How a GOP strategist delivered 'most compelling evidence' of Trump’s 2020 corruption: book
In their new book "Find Me the Votes: A Hard-Charging Georgia Prosecutor, a Rogue President, and the Plot to Steal an American Election," journalists Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman take an in-depth look at Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the presidential election results in Georgia in 2020.
Isikoff and Klaidman discussed the book during a Wednesday morning appearance on CNN, describing the role that GOP strategist Jordan Fuchs played in bringing to light "the most powerful evidence" of Trump's efforts to take Georgia's Electoral College votes in 2020 despite the fact that now-President Joe Biden won the state.
That evidence was the now infamous post-election phone conversation in which Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" him enough votes to change the election results. Raffensperger's deputy Jordan Fuchs, according to Isikoff and Klaidman, secretly recorded the conversation.
Isikoff told CNN, "Look, absent that, we would not have the most compelling evidence of Trump's pressure campaign to alter vote totals — something that is front and center, not just in the Georgia case, but also, in Jack Smith's election interference case in Washington, D.C."
Isikoff went on to describe events leading up to the conversation and Fuchs' reasons for recording it. Fuchs, Isikoff noted, recorded it in order to protect Raffensperger.
"The Trump people had been trying to get in touch with Brad Raffensperger for weeks now, and Raffensperger was ducking the call because the Trump campaign is suing him and, you know, they're in ongoing litigation," Isikoff told CNN.
"They don't want to get on the phone with Trump…. knowing Trump's habit of perhaps distorting what would get said in any conversation between the two of them. But Mark Meadows reaches out finally to this young woman, Jordan Fuchs, a Republican strategist who…. was 30 years old at the time, who's serving as the chief of staff to Brad Raffensperger, and says the president really wants to speak."
Isikoff continued, "She finally relents, gets Brad Raffensperger to relent…. She knows the risks that Raffensperger is facing, and she's determined to protect the boss. She's on the call, but you never hear her voice.
“She put herself on mute, and she taped the whole thing. I've talked to colleagues — they said they never would have had the guts to do what Jordan did. But as we say right in the book, it was the most consequential act of the post-election battle because it delivered the actual evidence of Trump's — the extent of Trump's pressure campaign."
