Report: Fulton County Prosecutors Have Another Recording of Donald Trump Pressuring a GA Official to Overturn the Election

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One of the most damning pieces of evidence about Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia is a phone call he made to Brad Raffensperger on January 2, 2021, in which he asked the secretary of state to find the exact number of votes he needs. to turn his loss to Joe Biden into a victory. In fact, it was that call that first inspired the Fulton County district attorney’s office to launch a criminal investigation into the former president. But as it turns out, that wasn’t the only call Trump made to local Georgia officials that was of particular interest to state prosecutors.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the Fulton County special grand jury, which was empaneled last year and completed its work in January, heard a recording of a call Trump made to David Ralston, the late Georgia House Speaker who died in November. According to several jurors who spoke to the outlet about the call, Trump asked Ralston to call a special session of the state legislature to overturn Bidens victory. The then Speaker did not seem very receptive to the request. Ralston, one of the jurors told the AJC, basically cut the president. He said, I will do everything in my power that I think is appropriate. He really took the wind out of the sails. Well, thank you, you know, was all the president could say.

Ralston was asked about the Dec. 19, 2020, call in an interview a day later, in which he recounted that Trump made it clear he wanted a special session of the Georgia General Assembly, adding, I shared with him my belief that, based on my understanding of Georgia law, that would be a very hard fight.

A spokeswoman for Trump did not respond to the AJC’s request for comment.

As CNN notes, this is the third known recording of Trump pressuring a Georgia official to overturn the state’s election; in addition to Ralston and Raffensperger, Trump also pressed an investigator in the Georgia secretary of states office to look into election fraud, saying he would be praised for overturning Biden’s votes. Trump is also known to have asked Brian Kemp to call a special session to overturn Bidens win and launch an audit of mail-in ballots (Kemp said no to the special session, and told Trump that he does not have the authority to order an audit).

The special grand jury, which met for about seven months in Atlanta, recommended that the DA’s office file criminal charges against unnamed individuals. In a report released after the conclusion of their investigation, the grand jurors also wrote that they believed one or more witnesses may have lied to them. District Attorney Fani Willis is currently weighing the charges; Trump, unsurprisingly, insists that he has done nothing wrong and that the investigation into his conduct is a politically motivated witch hunt, a claim he seems obligated to make at least once every other day or else he will die

In related news, in their conversation with The Atlanta Journal Constitution, one of the grand jurors said that in his under-oath testimony, Senator Lindsey Graham said that Trumps brain was so messed up following his loss in 2020 that if someone said [him] that aliens came down and stole Trump’s ballots, that Trump would believe it.

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