Trump pressured Georgia investigator to ‘find’ him more votes, new audio reveals

Georgia elections investigator had told Trump that her agency was ‘only interested in the truth’

Former president Donald Trump allegedly pressured the top investigator in last year’s Georgia mail-in ballot to ‘find’ fraud, telling her that she would be ‘praised’ for overturning the election in his favour.

The audio of the call obtained by the Wall Street Journal is the latest in the line of Mr Trump’s extraordinary efforts to influence the poll outcome in Georgia which he lost to his Democratic challenger Joe Biden by 11,779 votes. 

Earlier in January, several media outlets had reported about the telephone conversation between Mr Trump and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger during which the then-president tried to pressure him into finding enough votes to reverse his loss in the state.

The recently reported conversation between Mr Trump and the Georgia election investigator has further drawn attention to the criminal investigation launched by a Georgia prosecutor into the alleged efforts to overturn the state’s election results.

In the now reported six-minute-long phone call, Mr Trump repeatedly told the chief investigator Frances Watson that he won the election in Georgia and that “something bad happened.”

“When the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised,” he told Ms Watson. “I can assure you that our team and the [Georgia Bureau of Investigation], that we are only interested in the truth and finding the information that is based on the facts,” Ms Watson reportedly replied.

According to the WSJ, Mr Trump made the calls in December when Mr Raffensperger had launched an investigation to determine if election officials in Cobb Country had accepted mail-in ballots that did not match those on files. The allegations of ballot fraud were eventually determined to have no merit.

Mr Trump reportedly told Ms Watson to review the signatures going back several years. “I hope you are going back two years as opposed to checking one against the other,” CNN quoted Mr Trump as saying on the call. “Because that would just be a signature check that didn’t mean anything.”

In the calls, Mr Trump did not offer any evidence of the electoral fraud, noted the WSJ report.

Ari Schaffer, the spokesperson for Mr Raffensperger’s office, told WSJ: “This phone call is just one more example of how Secretary Raffensperger’s office’s public comments also reflect what was said in one-on-one conversations: We would follow the law, count every legal vote and investigate any allegations of fraud. That’s exactly what we did, and how we arrived at the accurate final vote tally.”

The criminal investigation launched by the Georgia prosecutor is now looking into both the calls that Mr Trump made to Mr Raffensperger and Ms Watson, reported CNN citing sources.

Mr Trump’s representatives did not respond to the request for comments from the WSJ.

Earlier in February, Mr Trump’s adviser Jason Miller had said, “There was nothing improper or untoward about a scheduled call between President Trump, Secretary Raffensperger and lawyers on both sides. If Mr Raffensperger didn’t want to receive calls about the election, he shouldn’t have run for Secretary of State.”