As you all have surely heard by now, President Trump had a phone conversation with Georgia Secretary of State Saturday Brad Raffensperger that has been leaked to the media. The phone call is being characterized as a massive abuse of power by the president and is being scandalized by the media.
But as with all media-driven scandals about the President, there is apparently little truth being told here.
Now let me note up front that I simply haven’t had the chance to listen to president Trump’s phone call for myself, and I suspect many out there making these claims have not either.
But Shipwreckedcrew over at RedState has listened to the entire phone call and he says the many in the media are blatantly lying about the phone call. Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey tweeted his article on it, which caught my attention:
New from @shipwreckedcrew — The President's Call With the Georgia Sec. of State — a Case Study in the Media Duplicity That Pres. Trump Has Battled From Day One https://t.co/LeZpbbiH1o
— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) January 4, 2021
The article is very long, so I’m not going to quote the entire article. I will quote a few portions though that help us better understand the reason for the call and what Trump was really saying.
THE CONTEXT: According to Shipwreckedcrew, there was a reason for the call that the media has failed to report. It was pending litigation in Georgia by the Trump campaign and they were trying to reach a settlement with Raffensperger:
But then I saw a report that the call was part of a “confidential settlement discussion” concerning the litigation pending in Georgia courts.
I had published an article earlier on Sunday calling attention to the fact that there remained a legitimate and valid election contest pending in Georgia state court filed by the Trump Campaign, and if the Campaign prevailed in the matter the outcome of the Georgia vote would be invalidated. Under Georgia law, the remedy to the successful plaintiff in that situation is a new election — which is pointless when it comes to a Presidential election since the calendar for the meeting of the Electoral College and the transition under the 20th Amendment makes a “do-over” election physically impossible to accomplish.
The fundamental meaning of that reality is that there is NO basis under Georgia law by which a Presidential candidate can follow Georgia law to contest the outcome of a general election contest. That is a fact that future Presidential contestants and parties need to keep in mind — or at least the GOP needs to keep it in mind, as the Democrat Party seems to understand it well, i.e., that there is no remedy involving the reversing of an election outcome secured by cheating.
But, even with the new circumstances for why the call took place, I was still perplexed by the commentary in the media reports about President Trump’s comments which were portrayed as him urging the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” votes for him and to explain things by saying they had just “recalculated” the outcome.
The context presented was so juvenile and cartoonishly improper from an objective point of view, there had to be more to the call than was being reported.
And there was.
President Trump was the first to speak and went on uninterrupted for about 12 minutes — about 20% of the total call. It was not made clear at the outset what the purpose of the call was, as the conversation immediately went to the basis for the election dispute lawsuit in Georgia and the position of the Trump Campaign as expressed in the complaint it has filed.
Much later in the call, closer to the end, Meadows comments on a possible follow-up meeting which would be considered part of further efforts to reach a settlement, “just like the call” — or words to that effect.
That was the first confirmation that I heard that the reason for the call taking place was to look for a settlement or narrowing of issues in dispute in the matter pending in state court in Georgia. From that perspective — which every IDIOT journalist whose stories I read failed to mention or understand that as part of providing context for the call — the President’s comments and Raffensperger’s responses made perfect sense.
These were adverse parties in pending litigation on the call, along with their counsel and advisors. Each side was arguing the facts and stating the case from their respective points of view. The President was not trying to “coopt” Raffensperger, he was trying to convince Raffensperger that the facts as alleged in the complaint filed were correct, and the Trump Campaign had the evidence to back them up.
The President — as well as Meadows and his attorneys — were urging the Georgia officials to look at the evidence the Campaign had, and the Georgia officials were resisting. The position of Raffensberger and the other official was that they have looked at the allegations — not the Campaign’s evidence — and they have done their own investigation of the allegations and found them to be unsubstantiated.
The dispute comes down to the unwillingness — and in some cases the unresponsiveness — of the Georgia Official’s to provide the Campaign with the data and evidence that the Secretary of State has gathered which leads to their conclusion that the allegations are unsubstantiated.
THE CONTROVERSY: Shipwreckedcrew also notes out that Trump wasn’t pressuring Raffensperger to find votes for him, but rather for him to do his job and discover all of the invalid votes that were cast:
On numerous occasions over the course of the hour, the President would jump into exchanges to make the same points over and over about his beliefs as to the outcome of the election. In a couple of instances, the phrasing he used referred to “finding” votes in comments he directed to Raffensperger. But the context for the comment was that he was referring to “finding” invalid votes. Rather than have Georgia fight his campaign on the allegations of invalid votes having been cast as set forth in the Complaint, Trump was urging Raffensperger to do his job — one part of which is to identify fraudulent voters who were ineligible to vote but did so anyway.
While identifying such invalid votes is one basis under Georgia law under which the losing candidate can file an election contest, Raffensperger has a separate and independent duty to identify such invalid or illegal votes himself as part of the official responsibility of his office. The President’s comments were not about “finding” more votes for him, but rather were about identifying invalid votes cast for Joe Biden. The Trump Campaign’s complaint identifies numerous categories of such votes and Pres. Trump was pressing the Secretary of State to do his job and confirm the same facts that the Campaign has found.
Every idiot journalist, legal pundit, and Democrat Party propagandist trotted out by the mainstream media now to claiming the President was doing anything else is lying about the substance and context of the call.
Getting back to the reason for the call, I felt this was also important to note from Shipwreckedcrew’s. The Trump campaign wanted access to the data that only the Secretary of State has access too, which is superior to the data which is publicly available:
Cleta Mitchell, one of the President’s attorneys on the case was on the call. She brought up the issue of whether or not dead people voted. The Campaign has alleged in the Complaint that as many as 5000 votes were cast in the name of Georgia voters who have died. Mitchell told Raffensberger that they arrived at that number by cross-referencing voters who submitted mail-in ballots, against Georgia residents with the same name and birth year who have been reported as having passed away prior to the election. Raffensperger claimed in response that his investigators had looked into that allegation, and had documented only two deceased voters who had votes cast in their names.
Mitchell stated that the Campaign has asked the Secretary of State’s office to share data that only the Secretary of State has and that the State is relying on to claim the Campaign’s allegations are incorrect. She said publicly available data is limited. The Campaign did what it could with the data available, but it does not have access to the same data the State has. She asked why the State won’t provide access to the data that either confirms or contradicts the allegations of the Complaint. Raffensperger had no good answer other than to say that state law might prevent disclosure of that information under privacy laws, and he would need to consult with the attorney representing the State in the election lawsuit about what they could provide to the Campaign.
Why won’t Raffensperger provide access to the data? Shipwreckedcrew said it seems like he’s just trying to run the clock out on Team Trump, especially since they are up against huge time constraints give that it’s the beginning of January and just a few days before the 6th, when Congress meets to certify the election.
The full article includes much more detail and you can read it here.