Trump: "Find 11,780 votes" to win Georgia
Trump was blatant about his attempts to subvert and steal the 2020 election, going so far as to demand in a January 2, 2021 phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, that Raffensperger "find 11,780 votes which is one more than we have. Because we won the state."1
11,780 was the magic number for Trump as Biden won the state of Georgia by 11,779 votes. Trump warned Raffensperger in his January 2, 2021 call to him, which Raffensperger recorded, that Raffensperger was taking "a big risk" by not conjuring up the votes. Trump told Raffensperger that "there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um that you've recalculated" because the "people of Georgia are angry."2
Trump, a notorious cheater at golf, cribbed his lie about election fraud in 2020 directly from the "fraud at polls" claim in his #1 favorite movie, Citizen Kane. His demand and threat to Raffensperger were as subtle as a note demanding money handed to a teller in a bank robbery. Yet Trump had bragged on January 23, 2016, that he could "shoot somebody" on NYC's 5th Ave and "wouldn't lose any voters." Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of election fraud in New York State3 and is under federal indictment for his attempts to subvert the election and his involvement in the January 6th insurrection against the US.4
- The Washington Post, "'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," January 3, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/d45acb92-4dc4-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html; The Wall Street Journal, "Trump Call to Georgia Lead Investigator Reveals New Details," March 11, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/recording-of-trump-phone-call-to-georgia-lead-investigator-reveals-new-details-11615411561?reflink=desktopwebshare_twitte; The Wall Street Journal, "Trump's Embarrassing Electoral College Hustle," December 30, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-embarrassing-electoral-college-hustle-11609371708; CNN, "Wall Street Journal: Trump pressured Georgia investigator to find 'the right answer' in baseless fraud push," March 10, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/10/politics/donald-trump-georgia-phone-call/index.html; The New York Times, "77 Days: Trump's Campaign to Subvert the Election," January 31, 2021 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/31/us/trump-election-lie.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage; CNN, "Timeline: What Georgia prosecutors looking at as they investigate Trump's efforts to overturn the election," August 5, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/08/politics/trump-georgia-2020-election/; The Washington Post, "Opinion: The most damning evidence against Trump," August 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/02/most-damning-evidence-against-trump/.
- As cited above.
- Newsweek, "Donald Trump Stung by Multiple Polls After Being Found Guilty," June 3, 2024, https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-presidential-election-poll-hush-money-biden-1907270.
- AP News, "Trump indicted for efforts to overturn 2020 election and block transfer of power," August 2, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/trump-indicted-jan-6-investigation-special-counsel-debb59bb7a4d9f93f7e2dace01feccdc.
