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Two House Democrats have called on FBI Director Christopher Wray to open a criminal investigation into President Donald Trump after a phone leak showed him pleading with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to quash the election of his state.
“As members of Congress and former prosecutors, we believe that Donald Trump has engaged in solicitation or conspiracy to commit a number of election crimes,” wrote Representatives Ted Lieu, D-California, and Kathleen Rice, DN.Y. a letter to Wray on Monday. “We call on you to open an immediate criminal investigation into the president.”
During the call, a recording of which was obtained by NBC News, Trump called on Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to allow him to erase President-elect Joe Biden’s margin of victory in the state.
“So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than what we have,” Trump said. “Because we won the state.”
The phone call, which lasted about an hour, showed Trump repeatedly pushing Raffensperger to change the vote tally while throwing a barrage of discredited conspiracy theories on the Republican election official and his staff. The president went so far as to suggest that if the secretary of state did not act according to Trump’s wishes, he could be criminally responsible.
“The Georgian people are angry. The people of the country are angry,” Trump said in the appeal. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, uh, you recalculated.”
Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel, Ryan Germany, made the call to crush the president’s claims – sometimes telling him his specific fraud allegations were downright bogus.
“Well, Mr. President, the challenge you have is the data you have is wrong,” Raffensperger said at one point.
In their letter, Lieu and Rice allege: “The evidence of Mr. Trump’s electoral fraud has now come to light.”
“In view of the factual predicate more than sufficient, we refer you to the criminal to open an investigation into Mr. Trump,” the lawmakers wrote.
The president has spent much of the past two months working to overturn the election results, urging lawmakers in swing states to ignore the vote totals in their states and backing unsuccessful court challenges – sparking strong criticism from Democrats and some Republicans.
But the recording of his conversation with Raffensperger led to a harsher response from Democratic opponents of Trump. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y., said on Sunday the President’s conduct was “ungodly”, while Senator Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Said she “deserved nothing less than a criminal investigation “.
When asked at a Democratic House leaders’ press conference on Monday whether the House should take action in response to the call, caucus chair Hakeem Jeffries, DN.Y., said that ‘he hadn’t read the transcript of the conversation, but: “We’re not in hindsight, we look forward to Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20.” Jeffries stressed that House Democrats are focusing on the fight against the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis within the new Congress.
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