[Washington Post lied...] "Correction: 'Trump pressured a Georgia elections investigator in a separate call legal experts say could amount to obstruction'"

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-call-georgia-
investigator/2021/01/09/7a55c7fa-51cf-11eb-83e3-322644d82356_story.html

By Amy Gardner
March 11, 2021 at 12:18 p.m. PST

Correction: Two months after publication of this story, the Georgia
secretary of state released an audio recording of President Donald Trump’s
December phone call with the state’s top elections investigator. The
recording revealed that The Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call,
based on information provided by a source. Trump did not tell the
investigator to “find the fraud” or say she would be “a national hero” if
she did so. Instead, Trump urged the investigator to scrutinize ballots in
Fulton County, Ga., asserting she would find “dishonesty” there. He also
told her that she had “the most important job in the country right now.” A
story about the recording can be found here. The headline and text of this
story have been corrected to remove quotes misattributed to Trump.

President Trump urged Georgia’s lead elections investigator to identify
wrongdoing in the state’s vote in a December phone call, saying the
official would be praised for doing so, according to an individual briefed
on the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the
sensitivity of the conversation.

Trump placed the call to the investigations chief for the Georgia
secretary of state’s office shortly before Christmas — while the
individual was leading an inquiry into allegations of ballot fraud in Cobb
County, in the suburbs of Atlanta, according to people familiar with the
episode.

The president’s attempts to intervene in an ongoing investigation could
amount to obstruction of justice or other criminal violations, legal
experts said, though they cautioned a case could be difficult to prove.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had launched the inquiry following
allegations that Cobb election officials had improperly accepted mail
ballots with signatures that did not match those on file — claims that
state officials ultimately concluded had no merit.

In an interview with The Washington Post on Friday, Raffensperger
confirmed that Trump had placed the Dec. 23 call. He said he was not
familiar with the specifics of what the president said in the conversation
with his chief investigator but said it was inappropriate for Trump to
have tried to intervene in the case.

“That was an ongoing investigation,” Raffensperger said. “I don’t believe
that an elected official should be involved in that process.”

The Post is withholding the name of the investigator, who did not respond
to repeated requests for comment, because of the risk of threats and
harassment directed at election officials.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Since Election Day, Trump has made at least three calls to government
officials in Georgia in an attempt to subvert President-elect Joe Biden’s
victory, beginning with a conversation with Gov. Brian Kemp (R) in early
December to berate him for certifying the state’s election results.

The president is furious with both Raffensperger and Kemp, who have
refused to echo his claims that the election was rigged. He has complained
that they betrayed him after he endorsed both of their 2018 elections. At
a rally Wednesday in Washington, shortly before his supporters ransacked
the Capitol, he attacked them personally onstage, calling the two men
“corrupt.”

Fact-checking Trump's Jan. 6 speech to 'stop the steal' protesters
As Congress was set to certify Joe Biden’s victory, President Trump gave a
speech filled with falsehoods. (Adriana Usero, Meg Kelly/The Washington
Post)
Trump’s call to the chief investigator occurred more than a week before he
spent an hour on the phone with Raffensperger, pushing him to overturn the
vote. In that Jan. 2 conversation, the president alternately berated the
secretary of state, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened
him with vague criminal consequences if the fellow Republican refused to
pursue his false claims, at one point warning that he was taking “a big
risk.”

‘I just want to find 11,780 votes’: In extraordinary hour-long call, Trump
pressures Georgia secretary of state to recalculate the vote in his favor

Legal experts said Trump’s call to the secretary of state may have broken
state or federal laws that bar the solicitation of election fraud or
prohibit participating in a conspiracy against people exercising their
civil rights.

Trump’s earlier call, to the chief investigator, could also carry serious
criminal implications, according to several former prosecutors, who said
that the president may have violated laws against bribery or interfering
with an ongoing probe.

“Oh my God, of course that’s obstruction — any way you cut it,” said Nick
Akerman, a former federal prosecutor in New York and a onetime member of
the Watergate prosecution team, responding to a description of Trump’s
conversation with the investigator.

Akerman said he would be “shocked” if Trump didn’t commit a crime of
obstruction under the Georgia statutes. He said the fact that the
president took the time to identify the investigator, obtain a phone
number and then call “shows that he’s trying to influence the outcome of
what’s going on.”

However, such cases can be difficult to prove, and legal experts said the
decision to prosecute Trump — even after he leaves office — would be a
politically fraught one.

Robert James, a former prosecutor in DeKalb County, Ga., said that proving
obstruction would hinge on what Trump said and the tone he used, as well
as whether the president’s intentions were clear.

Without the audio of the call, it would be more difficult to prove
wrongdoing, he said. The later call with Raffensperger is more damning, he
said, because of the power of the audio that was made public.

“He says, ‘Go find me some votes.’ That can clearly be interpreted as
asking someone to break the law,” James said.

In the wake of the Capitol siege by Trump supporters, Democratic House
leaders said Friday that they were preparing articles of impeachment that
they planned to vote on as early this coming week. While they were focused
primarily on Trump’s role in inciting a violent mob to storm the Capitol,
an early draft circulated Friday also mentioned Trump’s call to
Raffensperger as an example of “prior efforts to subvert and obstruct” the
certification of the 2020 election.

Audio: Trump’s full Jan. 2 call with Ga. secretary of state
Listen to the full Jan. 2 phone call. This audio has been edited to remove
the name of an individual about whom the president makes unsubstantiated
allegations. (Obtained by The Washington Post)
Raffensperger briefly mentioned Trump’s December call to the chief
investigator in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” earlier
this week. But the details of the conversation had not been previously
reported.

On the call, Trump sounded much like he did while talking to
Raffensperger, according to the person familiar with the discussion —
meandering from flattery to frustration and back again.

It was one in a series of personal interventions by Trump and his allies
in Georgia since the November election. The president has obsessed about
his defeat in the state and expressed disbelief to aides that he could
have lost while other Republicans won.

It is unclear how the president tracked down the chief elections
investigator. Before his Jan. 2 call to Raffensperger, Trump had tried to
reach the secretary of state at least 18 times, but the calls were patched
to interns in the press office who thought it was a prank and did not
realize the president was on the line, as The Post previously reported.
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows ultimately arranged the conference
call among Trump, Raffensperger and their aides.

That conversation followed previous inquiries to state officials by Trump
allies.

In mid-November, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) contacted Raffensperger
to inquire about whether entire counties’ mail ballots could be tossed if
an audit found high rates of mismatched signatures in those jurisdictions.

Raffensperger told The Post at the time that Graham appeared to be
suggesting that he find a way to toss legally cast ballots. Graham denied
that, calling that characterization “ridiculous.”

Then in late December, Meadows traveled to Cobb County to see for himself
how the ballot-signature audit was proceeding.

Meadows said he was not trying to interfere with the investigation but
just wanted to “talk outside of the tweets,” Jordan Fuchs, the deputy
secretary of state, said at the time.

Meadows was not allowed in the room where the audit was occurring, Fuchs
said, but he was able to peer through the window of the door.

Trump called the chief investigator the following day.

Here’s the full transcript and audio of the call between Trump and
Raffensperger

Raffensperger announced the audit on Dec. 14, after allegations surfaced
that ballots were accepted in Cobb County without proper verification of
voter signatures on the envelopes.

No evidence has emerged of widespread signature-matching anomalies in Cobb
or elsewhere in Georgia. Raffensperger ordered the audit, he said, because
his office pursues all allegations of election irregularities.

“Conducting this audit does not in any way suggest that Cobb County was
not properly following election procedures or properly conducting
signature matching,” Chris Harvey, Raffensperger’s director of elections,
said at the time. “We chose Cobb County for this audit because they are
well known to have one of the best election offices in the state, and
starting in Cobb will help us as we embark on a statewide signature
audit.”

If large numbers of mismatched envelope signatures had been discovered, it
would have been impossible to pair those envelopes with the ballots they
contained, which are separated to protect voter privacy as required in the
Georgia Constitution.

In the end, Raffensperger’s investigations team, working alongside the
Georgia Bureau of Investigation, found just two nonmatching signatures
among more than 15,000 examined during the audit in Cobb County. The audit
concluded on Dec. 29, six days after the president called the chief
investigator.

Trump was steaming about the outcome of the inquiry when he spoke to
Raffensperger on Jan. 2.

“Why can’t we have professionals do it instead of rank amateurs who will
never find anything and don’t want to find anything?” the president said,
according to audio obtained by The Post. “They don’t want to find, you
know they don’t want to find anything. Someday you’ll tell me the reason
why, because I don’t understand your reasoning, but someday you’ll tell me
the reason why.”

Alice Crites, Paul Kane and Mike DeBonis contributed to this report.



--
"LOCKDOWN", left-wing COVID fearmongering. 95% of COVID infections
recover with no after effects.

No collusion - Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, March 2019.
Officially made Nancy Pelosi a two-time impeachment loser.

Donald J. Trump, cheated out of a second term by fraudulent "mail-in"
ballots. Report voter fraud: sf.n...@mail.house.gov

Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.

President Trump boosted the economy, reduced illegal invasions, appointed
dozens of judges and three SCOTUS justices.