Trump's phone call with Georgia's top election official

why did the president help incite the riot  that killed five people at the capitol   it may be because four days earlier he failed  to get the state of georgia to take away   joe biden's victory a week ago saturday  georgia's top election official secretary   of state brad rappensberger spent an hour on  the phone listening to the president lie and   threatened mr trump spun tales of fraud and told  raffensberger he needed to find 11 780 votes   one more vote than biden's winning margin  in the state raffensberger is a lifelong   republican voted for mr trump and contributed  to his campaign but facing the president's   wrath he would not choose loyalty over  duty the story will continue in a moment i believe i said well mr president the challenge  that you have is that you have bad data   our data shows that you did not win the  race because we have the facts and the   facts are on our side brad rappensberger  had declined to take the president's call   the trump campaign was suing georgia officials and  raffensberger felt the call was inappropriate but   the white house kept insisting okay all right so  mr president everybody is on the line it was about   three in the afternoon saturday january second  when white house chief of staff mark meadows   started the conference call introducing mr trump's  lawyers an attorney for the state of georgia ryan   germany and secretary of state raffensberger  did you know that the call was being recorded   no so mr president i'll turn it over to you  someone gave the recording to the washington post   okay thank you very much hello brad and  ryan and everybody from the start the   president seemed delusional and we uh we won  the house but we won every single state house   and we won congress mr trump repeated 30 times  that he won the election he said he could still   win georgia if raffensberger would play along so  look all i want to do is this i just want to find   uh 11 780 votes what was the president asking  you to do he was asking us to recalibrate or   recalculate i believe it was recalculate somehow  get a different answer but i'm an engineer and   anyone that's good with numbers knows you can  calculate all you want but the numbers are the   numbers 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 but the words used by the  president and the president's chief of staff   give me a break cooperate compromise were they  asking you to join them in a conspiracy uh   i guess maybe they were just trying to intimidate  me and and uh cajole me into something it   wasn't gonna happen we have learned the call  january 2nd was not mr trump's first attempt   sources tell us that last month the president  himself phoned one of the georgia secretary of   state's investigators a person briefed on the  call said mr trump told the investigator they   would be a national hero if they found evidence  of fraud but no evidence was found that would   change the outcome of the election still on  the call with the georgia's secretary of state   mr trump badgered raffensberger with fantasies  of criminality the other thing dead people   so dead people voted and i think uh the the  number is in the pro close to 5 000 people   the president said in the call that 5 000  georgians voted in the name of dead people   right well it was two two ten thousand no two  yeah a total of two two people right right here   one two two dead people not thousands not  hundreds two people how do you know that   because we went back and looked and we searched  all the death records and we looked at day month   year so we had two people that had passed away  and we'll investigate and see if we can find   out who those people were that fraudulently  voted for those two dead people that is just   one of dozens of investigations launched after  the election by the georgia secretary of state   how would you describe the president's claims of  vote fraud in georgia fantastical unreasonable uh   lacking in any factual reality gabriel sterling  also a republican and a trump voter is the chief   operating officer for the secretary of state so  you can see he walked us through surveillance   video that the president and his lawyer rudy  giuliani use as their slam dunk evidence there's   no response none here giuliani is explaining to  georgia state senators his selectively edited   version of the video when you look at what you  saw on the video which to me was a smoking gun   powerful smoking gun well i don't don't have  to be a genius to figure out what happened   and i don't have to be a genius to figure  out that those votes are not legitimate vote   in national ads the trump campaign shows  just a clip of the video that reveals   cases filled with ballots being removed from  under a table america deserved an honest election   this is what they got suitcases of ballots  added in secret in georgia gabriel sterling   showed us that rudy giuliani was right you don't  have to be a genius to figure out what happened   when you look at all of the video sterling  says the election workers were told before   10 o'clock election night that they would be  going home and would finish the count the next   day it's before 10 the observers in the press  are still in the room to see all of this occur   with republican and democratic observers visible  on the video the still uncounted ballots were   placed in official boxes which were labeled locked  with tamper-proof seals and stored below the table   this is where they're packing up because they  think they're going home they're packing up to   seal them so that nobody can you know  mess with the ballots when no one's there   but less than an hour after the boxes were  stored sterling says the staff was told they   would have to keep counting through the night  so the ballots were pulled out and counted   sterling told us president trump's team had always  had the entire unedited video from my point of   view they intentionally misled the state senators  the people of georgia and the people united states   about this to cause this conspiracy theory to keep  going and keep the disinformation going which has   caused this environment that we're seeing today  are you saying they lied to the georgia state   senate i'm saying rudy giuliani looked them in the  eye and lied and rudy giuliani knows that he also   i belong believe you know he has some ethical  standards as a member of the bar he knows that   what he said was not true but our state senate  did not ask us to come in there so that we could   rebut what they said and it was actually left as  the gospel truth and it wasn't it was fabricated   in the call president trump slanders  one of the election workers in the video   a woman named ruby freeman who georgia officials  say is not suspected of tampering with anything   18 000 voters having to do with ruby  freeman that's she's a vote scammer   a professional vote scammer and hustler ruby  freeman uh that is uh that was the tape that's   been shown all over the world that makes everybody  look bad the president claimed freeman put the   so-called ballots hidden in suitcases through  the counter three times resulting in 54 000 bogus   votes and brad why did they put the uh votes in  three times you know they put them in three times   they did not put that we we can we did an audit of  that and we've proved conclusively that they were   not scanned three times ruby freeman is in hiding  because of threats death threats that sterling   says other election workers are also receiving  i finally saw one that said the young man's name   said you are a traitor may god have mercy on your  soul and had a gift of a noose slowly swinging   at that point i snapped i essentially  lost it and said this has got to stop   mr president five weeks ago gabriel  sterling addressed this directly to   the president what you don't have the ability  to do and you need to step up and say this   is stop inspiring people to commit potential acts  of violence someone's going to get hurt someone's   going to get shot someone's going to get killed  now that we saw the mob attacked the capital   is that what you meant yes that's exactly  what i meant in continuing the disinformation   and spinning up people's anger while they're  emotionally raw this is exactly what you're   going to see even raffensberger was threatened  by the president who said the georgia secretary   of state was culpable in the fantasy fraud  it's more illegal for you than it is for them   because you know what they did and you're not  reporting it that's a you know that's a criminal   that's a criminal offense and and you know you  can't let that happen that's that's a big risk   to you and to ryan your lawyer that's a big risk  well i think it was obviously a veiled threat   maybe a direct threat but there is no substance  of what he was saying so tell me brad what are   we going to do we won the election and it's not  fair to take it away from us like this and it's   going to be very costly in many ways when you  heard those words what did you think very costly i heard the threat i don't know what that meant exactly but  it wasn't going to move me off center   but i i mean all of this stuff is is very  dangerous stuff when you talk about no criminality   i think it's very dangerous for you to say that  the president of the united states is saying brad   this could be very dangerous for you well  really what it did is i think it really   revealed for us um was his character and it  was just a sad moment to really hear that   the president also suggested that someone  tampered with georgia's voting machines   but gabriel sterling the secretary of state's  chief operating officer told us the state hand   counted all of the voting machines paper ballot  receipts the state of georgia hand counted   how many ballots a little over five million and  when you hand counted the five million how did   that compare to what the electronic machines  were saying they came back at point one zero   five three percent off in the total number of  ballots and point zero zero nine nine percent   off the margin which is incredibly close you  would consider that to be virtually identical   yes i wonder how it feels trying to push back  against the president of the united states who   was making all of these claims it's like having a  shovel in your hand and trying to empty the ocean   when the president was making his speech on  wednesday and citing that mob in washington   he complained about weak and pathetic republicans  no it's amazing the weak republicans they're   pathetic republicans he was talking about  you well i think he was talking about others   i think actually i showed that i had some courage  i had some gumption that i actually would do my   job the ones that cow toweled him that just bent  over and did his bidding and not looking into the   facts i think that's weakness brad rapensberger  told us he didn't see the bloody attack on the   capitol when it was happening because at that  moment he was busy sending congress a 10-page   point-by-point rebuttal of the president's false  claims he learned later that the members of the   house and senate were under attack it was surreal  we've never seen anything like that in 150 years   maybe even longer probably 200 years it was really  an affront to the people that founded this nation   people need to go back and read their history  books you know we had some great founders i   know they weren't perfect men but they were great  people they're some of the most learned people we   had in our society and that's the highly ideal  that we all should kind of elevate ourselves to   to be noble people of high character  and patriotic and love our country

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 2,317,561

Keywords: 60 Minutes, CBS News, 2020 united states senate election in georgia, brad raffensperger, 60 minutes, pharma

Id: s1u8F6ERqqE

Length: 13min 18sec (798 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 12 2021