Again what a great madness, outgoing President Donald Trump pressured Georgia’s top election official, a fellow Republican, in an extraordinary phone conversation to “find” him enough votes to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the southern state.
The Saturday conversation with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was the latest move in Trump’s two-month effort insisting that his loss to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden in the November 3 election was the result of widespread voter fraud, a claim that has been widely rejected by state and federal election officials and multiple courts, say US media reports.
Trump warned Raffensperger that he and his General Council could face “a big risk” if they failed to pursue his request. He further cautioned, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”
It is to be noted that the word of the recording leak came at an extraordinary juncture, two days before special runoff elections on Tuesday in Georgia that will decide control of the US Senate, and three days before the Congress on Wednesday to certify the results of the November 3 election.
As reported, Raffensperger is heard responding during the leaked call: “Well Mr. President, the challenge is, the data you have is wrong.”
Meanwhile, Neal Katyal, who served as acting solicitor general under President Barack Obama, has said President Trump talked “like a Mafia boss, and not a smart Mafia boss” during his leaked phone call with Georgia’s secretary general.
On the other hand, Bob Bauer, a senior adviser to Biden, said the recording captures “the whole, disgraceful story about Trump’s assault on American democracy.” By any standard measure, every state has certified the election results, and a legal campaign by Trump to challenge the results has been met almost uniformly with quick dismissals by judges across the country.
Even President Trump, who will be in charge of the Justice Department for the 15 days left in his administration, hinted that Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the chief lawyer for secretary of state’s office, could be prosecuted criminally if they did not do his bidding.
As expected, legal experts said that the telephone conversation was the centerpiece of the scheme for which Mr. Trump became the third American president to be impeached for committing high crimes and misdemeanors. Now we have irrefutable proof that Trump lied to the American people virtually from the start of the US presidential election.
The outgoing President Trump as a property developer could not imagine to be the most powerful president in the world. Now he is not ready to accept Joe Biden’s overwhelming victory in the election. His madness goes so far that he even threatened using the army to hold on to power. We feel sorry for his derangement.
