I'll just come right out of the gate with this - this tape should be at the cornerstone of Trump's defense in the Georgia case (and it also seems useful in the federal conspiracy case). Until today, I had never read through any of the transcript. I had previously heard/read reports that in this call, Trump basically told Georgia's secretary of state to go find him 11,000 votes. However, upon spending the better part of 45 minutes reading the whole thing, it is quite apparent that just as how the media always does with things Trump says, it took a few snippets completely out of context and ran with them.
I don't see anything even remotely resembling Trump pressuring (let alone illegally pressuring) Georgia officials to do anything illegal (other than maybe giving him and his lawyers access to things they want to investigate that they're not legally allowed to access, but that's not even what he's being accused of having done wrong). The call starts out with Trump making a number of specific election allegations:
-That several hundred thousand ballots in Fulton county had forged signatures
-That "50s of thousands" of people were turned away from the polls because they had already voted when they in fact hadn't
-That 4502 people voted who weren't on the voter registration list
-That 18,325 non-residents voted (who allegedly only had PO boxes and not actual street addresses)
-That the alleged water-main break in Fulton county during counting didn't actually break
-That there were no poll watchers or law enforcement overseeing the ballots after people left after the main break
-That vote stuffing occurred after the water main break
-That surveillance tapes show that 18,000 fraudulent votes (all for Biden) were locked in suitcases or trunks
-That 2326 ballots were improperly sent to absentee voters who had no address in Georgia
-That some drop boxes were picked up and not delivered for 3 days
-That close to 5,000 dead people voted
-That ballots were improperly burned and shredded
Trump and his people (though mostly Trump) go back and forth with the Secretary of State and some guy named Ryan debating/arguing/whatever you want to call it many of the details of the above allegations. Sec. of State says Trump's claims are unfounded, Trump insists his claims have merit. There's also quite a bit of Trump requesting to see various documents which the Sec. of State says he's not allowed to have access to. The call concludes as follows:
Ryan (the other person with the Sec. of State) responds "Um, I’ll get with Chris, the lawyer representing us and the case, and see when he can get together with Kurt." The Sec. of State then responds "Ryan will be in touch with the other attorney on this call, Mr. Meadows. Thank you President Trump for your time."I would like you … for the attorneys … I’d like you to perhaps meet with Ryan ideally tomorrow, because I think we should come to a resolution of this before the election. Otherwise you’re going to have people just not voting. They don’t want to vote. They hate the state, they hate the governor and they hate the secretary of state. I will tell you that right now. The only people like you are people that will never vote for you. You know that Brad, right? They like you know, they like you. They can’t believe what they found. They want people like you. So, look, can you get together tomorrow? And Brad. We just want the truth. It’s simple. And everyone’s going to look very good if the truth comes out. It’s OK. It takes a little while but let the truth come out. And the real truth is I won by 400,000 votes. At least. That’s the real truth. But we don’t need 400,000. We need less than 12,000 votes. And are you guys able to meet tomorrow Ryan?
Now, here are all the times throughout the call that Trump mentions the specific number of votes he lost by:
an accurate number but its in the 50s of thousands— and that’s people that went to vote and they were told they can’t vote because they’ve already been voted for. And it’s a very sad thing. They walked out complaining. But the number’s large. We’ll have it for you. But it’s much more than the number of 11,779 that’s — The current margin is only 11,779. Brad, I think you agree with that, right? That’s something I think everyone — at least that’s’ a number that everyone agrees on.
But that’s the difference in the votes. But we’ve had hundreds of thousands of ballots that we’re able to actually — we’ll get you a pretty accurate number. You don’t need much of a number because the number that in theory I lost by, the margin would be 11,779
So there were many infractions and the bottom line is, many, many times the 11,779 margin that they said we lost by — we had vast I mean the state is in turmoil over this. And I know you would like to get to the bottom of it...
Ballots were dropped in massive numbers. And we’re trying to get to those numbers and we will have them. They’ll take a period of time. Certified. But but they’re massive numbers. And far greater than the 11,779.
But Brad, if you took the minimum numbers where many, many times above the 11,779 and many of those numbers are certified, or they will be certified but they are certified. And those are numbers that are there that exist
You know when you add them up, it’s many more times, it’s many times the 11,779 number.
But we only lost the state by that number, 11,000 votes, and 779. So with that being said, with just what we have, with just what we have we’re giving you minimal, minimal numbers. We’re doing the most conservative numbers possible, we’re many times, many, many times above the margin
But regardless of those votes, with all of it being said, we lost by essentially 11,000 votes and we have many more votes already calculated and certified, too.
We have a new tape that we’re going to release. It’s devastating. And by the way, that one event, that one event is much more than the 11,000 votes that we’re talking about.
I won this election by hundreds of thousands of votes. There’s no way I lost Georgia. There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes. I’m just going by small numbers when you add them up they’re many times the 11,000. But I won that state by hundreds of thousands of votes.
you will find you will be at 11,779 within minutes, because Fulton County is totally corrupt and so is she, totally corrupt.
But they are shredding ballots, in my opinion, based on what I’ve heard. And they are removing machinery and they’re moving it as fast as they can, both of which are criminal finds. And you can’t let it happen and you are letting it happen. You know, I mean, I’m notifying you that you’re letting it happen. So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state. And flipping the state is a great testament to our country because, cause you know, this is — it’s a testament that they can admit to a mistake or whatever you want to call it. If it was a mistake, I don’t know. A lot of people think it wasn’t a mistake. It was much more criminal than that.
Look, we need only 11,000 votes. We have are far more than that as it stands now. We’ll have more and more.
So what are we going to do here folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. You know, we have that in spades already. Or we can keep it going but that’s not fair to the voters of Georgia because they’re going to see what happened and they’re going to see what happened
So why am I posting all of Trump's specific allegations and all of the quotes where he talks about the 11k votes he lost by? Because in its totality, it paints a very different picture than that painted by the media. He's not asking anybody to go out there and find him a specific number of votes. He's simply asking for his allegations to be further investigated and he's making his point of view very clear that he believes that if a proper investigation is done, it will be proven that he won Georgia by many times the 11k number he lost by. I think he genuinely believed that then and that he still does today. Whether he's actually factually correct isn't the point as nothing in this call constitutes improperly pressuring a public official to do anything illegal.No, we do have a way but I don’t want to get into it. We found a way in other states excuse me, but we don’t need it because we’re only down 11,000 votes so we don’t even need it. I personally think they’re corrupt as hell. But we don’t need that. Because all we have to do Cleta is find 11,000-plus votes. So we don’t need that. I’m not looking to shake up the whole world. We won Georgia easily. We won it by hundreds of thousands of votes. But if you go by basic simple numbers, we won it easily, easily. So we’re not giving Dominion a pass on the record. We just, we don’t need Dominion, because we have so many other votes that we don’t need to prove it any more than we already have.
-let the flame wars directed towards me begin-
