President Donald Trump has reportedly told Georgia's top election official to "find" enough votes to overturn the election result, in a recording obtained and released by The Washington Post.
Per The Post, the hour-long phone call was made on Saturday (January 2), and sees outgoing President Donald Trump telling Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" votes in an apparent attempt to overturn the election results following his loss to President-elect Joe Biden
You can listen to the recording in question in the video below:(The full phone call can be heard HERE.)
While insisting that he had won the election in Georgia, Trump can be heard espousing a number of unfounded claims - at one point telling Raffensperger that he could be held criminally liable if he refused to report the ballots.
Trump goes on to make unverified claims that these ballots had been shredded by the Biden campaign and that voting machinery was removed from Fulton County.
At one point in the recording, Trump states:
"All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.
"The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry, and there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you've recalculated.
"You know what they did and you're not reporting it. That's a criminal offence. You can't let that happen. That's a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer."
Per BBC News, Raffensperger can be heard replying:
"Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong. We did an audit of that and we proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times.
"You have people who submit information and we have our people that submit information, and then it comes before the court and the court has to make a determination. We have to stand by our numbers, we believe our numbers are right."
Addressing the recording in a tweet made to his 88.5 million followers made on January 3, Trump later wrote:
"I spoke to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday about Fulton County and voter fraud in Georgia. He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the 'ballots under table' scam, ballot destruction, out of state 'voters', dead voters, and more. He has no clue! [sic]"
However, Raffensperger himself defiantly retweeted Trump, writing in reply: "Respectfully, President Trump: What you're saying is not true. The truth will come out."
Per Sky News, Joe Biden's senior adviser Bob Bauer has also commented on the recording stating:
"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."
Trump has made a number of baseless accusations of voter fraud on the part of the Biden campaign since the Democrat nominee was projected to become the next President of the United States by multiple media outlets in November.
However, despite a flurry of unsuccessful lawsuits from Trump and his supporters, Joe Biden is still expected to be sworn in as the 46th US President on January 20.
