Trump posts furious rant ahead of Jan 6 evidence from Georgia GOP official he asked to ‘find’ him 11,780 votes

Brad Raffensperger and Gabe Sterling set to testify before House select committee on Tueday

Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Sunday morning posting a furious rant about the House investigation into the events of 6 January 2021, turning his attention to the next hearing, set to feature Georgia election officials he asked to “find” him votes.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his deputy Gabe Sterling will testify publicly at the next hearing and are expected to be asked about what MrTrump called a “perfect call” in which they were pressured to help him overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Shortly before 9am on Sunday, Mr Trump posted: “The highly partisan Unselects are trying to create a FAKE narrative, for whatever reason but only with evil intention, that ‘He (me) knew he lost the Election.’ This is completely false. I felt the Election was RIGGED & STOLLEN, have from the very beginning, & have only gotten stronger in that belief with time & large amounts of additional evidence and proof.”

He continued: “In my mind I have, & HAVE HAD, NO QUESTION, and MANY people would be willing to so attest, but the Unselects don’t want to hear them……”

The former president then returned to one of his favourite phrases, posting simply: “WITCH HUNT!”

Continuing with a diatribe against the Democrats, Mr Trump wrote: “I am leading in every poll, by a lot, and the Democrats are doing everything they can to change that, even if it’s another Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, Mueller Scam, Impeachment waste of time, or whatever. The same lying people saying the same kind of thing. I only want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Turning to the next hearing after a brief pause, he posted: “My phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State, with many other people, including numerous lawyers, knowingly on the line, was absolutely PERFECT and appropriate. YES, it was a PERFECT CALL (and so was the second call for which the Washington Post was forced to do a major, and somewhat embarrassing, retraction). Thank you!”

After another gap in posts, he added: “I have sooo many witnesses to everything good, but the highly partisan and one sided Unselect Committee of political hacks has not interest in hearing or seeing them. This Witch Hunt could all be ended quickly if they did!”

The two top Georgia election officials, Mr Raffensperger and Mr Sterling will testify on Tuesday in the January 6 committee’s fourth public hearing.

Former president Trump repeatedly pressured Georgia’s elected officials to overturn the presidential election results after Joe Biden became the first Democrat to win the state since Bill Clinton in 1992.

Most infamously, Mr Trump called Mr Raffensperger and asked him to “find” 11,780 votes to overturn his loss in Georgia, since that was more vote than Mr Biden’s margin of victory.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry”, Mr Trump told Mr Raffernsperger on the call. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated.”

But Mr Raffensperger rebuffed the idea.

“Well, Mr President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong”, he said.

The testimony comes after Mr Raffensperger beat Representative Jody Hice in the Republican primary last month despite Mr Trump’s endorsement of the latter candidate. Similarly, Governor Brian Kemp beat former Senator David Perdue, Mr Trump’s preferred candidate for governor.

Mr Sterling, for his part, spent much of the aftermath of the 2020 election and the leadup to the Georgia Senate runoff election denouncing threats to election workers.

“Mr President, you have not condemned this language or these actions. This has to stop. We need you to step up, and if you’re going to take a position of leadership, show some”, he said in December 2020.

“We’re investigating. There’s always a possibility, I get it, you have the right to go to the courts. What you don’t have is the ability to — and you need to step up and say this — is stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence.”