The now-infamous call that features prominently in both the latest federal and Georgia indictment of former President Donald Trump came on Saturday, Jan. 2, 2021 – weeks after the election and just days before the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. With others on the line, Trump claims that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger ran a shoddy election and is duty-bound to dredge up more votes for Trump. In the hourlong call, Raffensperger – a Republican and former member of the Georgia House of Representatives – pushes back, again and again. Soon after the call, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis launched her investigation that resulted in the grand jury indictment Aug. 14, 2023. Trump reacted to news of Willis’ probe, saying she was “trying to find a tiny word or phrase (that isn’t there) during an absolutely PERFECT phone call.”
Here are some key moments.
Who was on the call?
1. Less than one minute in: Trump states “we won”
This is the first of 19 times Trump uses the phrase “we won” during the call. In fact, Trump had lost the election. He had also lost Georgia by nearly 12,000 votes, the national vote count had been certified, and it had survived dozens of legal challenges as well as recounts – three of them in Georgia.
2. Trump claims 18,000 votes were changed
Trump makes his claim about 18,000 votes eight times during the call and describes Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman as a “professional vote scammer and hustler.” Freeman would later testify to Congress about the doxxing that followed the false accusation. The situation was cited in both the Georgia indictment and the federal Jan. 6 indictment, which states that Giuliani – identified as Co-conspirator 1 – had “maligned” her and “used her name almost 20 times” on Dec. 10, in a hearing of a Georgia’s House of Representatives committee. Prosecutors say Trump knew better but lied to Georgia officials to persuade them to alter the vote count in his favor.
3. Trump says dead people voted
Trump repeats the claim of dead voters multiple times, as outlined in the Georgia indictment and, in the Jan. 6 indictment, about Georgia and Michigan. By the time of this call, research funded by Trump’s campaign had debunked the claim. Yet none of the work of the Berkeley Research Group – which also ruled out widespread voter machine malfunctions and other evidence across six states – had been made public at the time, and those findings would not be uncovered by the media for two more years.
4. Raffensperger tells Trump the data he has is wrong
This widely cited passage is one key point in the exchange where Raffensperger tells Trump unequivocally that the data he cites is wrong. Raffensperger responds that he has pinpointed the actual number of dead people who voted in Georgia: two. This also is excerpted in the federal Jan. 6 indictment. After the call, Trump would attack Raffensperger in a tweet cited in the Georgia indictment, saying he was “unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters,’ dead voters, and more. He has no clue!”
5. Video of ballot counters and water main break
In this exchange, Trump is conflating two allegations out of a Fulton County precinct that had been debunked by the time of the call: a water main break and suitcases of fake ballots – related to events that happened 17 hours apart. A social media post that went viral included spliced together video footage to make the two appear concurrent. Raffensperger’s response to the State Farm Arena video is highlighted in the federal Jan. 6 indictment. Investigations after the election had found that the “water main break” was an overflowed urinal, which did not affect the vote count, and the ballots pulled from “magic suitcases” were actually absentee ballots in official containers.
6. Voters who moved out of state and back
Ryan Germany, then attorney for the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office, is rebutting claims by longtime GOP attorney Cleta Mitchell that people voted illegally by moving out of state, registering to vote elsewhere, then moving back simply to turn the tide against Trump in Georgia. Mitchell was an early proponent of Trump’s election fraud claims and pulled together the legal team that sought to overturn the election. She would resign from her law firm days later after it issued a statement saying it was “concerned by” her role in the call. This exchange also was highlighted by Jan. 6 prosecutors.
7. Trump says ‘I just need 11,780 votes’
This is a key passage that experts say could put Trump in legal jeopardy, cited by Jan. 6 prosecutors in alleging that Trump was trying to threaten or induce a change to the official vote count. His attorneys have argued in briefs during the Jan. 6 hearings that “Trump was expressing his opinion that if the evidence was carefully examined one would ‘find that you have many that aren’t even signed and you have many that are forgeries.'”
Sources: The Associated Press, C-SPAN, National Public Radio, NBC News, The Washington Post.
