In a December phone call with the chief investigator in the office of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, former President Donald Trump insisted on winning Georgia’s presidential election, telling the researcher that “the country has ”An audit that was initiated to determine whether the process of verifying signature and voting by mail was done correctly in the third largest county in the state, according to a recently published audio recording obtained by The Wall Street Journal.
“This country counts because it’s very interesting … I’ve won everything but Georgia, I know, and I’ve won Georgia (I know) by far, and people know it, and you know it, something I mean it’s going something bad will happen, ”Trump told chief investigator Frances Watson, according to the recording of the six-minute call.
The former president goes on to say to Watson, “When the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised … People will say, great, because that’s what it’s all about, this ability to check it out and do well because everyone knows it’s bad “.
The existence of this new audio recording comes amid a criminal investigation into Trump’s efforts to topple the results of the November election in Georgia, which he lost by 11,779 votes. At the heart of this investigation, initiated by the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office last month, is a one-hour phone call Trump had with Raffensperger on Jan. 2. In that call, Trump launched unfounded conspiracy theories and falsehoods about the election. and begged Raffensperger to “find” the exact number of votes he needed to win Georgia. Trump has denied the wrongdoing and his dismissal lawyers argued that he “acted incorrectly in this phone call in no way.”
A Trump spokesman has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment.
Raffensperger announced on December 14 that investigators in his office, in coordination with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), would conduct an audit of matches of missing ballot envelope signatures, saying there were specific and credible allegations. that the concordance of signatures was not done correctly. by election officials in the June primaries. A total of 15,118 no-vote envelopes, which is where voters sign, were randomly selected to be audited.
The audit was completed on Dec. 29 and investigators only discovered two ballots that should not be accepted as they were and should have been subjected to the “healing” process. But the GBI director also made it clear that neither of these two ballots was issued fraudulently.
According to the recording, Watson assured Trump that his team and the GBI are only “interested in the truth and finding, you know, finding the information that is based on the facts.”
ABC News previously reported the existence of this call in January. At the time, a source familiar with the matter said Trump had told Watson to “find the fraud” and that he would be a “national hero” for it. These exact words are not pronounced in the audio recording of the call. In a follow-up conversation, this source told ABC News that was how Watson had interpreted the president’s words and how he described the call to this source.
When the call was first reported, ABC News did not identify the investigator because the source who shared the details of the call asked Watson not to go because of the threat facing election officials. In this recording, however, Trump identifies him by his name.
ABC News has approached Watson to comment on the call and audio recording, but has received no news. However, ABC’s Atlanta subsidiary, WSB, also obtained the recording and spoke exclusively with Watson.
“It’s something I didn’t expect and, as I mentioned in the call, I was surprised that it took time to do that,” Watson told WSB’s Mark Winne.
He also said he did not feel pressured and that the investigation agency had requested the phone call.
In a statement, Raffensperger spokesman Ari Schaffer said: “This phone call is just one more example of how public comments from Secretary Raffensperger’s office also reflect what was said in the individual conversations: we would follow the law, it would count all the legal aspects of voting and investigating any allegations of fraud.This is exactly what we did and how we arrived at the exact final vote sum.
In the recording of the call, Trump refers to Watson’s meeting with his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and Watson indicates that it happened a day before the call. ABC News previously confirmed that Meadows was in Cobb County trying to observe the Dec. 22 audit. Raffensperger’s deputy, Jordan Fuchs, said at the time that he did not allow Meadows to enter the room where the investigators worked, but he did allow him to stay at the door.
Trump makes much of the conversation throughout this call, sometimes rambling on about his election victories in other states, such as Florida, Ohio, Alabama and Texas, implying that those victories are evidence that his loss to Georgia it was impossible.
“What you can do, Frances, it would be, it’s a fantastic thing. It’s important to the country, so important. You have no idea, so important. And I’m very grateful,” he said, according to the recording.
Near the end of the call, Trump asked Watson if investigators will work during Christmas and said, “Because you know we have that date on the 6th, which is a very important day.”
January 6 was the day Congress counted the election votes, the final step in the certification process of the victory of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
That morning, Trump told a crowd of supporters at a rally: “I know everyone here will soon march to the Capitol building to make your voices heard peacefully and patriotically … Let’s fight like hell. And if not do “Don’t fight like hell, you won’t have a country anymore.”
It wasn’t long before a crowd of Trump supporters and violent extremists descended on the U.S. Capitol, overtaking police to infiltrate the nation’s government headquarters, forcing lawmakers and then-Vice President Mike Pence to seek security while insurgents tried to obstruct Congress. and Pence continued his constitutional duty to assert Biden’s victory.