A lawyer for former President Donald Trump tried Friday to justify the Republican’s earlier attempts to dismiss Georgia’s election results. Go Nakamura / Getty Images Hide caption
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A lawyer for former President Donald Trump tried Friday to justify the Republican’s earlier attempts to dismiss Georgia’s election results.
Go to Nakamura / Getty Images
Donald Trump’s legal team tried Friday to justify the accuracy of a call he made to election officials in Georgia. This action is now part of the criminal investigation into the actions of the then president in the state.
Earlier last month, Trump called the Georgian foreign minister and pressured him to “find” enough ballot papers to lead Trump to victory there. Trump just lost the state.
Democratic impeachment executives have drawn attention to the call in Georgia and Trump’s wider efforts to overturn the election as part of the circumstances that led to the January 6th Capitol uprising.
But Trump attorney Bruce Castor denied the central claim about the call.
“The caretakers told you the president demanded that the Georgian foreign minister” find “just over 11,000 votes,” Castor said. “The word ‘find’, like so many others pointed out by the property managers, is completely out of context.
“It is clear that President Trump’s comments and use of the word ‘fund’ are solely related to the inexplicable, dramatic decline in ballot rejection rates in Georgia,” Castor said before making an argument about the interpretation of the word “fund” . “”
Trump has been heavily criticized for his attempts to undermine Georgia’s election results – a state he relied on to secure a second term in the White House. In particular, Trump urged Georgian Foreign Secretary Brad Raffensperger to dismiss the state’s findings and, when rejected, launched an online campaign against state election officials accusing them, without evidence, of ignoring election fraud.
Fulton County prosecutors earlier this week announced an investigation into Trump’s behavior in an attempt to dismiss Georgia’s election results.
The investigation will investigate several potential violations of state law, including “soliciting electoral fraud, giving false testimony to state and local government agencies, conspiracy, extortion, violating the oath of office, and any involvement in violence or threats related to the electoral administration.”
