A pair of House Democrats have asked FBI Director Christopher Wray to open a criminal probe into President Donald Trump after a leaked phone call showed him pleading with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn his state’s election, NBC News reports.
“As members of Congress and former prosecutors, we believe Donald Trump engaged in solicitation of, or conspiracy to commit, a number of election crimes,” Reps. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Kathleen Rice, D-N.Y., wrote in a letter to Wray on Monday. “We ask you to open an immediate criminal investigation into the president.”
In an hour-long conversation on Saturday, an audiotape of which was obtained and published by the Washington Post on Sunday, the outgoing president asked Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to help him find votes to overturn his loss there to President-elect Joe Biden.
During the call, a recording of which was first released by The Washington Post, the outgoing president asked Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find votes” to overturn his loss there to President-elect Joe Biden.
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“The people of Georgia are angry. The people in the country are angry,” Trump said in the call. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated,” Trump said in the call.
“So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump said. “Because we won the state.”
Trump’s claims are a self-deluding fantasy as an initial tally, as well as two recounts, confirmed Biden’s victory in Georgia and its 16 Electoral College votes by more than 11,000 votes.
Raffensperger and his general counsel, Ryan Germany, told Trump that they could not help him, as Biden’s win had been fair and accurate.
In their letter, Lieu and Rice allege, “The evidence of election fraud by Mr. Trump is now in broad daylight.”
“Given the more than ample factual predicate, we are making a criminal referral to you to open an investigation into Mr. Trump,” the lawmakers wrote, according to NBC.
Trump has spent much of the past two months working to overturn the election results, pressing swing state lawmakers to disregard the vote totals in their states and backing legal challenges that have fallen short — drawing sharp criticism from Democrats and some Republicans.
