Georgia Trump indictment fails to disclose material facts
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The letter said that new evidence of “Large scale Voter Fraud” in Georgia had been reported in a local newspaper called the Georgia Star News, with an attached article claiming that more than 40,000 absentee ballots counted in DeKalb County were improperly tallied because they had not been documented upon their receipt by the appropriate official, as required by state election rules. “I would respectfully request that your department check this,” Trump wrote in the letter, “and, if true, along with many other claims of voter fraud and voter irregularities, start the process of decertifying the Election, or whatever the correct legal remedy is, and announce the true winner.”
None of that context is in the indictment, nor the Times article, nor the Axios report. And it’s essentially the same request from Trump that he delivered in the now infamous “perfect phone call” he made to Raffensperger and other Georgia election officials in January 2021.
The media enjoy short-handing that hourlong conversation as an effort by Trump to get the secretary of state to fabricate votes. The New York Times ominously wrote at the time that the president “pressured Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to ‘find’ him enough votes to overturn the presidential election and vaguely threatened him with ‘a criminal offense.'”
That’s not what happened there, either. In the call, Trump is audibly frustrated nearly to the point of tears, which is a little embarrassing for him, but the pressure amounts to asking over and over again for Raffensperger and Georgia election officials to examine claims of mass voter fraud, which he believes will uncover enough votes in his favor.
“I think you have to say that you’re going to reexamine it,” Trump says to Raffensperger. “And you can reexamine it, but reexamine it with people that want to find answers, not people that don’t want to find answers.”
“Well, you better check on the ballots because they are shredding ballots, Ryan,” Trump says to one of Raffensperger’s lawyers. “I’m just telling you, Ryan. They’re shredding ballots. And you should look at that very carefully.”
At another point, Trump says, “No, they [all the ballots scanned by a particular poll worker] were 100 percent for Biden— 100 percent. There wasn’t a Trump vote in the whole group. Why don’t you want to find this, Ryan? What’s wrong with you?”
The call ends with Trump stating, “We just want the truth,” which he says is that, “I won by 400,000 votes, at least. That’s the real truth. But we don’t need 400,000 votes. We need less than 2,000 votes.”
As for being “vaguely threatened” with a “criminal offense,” nobody received a threat. Trump said it would be a “criminal offense” for election officials, including Raffensperger, to have knowledge of ballot tampering and not report it. Trump did say he believed there had been ballot tampering but at no point did he say there would be a prosecution or that he had the evidence to back up his claim.
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The failure to disclose this aspect of Trump's request looks like a deliberate attempt to mislead potential jurors.
See, also:
Defendant in Georgia election interference case asks judge to unseal records
Attorney Kenneth Chesebro wants access to the grand jury report and transcripts.
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