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‘I want to find 11,780 votes’: Georgia election official speaks out about pressure from Donald Trump after 2020 loss
‘I want to find 11,780 votes’: Georgia election official speaks out about pressure from Donald Trump after 2020 loss
(FURTHER INVESTIGATION / FRANCE 2)
It’s an explosive phone call for Donald Trump, and a key witness in a potential trial of the former US president, charged with conspiracy against the United States. In this excerpt from “Complément d’enquête”, a senior official in charge of organizing the elections recounts how Donald Trump himself asked him to help him reverse the result of the 2020 election.
If he fails to win back the White House in 2024, will Donald Trump accept defeat this time? Four years ago, he cried conspiracy and denounced fraud. But it is the former president himself who now finds himself, for the first time in the history of the country, indicted for conspiracy against the United States of America. Because according to investigators, the invasion of the Capitol by his supporters after his fiery speech on January 6, 2021 was not a spontaneous demonstration that degenerated…
On September 12, 2024, “Complément d’enquête” recounts the 60 days during which Donald Trump tried everything to remain president, in defiance of the vote of American citizens. The magazine’s team was able to collect the testimony of a Republican presidential nominee who Trump pressured to help him overturn the election. On January 2, just days before the Capitol assault, the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger receives an explosive phone call from the White House. It was recorded.
On the other end of the line, Donald Trump himself, asking him to “find 11,780 votes. That’s one more than we need, because we won the state,” he argues. To justify his request, he once again puts forward alleged fraud: “deceased persons” who would have voted, and whose “the number is around 5,000” according to his words.
The Secretary of State resists these injunctions. After verification, only “two deceased persons whose spouses had voted for them”, he opposes Donald Trump as respectfully as possible. Faced with these answers, his interlocutor becomes threatening. He tries to intimidate him, invoking a “criminal offense” if the Secretary of State does not report ballots that he believes are falsified, And “a big risk for [Brad Raffensperger et son] lawyer”.
Four days later, on January 6, facing the crowd, Donald Trump maintained his accusations of fraud in Georgia. And in his mouth, the number of dead pseudo-voters even doubled. “More than 10,300 ballots cast in Georgia were filed by residents who died in 2020, and before the election”, he says, just before his supporters invade THE Capitol. The assault left seven people dead, according to a bipartisan report from the U.S. Senate, and shocked the world. It remains one of the greatest traumas of American democracy.
Excerpt from “Donald Trump, the strategy of chaos”, a document to be seen in “Complément d’enquête” on September 12, 2024.
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