Trump doubles down on Georgia election fraud

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - In a televised town hall with CNN, former president Donald Trump doubled down on the very same claims that kicked off a criminal investigation into his conduct after Georgia’s 2020 election.

The former president again used the word “perfect” to describe a phone call he made in the weeks after the 2020 election where he asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” him the exact number of votes Trump would have needed to win the state.

The call launched a grand jury investigation out of Fulton County and District Attorney Fani Willis has indicated that indictments against Trump and others could come down sometime this summer.

During Wednesday night’s town hall, Trump doubled down on his defense of the call, and added that Raffensperger “owed” him votes.

“I said ‘you owe me votes’ because the election was rigged,” said Trump, speaking to moderator Kaitlan Collins. “That election was rigged, and if this call was bad, why didn’t [Raffensperger] and his lawyers hang up?”

“My initial thoughts were, this isn’t going to help,” said Caren Myers Morrison, a law professor at Georgia State University and a former prosecutor. “I think it’s some good corroborating evidence.”

Legal experts, including Morrison, have theorized that the former president, in addition to several state and local officials who acted as false electors on behalf of Trump, could be indicted in a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) charge, whereby any member of a group can be charged with crimes committed by another.

On Wednesday, as he has in the past, Trump claimed his call with Raffensperger was “perfect.”

“But that’s certainly undercut when he says, look, he owed me the votes,” said Morrison. “It’s making very clear that his state of mind was, he wanted something from the Secretary of State.”

Willis has stated that if any indictments come, they would likely happen this upcoming summer.

“Georgia’s election system is battle-tested, and we are a national leader in elections,” said a spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s office. “Our results were confirmed, and reconfirmed, multiple times in 2020 and our election officials are fully prepared to take on anything in 2024.”

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