'Reckless': Legal expert says Trump 'tied a bow' on GA case by insisting Raffensperger 'owed' him votes

11 May 2023

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Jr.'s 34-count criminal prosecution is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Donald Trump's legal problems. The former U.S. president is also facing two federal criminal investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and special counsel Jack Smith as well as a state criminal probe by Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis.

Willis has been investigating Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in her state. President Joe Biden won Georgia, but Trump has falsely claimed that the election was stolen from him there. And he infamously tried to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a conservative Republican, into helping him "find" enough votes to reverse Biden's Peach State victory. Raffensperger, however, wouldn't budge and maintained that Biden won Georgia's electoral votes fairly.

If Willis decides to proceed with a criminal indictment of Trump, that conversation with Raffensperger will be a crucial part of her evidence. Trump discussed the conversation with CNN's Kaitlan Collins during a townhall event on Wednesday night, May 10 — and Antony Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta, believes that Trump's comments to Collins have made Willis' case against him even stronger.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Greg Bluestein zeroes in on the Raffensperger-related parts of the townhall in an article published on May 10, getting Kreis' insights.

Kreis told the Journal-Constitution, "Subjects of criminal investigation aren't usually reckless enough to go on national television and admit their corrupt intent, but Donald Trump just handed Fani Willis a new piece of evidence and tied a bow on it. Trump stated, in relatively plain terms, that he felt entitled to votes as a matter of personal right, regardless of the evidence laid before him that he did not win Georgia, and that vote tallies and recounts be damned."

During the townhall, Trump reiterated his debunked claim that voter fraud occurred in Georgia in the 2020 election and he said he called Raffensperger to voice his concerns.

Trump told Collins, "Yeah, I called questioning the election. I thought it was a rigged election. I thought it had a lot of problems…. I said: You owed me votes because the election was rigged. That election was rigged. If this call was bad, why didn't him and his lawyers hang up?…. This was a perfect phone call."

The former president also said to Collins, "This was a call that was made to question the results of the election. When we can't make a call to question the election results, then this country ought to just forget about it."

Read the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's full article at this link (subscription required).

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