A new report from the Daily Beast revealed that in the aftermath of the 2020 elections, then-president Donald Trump not only demanded that Georgia election officials find votes for him so he can undo his loss to Joe Biden, but also praised his supporters for sending death threats to officials who refused to help him overturn the election because they were “bad people who were getting what they deserved.”
The authors of the report, Jose Pagliery and Asawin Suebsaeng, wrote that they have acquired hundreds of internal emails from Georgia officials immediately calling for an investigation into Trump’s meddling as well as concerned administrators sharing death threats they believed should be taken seriously.
“There were death threats promising to make the Boston bombings look like child’s play.’ Impassioned pleas for Georgia’s top elections official to stand firm in the face of pressure from Trump to break the law. And an alarmed state official demanding an immediate investigation into Donald Trump’s ‘solicitation to commit election fraud,'” The report states.
Of note is the revelation that calls to Trump about the threats of violence fell upon deaf ears in the White House with Pagliery and Suebsaeng writing, “According to a former senior administration official and another source close to the former president, Trump was repeatedly briefed in the White House on the deluge of death threats directed at Georgia’s Republican officials. The 45th U.S. president’s reactions were—predictably—lacking in empathy.”
According to one ex-official, “There was this one time I heard [Trump] suggest they might be exaggerating the kind of threats they were getting. But more often, he’d make fun of them and say they were bad people who were getting what they deserved.”
The Beast notes that Trump, when informed about the threats of violence, suggested officials give into his demands if they wanted them to stop.
“The person close to Trump said that when the then-president was told about the flood of vulgar or violent threats against officials not cooperating with his anti-democratic efforts, Trump would sometimes remark that if they wanted the threats to stop, all they had to do was what Trump kept demanding of them,” the report states. “The then-president would also praise those issuing threats—’my people’— for harassing and pushing Georgia GOP officials to overturn the state’s legitimate election results in Trump’s favor, this source said, citing firsthand experience.”
Read the entire report at The Daily Beast.
