President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that legal scholars described as a flagrant abuse of power and a potential criminal act.
The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.”
Throughout the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected Trump’s assertions, explaining that the president is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.
Trump dismissed their arguments.
“The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated.”
Raffensperger responded: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”
Read the full transcript of the Trump-Raffensperger call
At another point, Trump said: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”
He later added: “So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.”
The rambling and at times incoherent conversation offered a remarkable glimpse of how consumed and desperate the president remains about his loss, unwilling or unable to let the matter go and still asserting he can reverse the results in enough battleground states to remain in office.
“There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump said, a phrase he repeated again and again on the call. “There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”
Several of his allies were on the line as he spoke, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a prominent GOP attorney whose involvement with Trump’s efforts had not been previously known.
In a statement, Mitchell said Raffensperger’s office “has made many statements over the past two months that are simply not correct and everyone involved with the efforts on behalf of the President’s election challenge has said the same thing: show us your records on which you rely to make these statements that our numbers are wrong.”
The White House, the Trump campaign and Meadows did not respond to a request for comment. Read more at Washington Post
The call by President Trump on Saturday to Georgia’s secretary of state raised the prospect that Mr. Trump may have violated laws that prohibit interference in federal or state elections, but lawyers said on Sunday that it would be difficult to pursue such a charge. Read more at New York Times
The story of the extraordinary call of a president pushing a top election official to rig the Georgia results was broken by the superb reporting of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein and the Washington Post’s Amy Gardner, but the backstory is almost as interesting.
It started on Saturday when Trump and his team reached out to talk to Raffensperger, who, according to an adviser, felt he would be unethically pressured by the president. Raffensperger had been here before: In November he accused Trump ally and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham of improperly exhorting him to meddle in the election to help Trump win Georgia. Graham later denied it.
So why not record the call with the president, Raffensperger’s advisers thought, if nothing else for fact-checking purposes. “This is a man who has a history of reinventing history as it occurs,” one of them told Playbook. “So if he’s going to try to dispute anything on the call, it’s nice to have something like this, hard evidence, to dispute whatever he’s claiming about the secretary. Lindsey Graham asked us to throw out legally cast ballots. So yeah, after that call, we decided maybe we should do this.”
The call took place Saturday afternoon. “Mr. President,” announced Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, at the top of the call, “everyone is on the line.” Little did he know. Trump made his ask and did most of the talking for the next hour, trafficking in the same conspiracy theories about election fraud that no court or criminal investigator has found credible. At the end of the call, Trump complains, “What a schmuck I was.”
Raffensperger’s team kept quiet about the call and the recording and waited. The president made the next move, claiming on Sunday morning via Twitter that Raffensperger was “unwilling, or unable, to answer” questions about his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud. “Respectfully, President Trump: What you're saying is not true,” Raffensperger replied at 10:27 a.m. “The truth will come out.” It wasn’t an empty promise.
This isn’t the first time that a call or his recorded comments have threatened Trump (see: Access Hollywood, Ukraine president).
“This phone call is bad,” Georgia conservative commentator Erick Erickson said on Twitter. We asked him to expand on that, and here’s what he added: “I think the general worry is that the GOP early vote actually came on strong [late] and there’s a real worry that the president shows up tomorrow and messes it all up. The North Georgia GOP has to turn out on Election Day. They’ve lagged the whole state. The President goes to Dalton tomorrow to get them out and now people are worried he spends his time attacking the GA GOP … There is real nervousness.”
Erickson and other Republicans have been concerned since November that the president’s voter fraud rhetoric will dampen turnout, a fear intensified by far-right activists who’ve suggested that Trump voters not go to the polls unless Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue fight harder to somehow cancel Biden’s Georgia win. Trump’s handling of a coronavirus relief package and his vetoing of a defense bill is another concern: Congress overrode the vote, but Perdue and Loeffler skipped out so they weren’t crosswise with Trump. Loeffler on Sunday avoided answering how she would’ve voted on the defense bill.
“Look, voters aren’t paying attention to all this stuff, people like us are,” one Georgia Republican strategist who’s working to elect Loeffler and Perdue told Playbook. “But at a certain point, all these little things that don’t look like they matter could matter. I still feel OK. But this doesn’t help. The president needs to cut out the Leeroy Jenkins s---. Unfortunately, he won’t.” Full transcript of the call with audio Read at POLITICO Playbook
(WASHINGTON) — In an extraordinary rebuke of President Donald Trump, all 10 living former secretaries of defense cautioned Sunday against any move to involve the military in pursuing claims of election fraud, arguing that it would take the country into “dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory.”
The 10 men, both Democrats and Republicans, signed on to an opinion article published in The Washington Post that implicitly questioned Trump’s willingness to follow his constitutional duty to peacefully relinquish power on Jan. 20. Following the Nov. 3 election and subsequent recounts in some states, as well as unsuccessful court challenges, the outcome is clear, they wrote, while not specifying Trump in the article.
“The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived,” they wrote.
The former Pentagon chiefs warned against use of the military in any effort to change the outcome.
“Efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory,” they wrote. “Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic.”
A number of senior military officers, including Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have said publicly in recent weeks that the military has no role in determining the outcome of U.S. elections and that their loyalty is to the Constitution, not to an individual leader or a political party. Read more at Time
Former Vice President Cheney, who has kept a low profile in the Trump years, "originated" the idea for a WashPost op-ed in which all 10 living former SecDefs — including both of Trump's — argue that the "time for questioning the results has passed," former SecDef William Perry tweeted.
President-elect Joe Biden and President Donald Trump are both scheduled to appear in Georgia on Monday ahead of two runoff elections that will not only determine the state’s representation in Congress, but the balance of power in the Senate. Biden is scheduled to appear in Atlanta alongside Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to stump for the two Democratic candidates, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. Biden and Harris stopping in Georgia underscores how important the state is for Democrats in setting the policy table in 2021. Trump will campaign for Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue during a “Victory Rally” at Dalton Regional Airport. Read more at USA Today
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, will not be extradited to face charges in the U.S., a British judge ruled on Monday.
The judge, Vanessa Baraitser, said extradition would be “oppressive” because of his mental health, the Associated Press reported. Assange was at “real risk” of suicide, she said, adding that she was not satisfied that the U.S. prison system would be able to prevent him from ending his own life.
The U.S. government is expected to appeal the decision.
Assange, who published hundreds of thousands of secret government files about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as well as diplomatic cables between 2010 and 2011, faces a list of 18 federal charges including violating the Espionage Act and conspiring to hack government computers. Read more at Time
WASHINGTON – Former House Speaker Paul Ryan excoriated fellow Republicans Sunday in a rare statement that called planned GOP efforts to challenge President-elect Joe Biden's win "anti-democratic and anti-conservative."
Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin who served as House Speaker from 2015 to 2019, has seldom weighed in on events since leaving office, but issued a lengthy statement decrying Republican plans to object to certifying the Electoral College results in a joint session of Congress on Wednesday. Twelve incoming and sitting Republican senators and dozens of GOP House members plan to object to the count over President Donald Trump's baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.
"Efforts to reject the votes of the Electoral College and sow doubt about Joe Biden’s victory strike at the foundation of our republic," Ryan said in a statement. "It is difficult to conceive of a more anti-democratic and anti-conservative act than a federal intervention to overturn the results of state-certified elections and disenfranchise millions of Americans. The fact that this effort will fail does not mean it will not do significant damage to American democracy." Read more at USA Today
India has approved two coronavirus vaccines and is now setting off on one of the most ambitious immunization programs ever. The country of 1.35 billion plans to inoculate 300 million people by August. In the US, about 4.2 million vaccine doses have been administered, and health experts say things need to speed up to keep pace with vaccination goals. Over the last month in the US, more than 100,000 people have been in the hospital battling Covid-19 every single day. If infection rates get worse, one doctor said we could be looking at a “total collapse” of the health care system. It’s further proof that a vaccine doesn’t provide an immediate solution to the pandemic. In the UK, Prime Minister Boris Johnson admitted coronavirus restrictions may get tougherthere as cases rise, even though vaccines are already being administered. Read more at CNN
The death toll in the United States has climbed past 350,000, the most of any country, while more than 20 million people nationwide have been infected. States have reported record numbers of cases over the past few days, and funeral homes in Southern California are being inundated with bodies.
The U.S. has speeded up COVID-19 vaccinations in the past few days after a slower-than-expected start, bringing the number of shots dispensed to about 4 million, health officials said. Gary D. Robertson reports.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious-disease expert, also said that President-elect Joe Biden's pledge to administer 100 million shots of the vaccine within his first 100 days in office is achievable.
And he rejected President Trump's false claim on Twitter that coronavirus deaths and cases in the U.S. have been greatly exaggerated.
“All you need to do...is go into the trenches, go into the hospitals, go into the intensive care units and see what is happening. Those are real numbers, real people and real deaths,” Fauci said.
But Fauci also said he has seen “some little glimmer of hope” after 1.5 million doses were administered in the previous 72 hours, or an average of about 500,000 per day, a marked increase in vaccinations. He said that brings the total to about 4 million. Read more at AP
The 117th Congress was sworn in yesterday, and some things look a little different. For one, the chambers are historically diverse, with record-setting numbers of women, Black and Latino members and those who identify as LGBTQ. In the House, Republicans managed a net gain of 11 seats, narrowing the Democratic majority. A few members of Congress, including Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, will be leaving their posts to take up positions in the incoming Biden administration. Other things, however, stay the same: Nancy Pelosi won a fourth nonconsecutive term as speaker of the House, despite a few defections from her own party. Read more at CNN
Nancy Pelosi wins a fourth term as speaker. The 80-year-old California Democrat won in a 216-209 vote, with five Democrats voting present or against her. The first vote of the new session of Congress showed how her narrow majority will make it difficult for House Democrats to pass legislation. Read more at Wall Street Journal.
Two Democrats voted against Speaker Pelosi: Rep. Jared Golden (Maine) voted for Sen. Tammy Duckworth (Ill.) ... Rep. Conor Lamb (Penn.) voted for House Democratic Chair Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.)
Voting present: Reps. Mikie Sherrill (N.J.), Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) and Abigail Spanberger (Va.). Read more at Axios.
Hearings are scheduled Monday for two Louisville Metro Police officers facing dismissal for their roles in Breonna Taylor's death . Detective Joshua Jaynes received a pre-termination letter after a Professional Standards Unit investigation found he violated department procedures on truthfulness and preparation to carry out a search warrant. Detective Myles Cosgrove, who the FBI concluded fired the shot that killed Taylor, also received a pre-termination letter. If Jaynes and Cosgrove are officially fired, they will be the second and third officers connected to Taylor's death to be terminated by LMPD. According to the pre-termination letters both men received, the hearings were originally set for last week. Read more at USA Today
Stimulus checks may have already appeared in bank accounts for many Americans, however, the Internal Revenue Service warns the "official payment date" is Monday. Meaning, Jan. 4 is the effective date when the U.S. Treasury will actually transfer funds to the institutions for credit to the individual accounts, according to bankers. It's expected that during this round of Economic Impact Payments there will be 113 million payments made via direct deposit and 34 million payments made through paper checks and prepaid cards. If you don't see stimulus cash in your bank account by early January, watch your mail for a paper check or even a debit card. Read more at USA Today
The US and Iran are ratcheting up tensions in the Persian Gulf around the anniversary of the death of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, who was assassinated in a US drone strike last January 3. Some Iranian military forces have ramped up their readiness levels in recent days, according to US sources, including moving short-range ballistic missiles into Iraq, where they could potentially strike at US bases. Similar attacks happened last year in the wake of Soleimani’s death. Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller has also ordered a US aircraft carrier to stay in the Persian Gulf region after it had been scheduled to move. Read more at CNN
A government spokesman said that Iran on Monday began the process of enriching uranium at a level of 20 percent, a short technical step from the 90 percent purity level needed to produce a nuclear weapon — something the multilateral nuclear deal was meant to prevent. The move comes amid heightened tensions between Iran and the Trump administration as Tehran on Sunday marked the first anniversary of the U.S. killing of senior military commander Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani. Read more at Washington Post
Wall Street is going to kick out three Chinese telecom companies in order to comply with a Trump order banning Americans from investing in firms the government suspects are either owned or controlled by the Chinese military. China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom have all been listed on the New York Stock Exchange for years, but most of their business is based in China. So, while trading volumes are low in the US, the decision could affect share values elsewhere. The Trump administration has been putting pressure on Chinese firms like these for a while. Trump recently signed new rules that could force Chinese companies to delist from American stock exchanges if they fail to meet US auditing standards. Read more at CNN
President Trump on Monday is expected to give Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, according to someone familiar with the plans.
Nunes is a close ally of the president, and one of Trump’s most vocal supporters in his quest to undermine the Justice Department’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Read more Washington Post
The Republican battle lines being formed in President Trump's final days — his loyalists vs. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's establishment — will shape American politics for the next four years.
Why it matters: This power struggle will help define everything from the future of conservatism and right-wing media, including Fox News, to President-elect Biden’s ability to win Republican cooperation in office. More broadly and more importantly, the outcome will determine if Trumpism — and its norm-smashing tactics — come to permanently define one of America's two major political parties.
The camps are clear as we begin this epic political month:
The Trump camp includes House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, the 12 senators and 140+ House members who plan a futile fight Wednesday against certification of Biden’s victory. That group includes GOP 2024 hopefuls, including Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
With Trump out of office, McConnell will be the GOP’s de facto leader, backed by Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah and other establishment types who don't have to worry about primary challenges from the right, where Trump has shown he’s willing to play a decisive role.
Look for McCarthy to straddle the camps.
So will Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, primed for a 2024 presidential run. Cotton, a vocal Trump ally, announced last night that he won't join the protest: "[O]bjecting to certified electoral votes won’t give him a second term."
Between the lines: Some top Republicans tell us this split will blur. McConnell is unlikely to chart a true separation, and will do plenty for Trumpy Republicans in coming years.
McConnell has greater street cred with the base than he did a few years ago, after helping Trump seat three justices on the Supreme Court. Read more at Axios
More than 225 Google engineers and other workers have formed a union, a rarity in Silicon Valley. Members said their main goal was to protect employees who speak out on matters like diversity and sexual harassment, rather than to negotiate contracts. Read at more New York Times
The final "Jeopardy!" episodes hosted by game show legend Alex Trebek will air starting on Monday through Friday, Jan. 8. Trebek died Nov. 8 at age 80 after a battle with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He announced the diagnosis in March 2019 and provided frequent updates to fans, acknowledging waves of "deep, deep sadness" but continuing to show determination and humor. Friday's episode will include a special tribute to Trebek, who hosted more than 8,000 episodes of "Jeopardy!" since 1984. The game show will continue airing new episodes Jan. 11 with "Jeopardy!" champion Ken Jennings as guest host. Read more at USA Today
The Senate runoffs in Georgia have become the nation's latest battleground against election misinformation as false and misleading posts swarm Facebook and Twitter.
A report from human rights group Avaaz found a dozen false claims on Facebook, including voter fraud and intimidation, spread through 204 posts in English and Spanish that generated 643,000 interactions. Sixty-percent of the posts slipped through undetected and reached voters without fact check labels, the report found.
Among the unfounded claims: that Democratic challenger Raphael Warnock – who is running against incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler – supported Fidel Castro and that the NAACP issued a warning that white supremacists and other fringe groups planned to target Black men.
Avaaz campaign director Fadi Quran said the onslaught of falsehoods before early voting began Dec. 14 could further erode public trust in the election process and suppress voter turnout. Read more at USA Today
Venture capitalists historically have been reluctant to invest in startups based too far from home, making it easier for "good ideas" to get funded in the Bay Area or the Acela corridor, Axios' Dan Primack writes.
Shutdowns have changed that, which could create a virtuous cycle of economic opportunity in cities and regions left out of America's tech boom.
As a sign of these rising markets, 2020 saw several large IPOs for VC-backed companies in non-bubble areas, including Columbus, Ohio (Root Insurance), and coastal North Carolina (nCino).
Many VCs used to abide by the "20-minute rule": They wouldn't invest in a company located more than a 20-minute drive from their home or office.
One Boston-area investor put a subway spin on it, saying he wouldn't meet with companies located past a certain stop on the MBTA's Red Line.
But the pandemic forced venture capitalists to attend board meetings via Zoom. And they learned that, while often missing the in-person interaction, their work didn't suffer. Read more at Axios
Lives Lived: Brian Urquhart joined the United Nations at its creation in 1945. He spent the next four decades directing peacekeeping operations, leading U.N. forces into war zones including Congo, Kashmir and Cyprus. Urquhart died at 101. Read more at New York Times
Attacks in Niger. At least 100 people were killed on Saturday in attacks on two villages in western Niger, Prime Minister Brigi Rafini said on Sunday. The killings were part of simultaneous raids on the villages of Tchombangou and Zaroumdareye by suspected Islamist militants, although Rafini did not identify a specific culprit.
Violent incidents have plagued the border area between Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso in recent years: 4,000 people were killed in Islamist-linked violence across the three countries in 2019, according to a United Nations estimate. Read more at Foreign Policy
Scottish independence. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has made clear his views on a potential referendum on Scottish independence, telling the BBC that such votes should only be held “once in a generation.” Under current rules, a referendum would likelyneed the support of the government in London to go ahead.
Johnson’s remarks come as Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon continues to push for Scottish independence, saying Scotland is “committed to a legal, constitutional route to becoming an independent state,” in an opinion piece published in the Irish Timeson Saturday. Read more at Foreign Policy
Nile dam talks. Talks between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan over access to the waters of the Nile River will continue this week with a view to concluding at the end of January, the Sudanese water ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
The three sides have yet to reach agreement on how water will be distributed from the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which downstream Egypt and Sudan see as an existential threat. Ethiopia insists its dam will only be used to generate electricity and water flows will be unaffected. Read more at Foreign Policy
Italy’s government on edge. The Italian government is at risk of toppling as a dispute between Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and junior coalition partner Matteo Renzi heats up.
Renzi is demanding changes to Conte’s economic recovery plans and called on him to give up the reins of the country’s secret services. Reuters reports that a cabinet meeting on Jan. 7— when Conte is expected to seek backing for his economic plan—could spell the end of the government if the two ministers from Renzi’s Italia Viva party refuse to support it. Read more at Foreign Policy
Canada’s new travel rules. Canada is to become the latest country to require proof of a negative coronavirus test to enter its borders, as virus numbers continue to spike. Under the new rule, travelers will be required to produce a negative test from the past 72 hours, as well as fulfilling a subsequent 14-day quarantine period.
Canada’s borders are still closed to the United States and entry has essentially been restricted to Canadians even before the testing requirement was introduced. Canada has surpassed 600,000 total cases—or just under 16,000 confirmed cases per million residents, a figure four times smaller than in the United States, where there are nearly 64,000 cases per million. Read more at Foreign Policy
Increased mask wearing in the coronavirus-era has led to a parallel increase in demand for cosmetic surgery in South Korea, Reuters reports. One surgeon reports seeing more customers asking to get work done on the parts of the face not covered by a mask, while others, like Ryu Han-na, have used the time to get a nose job—safe in the knowledge that the area will heal before anyone sees it.
South Korea’s cosmetic surgery industry, estimated to be worth $10.7 billion in 2020, is expected to increase to $11.8 billion this year, according to Gangnam Unni, a Korean cosmetic surgery platform. Gangnam Unni reported a 63 percent increase in users of its service in 2020 over the previous year. Read more at Foreign Policy
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