Trump pressured Georgia with a phone call to “find the fraud”

Atlanta – When election officials in Georgia verified signatures on postal ballot envelopes in a county in the Atlanta metropolitan area, Donald Trump he demanded that the lead investigator “find the fraud” and claimed it could make him a national hero.

The December appeal, described by a person knowledgeable and asking for anonymity to address the sensitive nature of the discussion, is another link in the chain of extraordinary pressure campaign Trump has exerted on state officials in his attempt to quash the results of the November election, which he lost to the Democrat Joe Biden.

It is one of at least three phone calls over the course of a month between early December and early January in which Trump sought help from senior officials in Georgia to undermine the election, although he was denied in every attempt. Trump lost to Biden in Georgia by 11,779 votes.

The call to the investigator was prior to Trump’s Jan. 2 appeal to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, asking election officials to “find” enough votes to undo Biden’s victory in the state. It happened when election officials checked the signatures on the Cobb County postal ballots.

No cases of fraud were found in the audit, during which more than 15,000 signatures were reviewed. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation assisted in the audit of the firms.

For months, Trump and his allies have made false claims about the process of verification of signatures in Georgia on mailed ballots and the results of the November election. They demanded, among other things, a verification of the signature.

The White House had not yet commented on the matter. The Washington Post was the first outlet to report the call on Saturday. The outlet said it withheld the identity of the investigator, who did not respond to requests for comment due to the danger of threats and harassment against election officials.