Trump Pressured Georgia Secretary of State to ‘Find’ Votes

‘There is nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you recalculated,’ the president told Brad Raffensperger

President Trump in a Saturday telephone call urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the November election results that delivered the state to President-elect Joe Biden.

At one point in the roughly hourlong call, Mr. Trump told Mr. Raffensperger that he could face legal action and said he wanted him to find nearly 12,000 votes so he could reverse Mr. Biden’s victory.

“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state,” he told Mr. Raffensperger on the call, adding later, “It’s not a problem that is going away.” Mr. Biden won the state by 11,779 votes out of about 5 million cast.

A recording of the call was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

News of the extraordinary conversation of a sitting president pressuring a state elections official to overturn election results comes just days before Tuesday’s runoff elections in Georgia that could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate and a Wednesday joint session of Congress to ratify Mr. Biden’s Electoral College win.

Bob Bauer, a senior adviser to Mr. Biden, said Sunday of the Trump phone call, “We now have irrefutable proof of a president pressuring and threatening an official of his own party to get him to rescind a state’s lawful, certified vote count and fabricate another in its place. It captures the whole, disgraceful story about Donald Trump’s assault on American democracy.”