‘I need 11,000 votes, give me a break’: Raffensperger details Trump’s election demands

WASHINGTON —  Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger fielded a flood of demands from then-President Trump after the 2020 election to address alleged election fraud, according to testimony from Tuesday’s hearing on the insurrection.

“‘I just want to find 11,780 votes,’” Raffensperger said Trump told him during a phone call. “I need 11,000 votes, give me a break.”

The audio played by the the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack depicted an increasingly frantic Trump, with the former president’s requests to Raffensperger growing more explicit as time went on. Members of the audience in the Cannon Caucus Room, where the committee’s hearings are taking place, laughed throughout the audio clips.

“I think you’re gonna find that they are shredding ballots, because they have to get rid of the ballots,” Trump said on one phone call to Raffensperger. “The ballots are corrupt.”

Trump then claimed that the law enforcement officers who investigated the allegations of election fraud — and found them to be false — were dishonest, and suggested that Raffensperger could be held liable for criminal behavior if he didn’t comply with the president’s requests, according to the audio clips.

“You can’t let that happen, that’s a big risk to you,” Trump said. “All of this stuff is very dangerous.”

Raffensperger said that he maintained his stance that the election in Georgia was not rigged or subject to fraud.

Politics

State officials received scores of calls from Giuliani, other Trump allies after 2020 election

‘Pressuring public servants into betraying their oath was a fundamental part of the playbook,’ said committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.).

June 21, 2022

“What I knew is that we didn’t have any votes to find,” Raffensperger told the panel Tuesday. “There was no shredding of ballots.”

Tuesday was the select committee’s fourth day of hearings on the Jan. 6 insurrection. The next hearing is on Thursday.