Trump in phone call presses Georgia's election chief to 'find' votes to reverse Biden's win: Report

Washington DC: US President Donald Trump, in an extraordinary one-hour phone call, told Georgia's election chief to reverse President-elect Joe Biden's win and urged him to "find" enough votes to overturn his defeat in the swing state in the November 3 election, according to a secretly-recorded audio of the conversation posted by a major American media outlet.

The Washington Post reported that during the phone call on Saturday Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to "find" enough votes to overturn his defeat, a development that legal scholars described as a flagrant abuse of power and a potential criminal act. "The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry. And there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you've recalculated," Trump told Raffensperger.

"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 said. Trump lost the election in Georgia by 11,779 votes.

"Flipping the state is a great testament to our country. It's a testament that they can admit to a mistake. A lot of people think it wasn't a mistake, it was much more criminal than that. But it's a big problem in Georgia, and it's not a problem that's going away," he said.

"The people of Georgia know that this was a scam, and because of what you've done to the president, a lot of people aren't going out to vote [in the runoffs]. A lot of Republicans are going to vote negative because they hate what you did to the president," said the outgoing president.

According to The Washington Post report, 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.

"Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong," Raffensperger said.

Trump reiterated that there is no way he lost Georgia.

Trump has refused to concede to Biden, a Democrat. He has falsely asserted he won the race while publicly pressuring Republican lawmakers to step up and fight for the Presidency.

The Trump campaign and several of the president's allies have launched dozens of attempts to challenge the election results in numerous swing states. None of those legal efforts has succeeded in invalidating votes for Biden.

The US Supreme Court earlier in December rejected a bid from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to sue four key swing states over changes they made to voting procedures.

Top Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, in a statement, said that Trump's recorded conversation with Raffensperger was more than a pathetic, rambling, delusional rant.