Georgia Authorities Open Investigation into Trump Call to S.O.S.

In the days following the November 7th announcement that Joe Biden had won the 2020 presidential election, President Trump and his team began a furious effort to try to prove that this was untrue.  They felt as though widespread voter fraud, or perhaps even the manipulation of voting machines themselves could have been the culprit.

As their efforts to prove this fraud continued to falter, Trump looked to pressure some local lawmakers to assist in his quest, indulging during a phone call to Brad Raffensberger, the Secretary of State for Georgia, a state that had just gone blue for the first time since the early 1990’s.

That phone call is now at the center of an investigation by authorities in the Peach State.

Georgia’s secretary of state’s office on Monday opened an investigation into a phone call between Donald Trump and the state’s top elections official in which the then-president said he wanted to “find” enough votes to overturn his loss in the state, an official said.

Walter Jones, a spokesman for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, confirmed the investigation.

“The Secretary of State’s office investigates complaints it receives. The investigations are fact-finding and administrative in nature. Any further legal efforts will be left to the Attorney General,” Jones wrote.

Georgia authorities weren’t mincing their words, either.

The investigation by the secretary of state’s office stems from a complaint by George Washington University Law School professor John Banzhaf III, according to the investigative case sheet.

In an emailed press release sent Jan. 4, Banzhaf said he had filed a complaint with the secretary of state’s office requesting “that this matter be fully investigated, and action be taken to the extent appropriate.” The complaint suggests Trump may have committed one or more violations of Georgia law, including conspiracy to commit election fraud, criminal solicitation to commit election fraud and intentional interference with the performance of election duties, the release says.

Trump’s team has dismissed the investigation as frivolous, stating that the President said nothing improper or untoward during his phone call with Raffensberger.