FlashPoints: There were 29 phone calls between Trump and Raffensperger

Greg Palast

I don’t think it’s just Donald Trump that’s in trouble now that a special grand jury is being impaneled at the request of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to investigate interference in the 2020 election. The Republicans, including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, were playing fast and loose with accusations of voter fraud. I wouldn’t be surprised if Raffensperger gets cuffed. And, if there is justice, he should be breaking rocks in a chain gang. There were 29 phone calls between Trump and Raffensperger — twenty-nine — not one. Raffensperger released one, where he looks like a man for all seasons. I’d like to get the recordings of those other calls. And I’m sure the grand jury will want to hear them too. I don’t know how many were recorded, but I want to know what’s in those other calls, and to what extent Raffensperger and his office were playing games with Trump. “Look, all I want to do is this; I just want to find 11,780 votes.” — Donald Trump speaking to Brad Raffensperger in a call recorded on January 2, 2021 Understand, the guy that Trump is speaking to, Brad Raffensperger, there’s probably no one in the country who is more vicious when it comes to false, crazy, wild, and unsupported accusations of voter fraud by Democrats than Brad Raffensperger… He really is the Purge’n General of Georgia. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is no hero. This is the guy that wrongly removed 198,000 legitimate voters from the voter rolls of Georgia. We have their names and addresses. I did the investigation, the ACLU put out my report, Black Voters Matter went to federal court to get the people put back on before the election. And if you watched Democracy Now!, you’d know that I was, literally, physically chasing Brad Raffensperger all over the Capitol to get him to go over that list, as a federal court ordered him to. When you talk about Jim Crow tactics, this guy is the best in the nation — and I don’t mean that as a compliment, I mean it as a warning. I think Trump was shocked that he didn’t get the cooperation from Raffensperger. And he didn’t get it for a simple reason; Raffensperger mucked with the numbers as much as he could before the election, but when the count came through, he wasn’t going to serve five to life for Donald Trump.