Mueller prosecutor says Georgia and feds will hit Trump for threatening Raffensperger
As another Donald Trump indictment looms, former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann said that he thinks the state and federal government will file charges for threats made to former Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
Speaking to MSNBC on Tuesday, Weissmann, who previously served as special counsel Robert Mueller's senior prosecutor, explained that, based on a target letter sent to the former president, he's expecting charges to include intimidation.
In an hour-long conference call after the 2020 vote, Trump pressured Raffensperger to change Georgia's election results, saying that the result was fraudulent and asking him to find votes for Trump.
"They knew that this wasn't true by the time they're on this call," host Nicolle Wallace said, playing the clip where Trump demands 11,780 votes.
Reporter Betsy Woodruff Swan told Wallace it's unclear if special counsel Jack Smith will charge Trump with solicitation of a fraud, but she anticipates that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis – who is in the midst of a separate investigation into Trump's involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election – will.
"I think there's a part of the tape recording that has not gotten enough attention," Weissmann noted. "Of course, what you played is the money shot. That is key. But if you combine it with another piece, I think it's really devastating in terms of what Donald Trump was doing. On tape, he threatens criminal prosecution against Raffensperger if he does not look and find these [votes], and says you are playing with fire because you could be committing fraud."
"And the people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry," Trump said on the Jan. 2, 2021 phone call. "And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated. Because the 2,236 in absentee ballots. I mean, they’re all exact numbers that were done by accounting firms law firms, etc. and even if you cut ‘em in half, cut ‘em in half and cut ‘em in half, again, it’s more votes than we need."
"Well, under the law, you’re not allowed to give faulty election results, OK?" Trump claimed later in the call. "You’re not allowed to do that. And that’s what you've done. This is a faulty election result. And honestly, this should go very fast. You should meet tomorrow because you have a big election coming up and because of what you’ve done to the president — you know, 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 and a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative because they hate what you did to the president. Okay? They hate it."
Much of what he said was a threat, according to the secretary of state who has written a book and spoken publicly about the incident.
Raffensperger explained: “I felt then — and still believe today — that this was a threat. Others obviously thought so, too, because some of Trump’s more radical followers have responded as if it was their duty to carry out this threat.”
Weissmann said it's difficult to find something that's more of a threat than what unfolded on that call – and that his claims that Raffensperger was committing fraud were clearly baseless.
"That's the last thing Brad Raffensperger is doing, because he's sitting there saying I did not find this, so I cannot do it," said Weissmann. "That is not fraud. And so when you have the — remember this is the then-sitting president of the United States saying this to the secretary of state. I mean you can't get more threatening than that. Imagine being on that call where it's not just sort of a good faith belief of, gee, there's rampant fraud and I just want you to clear this up. When he says there's no fraud, you say essentially you better damn well find it or you are going to face criminal prosecution. To me, it's that combination that makes this a really strong case both at the state level and at the federal level for Jack Smith and for Fani Willis."
See the clip in the video below or at the link here.
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