On Monday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) shared with ABC’s Good Morning America his thoughts on the controversial recorded phone call where President Donald Trump asked him to “find” him more votes.
Raffensperger has been working to determine if any voter fraud occurred during the 2020 election, an idea that Trump had been pushing lawsuits about since November. Raffensperger stated that discussing any legal matters on the phone with Trump was something he “never believed was appropriate.”
“We’re in a litigation mode with the president’s team and the state of Georgia, and whenever you say anything, you have to have advisers there, they have to have their advisers there, and I just preferred not to talk to someone we are in litigation with but we took the call, and we had a conversation,” Raffensperger said.
They discussed voter data within the state of Georgia, which they disagreed on.
“The data that (Trump) has is just plain wrong,” said Raffensperger. “He had hundreds of hundreds of people he said that were dead that voted; we found two. That’s just an example; he has just bad data.”
Trump had been using the idea that votes were counted for deceased Americans as one of many examples of possible ways voter fraud had been committed while fighting his legal battles. However, there has not been any evidence to support these claims.
When asked if Raffensperger would be launching a criminal investigation against the President, he stated that “because (he) had a conversation with the president… there might be a conflict of interest.
“I understand that the Fulton County district attorney wants to look at it. Maybe that’s the appropriate venue for it to go,” he added.
During the call, Trump also asked Raffensperger if it was possible that ballots were shredded in Fulton County, or if voting machinery had been hacked against him, both suggestions with no evidence to support.
Raffensperger refused to directly answer to questions regarding the legality of Trump’s requests for him during the phone call.
“I’m not a lawyer; all I know is that we’re gonna follow the law, follow the process, truth matters,” he said. “And we’ve been fighting these rumors for the last two months.”
The phone call was leaked after Trump criticized Raffensperger in a tweet on Sunday.
