A Sunday report from The Washington Post claimed that Donald Trump attempted to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn the state’s election in his favor. According to attorney Seth Abramson, Trump’s alleged pressuring of Raffensperger would mean he committed a federal crime.
“Hey, fun fact, threatening an elections official with criminal prosecution unless he rigs an election in your favor is not just impeachable but a federal crime,” Abramson tweeted .
The attorney pointed to 52 U.S. Code Section 20511, which deems attempts to defraud or deprive “residents of a State of a fair and impartially conducted election process” using ballots that are known to be fraudulent, fictitious, or materially false as punishable by up to five years in prison.
He noted Trump’s purported admission that he only required enough ballots for victory reveals the president was not lodging a “specific actionable complaint,” but was instead attempting to “rig” the 2020 electoral outcome. Abramson also suggested that Trump attempted to threaten Raffensperger for political gain.
“Trump says he is ‘notifying’ Raffensperger formally that he’s eligible for *criminal prosecution* if he doesn’t do what Trump is demanding, which is ‘find’ *just enough votes* for him to win.”
During the conversation, The Washington Post reported that Trump asked for 11,780 votes. He reportedly suggested that Georgians were “angry” and asked Raffensperger to tell them that he has “recalculated.”
The publication called the phone call “rambling and at times incoherent” and suggested it highlighted how desperate and consumed Trump has been about his loss to President-elect Joe Biden.
“There’s no way I lost Georgia,” he allegedly repeated over the course of the call.
The Washington Post noted he previously pressured Michigan Gov. Brian Kemp to replace the state’s electors, asked the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to overturn the region’s results, and invited Michigan Republican state leaders to the White House as part of his plan to overturn the electoral results.
As noted by The Daily Mail , reports of the call come after Trump tweeted about Raffensperger on Sunday, who he claimed had “no clue” about the alleged fraud in the 2020 electoral process.
Despite Trump’s ongoing battle against the results of the referendum, he has lost over 50 legal battles to date and continues to fail to support his theory of widespread voter fraud. There have, however, been isolated incidents of fraud, including one of his own supporters who attempted to support the commander-in-chief using his deceased mother’s identity.