Carl Bernstein, one of the two journalists who broke the Watergate Scandal back in 1972, has branded Donald Trump's phone call with Georgia's top election officials a "far worse" controversy.
Famously, Bernstein's reporting alongside fellow-journalist Bob Woodward eventually led to President Richard Nixon's resignation over the botched cover-up of his administration's burglary of Democratic National Committee headquarters.
Speaking in a virtual interview with CNN, Bernstein was asked about his thoughts on Trump's leaked call, to which Bernstein replied:
"It’s not déjà vu. This was something far worse than occurred in Watergate. We have both a criminal president of the United States in Donald Trump and a subversive president of the United States at the same time in this one person.
"This is the ultimate smoking gun tape. It is the tape with the evidence of what this president is willing to do to undermine the electoral system and illegally, improperly, and immorally try to instigate a coup."
Bernstein added that the only thing that would oust Trump from office would be momentum from other Republicans, stating: "the one thing we should recall from Watergate was that the heroes of Watergate were Republicans who would not tolerate Richard Nixon’s conduct."
Trump proposed controversy earlier today after The Washington Post obtained and released a recording of a phone call in which the outgoing president can be heard speaking to Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
You can listen to the phone call in question below:(The full phone call can be heard HERE.)
In the January 2 phone call, Trump asks Raffensperger to "find" votes in the state of Georgia to help overturn the election in order to defeat Joe Biden.
While falsely insisting that he had won the state of Georgia in the 2020 presidential election, Trump can be heard espousing a number of unfounded claims, and at one point tells Raffensperger that he could be held criminally liable if he refused to report the truth.
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."
Meanwhile, per BBC News, Raffensperger replied: "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."
