“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”
Outgoing US President Donald Trump pressured the leading election official in Georgia to “find” enough votes to swing the result in his favour in the state, a leaked audio recording obtained by the Washington Post has revealed.
A recording of a phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was obtained by the newspaper and published in full on Sunday.
During the phone call, the full transcript of which can be read here, Trump can be heard asking Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat to President-elect Joe Biden in the state.
The Washington Post also claimed that Trump alternately flattered and begged Raffensperger in an attempt to overturn his defeat and even threatened him with vague criminal consequences.
“All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump can be heard saying in the leaked audio recording.
“There’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated.”
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” Trump added, while also claiming there was “no way” he lost the state.
The Washington Post claims that Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected Trump’s claims and told him he was relying on debunked conspiracy theories about election fraud, something Trump has consistently claimed was responsible for his defeat, with no evidence.
“Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong,” Raffensperger is heard to have said in the recording.
There has been no comment on the recording from either The White House or from Raffensperger since details of the phone call emerged.
Election results from the state of Georgia show that Joe Biden accumulated 11,779 more votes than Trump out of over five million cast in total.
