On January 2, 2021, Trump held a one-hour phone call with Raffensperger. Trump was joined by chief of staff Mark Meadows, trade adviser Peter Navarro, Justice Department official John Lott, law professor John C. Eastman, and attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Cleta Mitchell and Kurt Hilbert. Raffensperger was joined by his general counsel Ryan Germany. On January 3, The Washington Post and other media outlets obtained a recording of this phone conversation.
In the 2020 United States presidential election, former Vice President Joe Biden defeated incumbent President Donald Trump. Nevertheless, Trump and his campaign continued to falsely claim that voting fraud had cost him electoral victory in several states, including Georgia. Trump's baseless claims were rejected by numerous state and federal judges, elected officials, governors, and government agencies, including his own administration's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Se…
Legal experts said Trump's attempt to pressure Raffensperger could have violated election law, including federal and state laws against soliciting election fraud or interference in elections. Election-law scholar Edward B. Foley called Trump's conduct "inappropriate and contemptible" while the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washingtoncalled Trump's attempt "to rig a presidential election ... a low point in American history and unquestionably impe…
The day after the Trump call was disclosed, Republican Georgia voting system implementation manager Gabriel Sterlingsharply refuted Trump's claims of election fraud during a press conference with Raffensperger, listing and debunking several allegations made by Trump and his allies that thousands of teenagers, dead people, and unregistered citizens had voted, and a misleading video that had been distributed supposedly showing fake ballots being secretly retrie…
During the hand recount of all ballots of the state of Georgia between November 11 and 20, 2020, Republican Senator of South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, privately called Raffensperger about the audit. Raffensperger concluded that Graham intended to ask him to throw out all legal mail-in ballots and described that he felt "threatened" during the conversation, which Graham denied. The Washington Post reported in February 2021 that the Fulton Countydistrict attorney was examinin…
• Hello Garci scandal, a similar scandal in the Philippines that took place in 2005
Full audio sources of the call
• "Full phone call: Trump pressures Georgia Secretary of State to recount election votes". NBC News.
• "Read the full transcript and listen to Trump's audio call with Georgia secretary of state".
• "Trump's Georgia Call: Listen to the Audio and Read a Full Transcript". Wall Street Journal. January 4, 2021.