Donald Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during call

The revelation comes after Trump has publicly disparaged election officials in Georgia, blaming his loss in the state on widespread voter fraud, though the Justice Department found no such evidence of fraud that would change the outcome of November’s election.

“There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump insisted on Saturday during the call, audio excerpts of which were published by the Post Sunday. “There’s no way. We won hundreds of thousands of votes.”

Trump and Raffensperger exchanged tweets about the conversation Sunday morning: Trump said Raffensperger was “unwilling, or unable” to answer questions about fraud. “He has no clue!” Trump wrote.

“Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true. The truth will come out,” Raffensperger responded.

During the call, the president insulted, complimented and pleaded with Raffensperger to cooperate with him in altering the election results.

Trump called Raffensperger a “child,” a “schmuck” and “either dishonest or incompetent” for not supporting claims of widespread voter fraud in Atlanta, the state’s largest city, the Post reported.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” Trump said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

“Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong,” Raffensperger responded.

Trump asked for Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to alter the result of the election.

“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,” the president said.

Georgia officials tallied votes for the presidential election three times, including in an audit required by state law and a recount requested by the president. Each count determined that Biden won the state, the first Democrat to do so since 1992.

Biden won the state by a margin of 12,670 votes, or 0.25% of the roughly 5 million ballots cast.

Others on the call Saturday included White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and prominent conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, the Post reported.

The president’s unsubstantiated claims of a mass election conspiracy have been supported by large parts of the GOP base, as well as Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who face Democrats in Georgia’s Senate runoff Tuesday.

Raffensperger, a Republican and a Trump supporter, has repeatedly denounced the president’s claims of election fraud as unfounded.

His refusal to support the president’s effort to overturn the state’s election results have earned him intense backlash from other Republicans, including protests at his house and a letter from Perdue and Loeffler calling on him to step down from his office.

More than 140 Republican members of the House of Representatives will contest Congress’ official counting of the Electoral College vote Wednesday. A dozen sitting and incoming Republican senators, including Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, will also contest the count, ensuring the long-shot effort will be debated in the upper chamber.

This is not the first time the president has pressured Georgia officials to alter the results of the state’s election.

Last month President Trump urged Brian Kemp to demand the state Legislature act to overturn Biden’s victory in Georgia.

Kemp refused and has been subjected to a steady barrage of Trump attacks in the weeks since.

The president’s comments on the phone call resulted in a seismic reaction from across the political spectrum.

Bob Bauer, senior legal advisor to the Biden presidential campaign, said: “We now have irrefutable proof of a president pressuring and threatening an official of his own party to get him to rescind a state’s lawful, certified vote count and fabricate another in its place.

“It captures the whole, disgraceful story about Donald Trump’s assault on American democracy.”