Ga. Sec. Of State Raffensperger on Trump Call: ‘I Didn’t Know It Was Being Recorded’

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Janet Ybarra
Democrat
Former Washington Journalist
Contributor on The Bipartisan Press

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Adding a layer of mystery to the conflagration which is the phone call Donald Trump placed last weekend to the secretary of state of Georgia, that Peach State official has publicly denied being the source of the recording of the call.

Trump set the nation on fire when The Washington Post released a recording of a call placed Saturday from Trump, his White House chief of staff and some conservative attorneys on one side, and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs and that office’s general counsel, Ryan Germany.

On the call, Trump can be heard berating Raffensperger, telling him to “recalculate” the state’s tally in November’s presidential election, which went to President-elect Biden.

Trump can be heard apparently threatening Raffensperger, and seeming to try to extort him specifically for 11,780 votes — just enough to flip the state to Trump.

Wow. WaPo just released a recording showing President Trump attempting to blackmail Georgia’s Secretary of State to overturn the election.
Listen: pic.twitter.com/33SO6Tyx8u
— Keith Edwards (@keithedwards) January 3, 2021

The release of that recording has resulted in calls for Trump’s resignation — and even a second impeachment just weeks before he leaves office.

But Raffensperger himself appeared on television to deny that he knew that the phone call was being recorded.

“I didn’t know it was being recorded. I just was at my home with my wife and I had it on speakerphone, but I didn’t record anything in my house. But I was making notes,” Raffensperger told Fox News. “Also, then on Sunday morning, he’d put out a Twitter. I thought we had a private conversation, man to man, just having a conversation with the president of the United States. But then he goes out on Twitter the next morning and says stuff that’s not true.

“First of all, he releases that we did have a conversation. I didn’t see what the issue was that, obviously, we did have a conversation, the whole world knows. He’s got 80 million Twitter followers, but then he also says stuff that wasn’t true, and I was respectful in that.”