Trump recorded pleading with election official to ‘find’ him votes

US President Donald Trump badgered and pleaded with Georgia’s election chief to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the state, suggesting in a telephone call that the official “find” enough votes to hand Mr Trump the victory.

The conversation on Saturday was the latest step in an unprecedented effort by a sitting president to pressure a state official to reverse the outcome of a free and fair election that he lost.

The renewed intervention and the persistent and unfounded claims of fraud by the first president to lose re-election in almost 30 years come nearly two weeks before Mr Trump leaves office and two days before twin runoffs in Georgia that will determine control of the Senate.

Mr Trump confirmed in a tweet Sunday that he had spoken to Georgia’s secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffensperger, who tweeted that claims Mr Trump made during the call were untrue.

“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Mr Trump said on the call. “Because we won the state.”

Georgia counted its votes three times before certifying Mr Biden’s win by a 11,779 margin, and Mr Raffensperger responded: “President Trump, we’ve had several lawsuits, and we’ve had to respond in court to the lawsuits and the contentions. We don’t agree that you have won.”

Audio snippets of the conversation were posted online by The Washington Post. A recording of the call was later obtained by The Associated Press from a person who was on the call.

The president used the hour-long conversation to tick through a list of claims about the election in Georgia, including that hundreds of thousands of ballots mysteriously appeared in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta. Officials have said there is no evidence of that happening.

The Georgia officials on the call are heard repeatedly pushing back against the president’s assertions, telling him that he’s relying on debunked theories and, in one case, selectively edited video.

At another point in the conversation, Mr Trump appeared to threaten Mr Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the secretary of state’s legal counsel, by suggesting both could be criminally liable if they failed to find that thousands of ballots in Fulton County had been illegally destroyed. There is no evidence to support Mr Trump’s claim.

“That’s a criminal offense,” Mr Trump says. “And you can’t let that happen.”

Democrats and a few Republicans condemned Mr Trump’s actions, while at least one Democrat urged a criminal investigation.

Biden senior adviser Bob Bauer called the recording “irrefutable proof” of Mr Trump pressuring and threatening an official in his own party to “rescind a state’s lawful, certified vote count and fabricate another in its place”.

“It captures the whole, disgraceful story about Donald Trump’s assault on American democracy,” Mr Bauer said.

Mr Trump has repeatedly attacked the way Mr Raffensperger ran Georgia’s elections, claiming without evidence that the state’s 16 electoral votes were wrongly given to Mr Biden.

“He has no clue!” Mr Trump tweeted of Mr Raffensperger, saying the state official “was unwilling, or unable” to answer questions about a series of claims about ballot handling and voters that have been debunked or shot down by judges and election authorities.

Mr Raffensperger responded on Twitter: “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true. The truth will come out.”

There was no widespread fraud in the election, which a range of election officials across the country, as well as Mr Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, have confirmed.

Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia, key battleground states crucial to Mr Biden’s victory, have also vouched for the integrity of the elections in their states.

Nearly all the legal challenges from Mr Trump and his allies have been dismissed by judges, including two thrown out by the Supreme Court, which includes three Trump-nominated justices.