Having the quote, we're
having a normal call.
Nobody said, Oh, gee,
he shouldn't have said that.
What if this call was bad?
I question the election.
This guy's bad.
I didn't ask him to find anything.
We just heard the audio of this call.
So, look, all I want to do is this.
I just want to find
11,718 votes,
which is one more that we have
because we won the state.
The video you just saw was former
President Trump last night
denying asking Georgia's Republican
Secretary of State, Brad
Raffensperger, to find him votes
before conceding
that he did ask him to find him votes.
And then the audio you just heard
was then
President Trump in January of 2021
directly asking Raffensperger to find him
those votes.
Joining us now,
Georgia Secretary
of State Brad Raffensperger.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Secretary, for joining us tonight.
What was your reaction when you heard
those comments last night?
Well, President
Trump
said we didn't hang up on the phone call.
You have to understand,
I've been taught
and I believe in respecting people's
positional authority
no matter what that level
and what office they hold.
But he held the office
of president of united states of america
and that office deserves respect.
Whenever you have a conversation
with the president
of the United States of America.
So.
So that's why you didn't hang up,
not because you did.
What was it
he was essentially suggesting?
Was that if you and your attorneys
who were on the call,
I should note,
which was also recorded,
actually thought something was wrong,
that you would have
hung up in the moment.
But you were saying you did it
because it was the president
of the United States on the other line.
I wouldn't hang up on
a governor, Senator.
Congress per person.
I just respect people's
position of authority.
And I think that's one of the things
that we have going on in America
right now.
You know,
we have lost respect in the offices
that people hold.
And I think
that we should have respectful
conversations at all times.
And when he says
that, he was just calling to question
the results of the election,
initially claiming
he wasn't
asking you to find him anything,
that's obviously not true.
We've all heard the call
Well, I gave him all the facts.
He said in the call that there's 5000
dead people
that were alleged to have voted.
They sued us on 10,315.
And I told them that there was two
and we found two more.
They said that there's underage voters.
66,000.
There were zero,
that there are thousands of felons.
There was less than 74
2400 non-registered voters.
There's actually zero.
But Caitlin,
what's really interesting is
I didn't realize until just recently,
but it was reported in the newspaper
that he actually had paid
Berkeley Research Group.
He spent over $600,000
for them to look into this.
And he had that report the day
before he called.
And then just a few weeks ago,
we heard about
he paid simpatico about $750,000.
And they also came back and said
there was not sufficient enough fraud
to overturn this race.
So he had the facts and then he called.
And that was a report
from The Washington Post.
And so he had those facts. He called you.
You explained again to him
the numbers
But do you believe he was strong
arming you in
using your office to get him votes that
he did not earn from voters?
Well, I knew that
we didn't have the votes.
We knew that we had
checked out everything,
every single allegation.
In fact,
he handpicked Bobby Christin, his U.S.
attorney from the Southern District,
to come up to Atlanta
and specifically
look at the Fulton County
counting of the absentee
ballots that went on on election night.
And Bobbi Kristina as a youth attorney
acting U.S.
attorney of the northern district,
did not find,
you know, fraud there
and then report that back
to the president.
And so every time
that there was an allegation,
we did our checking
so we could report back to the voters.
We report I report back to the voters.
I want to all the voters understand
that we're going to be fair
and honest election.
And that's my job.
To make sure
that they have confidence in the results.
What do you make of him saying
that he would make that
same call again to you today
despite the fact that the d.A.
There said charges could come this summer
well, if he did, he'd get the same answer
that now
we have even more data points
that just show
that president trump did come up short.
So what happened in Georgia?
And I think it may have happened
in other states, but in georgia, we know.
24,000 voters
skipped the presidential race.
They didn't vote for any of the three
candidates for president
and yet they voted down ballot
in other races.
And that's why
president trump came up short.
In fact,
what you saw
is actually
our Republican congressman got 33,000
more votes collectively,
33,000 more votes than President Trump.
You've been clear
that you obviously follow
the numbers there, but you say,
I am a Republican.
You've noted
before that you would have wanted
a Republican to win that election.
Does it hurt Republicans
to have someone who is right now
the GOP frontrunner
that is still denying
the results of the election, including in
your state
I think that when people
run for office,
they should be looking forward
because that's where we going
to spend our future time.
And that's really where
what people are looking at,
what's going to happen next week,
what's going to happen next year?
What are your plans for the future?
And so I think that
when people run campaigns
that should be really
looking towards the future
not just looking back
and talking about stolen election claims
which have been disproven.
Brad Raffensperger, Georgia's Republican
secretary of state, your name was invoked
many times last night.
So thank you for joining us and
your time tonight.
Thank you.