Investigators from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office will question Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger as part of the federal probe into efforts to undermine the peaceful transfer of power.
A State Department spokesman confirmed that the interview with Raffensperger will take place in Atlanta on Wednesday. The interview was first reported by The Washington Post.
Then-President Donald Trump called Raffensperger in January 2021 to urge him to “find” the votes Trump needs to win the state of Georgia — a state that Joe Biden won by nearly 12,000 votes.
At points during the call, Raffensperger felt Trump went so far as to threaten him with supporting Trump’s plan to undermine the election results.
“I felt then – and I still feel – that this was a threat,” Raffensperger wrote of part of the call in his book Integrity Counts. “Others obviously thought so too, with some of Trump’s more radical supporters reacting as if it was their duty to carry out that threat.”
Raffensperger, an elected Republican, rejected Trump’s demands. He and his family and other campaign workers in the state then faced a barrage of threats.
Trump asserted that he did nothing wrong in his conversation with Raffensperger and described it as an “absolutely perfect phone call”.
The former president and his allies are also being investigated by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who has been watching for possible racketeering and conspiracy charges as part of her investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 election there. Raffensperger testified before a special grand jury as part of this investigation.
Willis is expected to announce in August if anyone will be charged in the Georgia probe.
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