In the end, being elected president may be the worst thing that ever happened to Donald Trump. He may have gotten away with corrupt and even illegal business practices his entire life, but his calls to rig a presidential election should not, and does not appear to be about to, go unpunished.
NEW: A local criminal investigation into then-President Donald Trump’s attempt to meddle with Georgia’s 2020 election recount is inching forward, as Fulton County investigators have interviewed elections officials and received documents from the agency https://t.co/DJhIk67kA1
— Spiro Agnew’s Ghost (@SpiroAgnewGhost) September 5, 2021
In Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis continues to investigate a phone call between, among several others, then-president Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, which was leaked to the press almost immediately after it concluded. Trump can be heard in the call telling officials to “find 11,780 votes” so that he would win the election in Georgia after weeks of telling supporters that he really had won in every state that flipped from red to blue in 2020.
According to The Daily Beast, four witnesses have come forward to speak to Willis and her team of investigators.
‘“They’ve asked us for documents, they’ve talked to some of our folks, and we’ll cooperate fully,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told The Daily Beast this week.
‘Her investigators have since interviewed at least four officials at the secretary of state’s office, asking questions that show a particular interest in Raffensperger’s separate phone conversations with Trump and U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, according to two of these sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.’
Trump, in Taped Call, Pressured Georgia Official to ‘Find’ Votes to Overturn Election https://t.co/aoOJMNcwkY
— Mark Stern (@mfstern) September 2, 2021
While Raffensberger and a number of others were astonished by Trump’s demands in the phone call, and even tried to gently push back against it before turning him in, others may have actually been influenced to attempt to meet his demands, such as the Georgia secretary of state’s top attorney, Ryan Germany.
‘According to two sources, DA investigators interviewed a number of people around May who could have been influenced by the former president’s plea to find votes, including Germany, agency communications director Ari Schaffer, chief operating officer Gabriel Sterling, and the external affairs director who oversees the agency’s outreach programs, Sam Teasley.’
The infamous phone call, cited in Trump’s second impeachment, was never going to change the outcome, says Georgia state rep. @GaSecofState, because “there were no votes to find.” https://t.co/JSNShqb09k pic.twitter.com/N86VDFkOtz
— OZY (@ozy) September 5, 2021
However, the case is in no way going to be an easy one and actually charging or convicting Trump may prove all but impossible considering the amount of financial resources Trump has thanks to supporters willing to fork over cash for his legal fight.
‘The effort to potentially indict Trump faces a steep uphill climb, and not only because it is still unprecedented for a local prosecutor to pursue a criminal case against a former president. Willis, who is still in her first year in office, is operating with county funds that seem rather slim compared to the war chest that Trump has amassed from loyalists. The latest numbers show that Trump’s political groups have collected $100 million so far this year, according to The New York Times. That’s four times the entire Fulton County DA’s latest annual proposed budget.’
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is trying to use open records laws to find political motivations behind the DOJ’s lawsuit over Georgia’s voting law. https://t.co/TO9M9d9FkF #gapol
— Mark Niesse (@markniesse) September 2, 2021
