Former President Donald Trump at a rally in Georgia. Spencer Platt / Getty Images
Then-President Donald Trump poked fun at Georgia election officials who received death threats while attempting to overturn the 2020 election results, and even said they deserved the vitriol, The Daily Beast reported.
As part of his attempts to change the election results, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2 urging him to “find 11,780 votes” to overcome Joe Biden’s victory. Raffensperger had pushed back the call and did not follow up on these demands.
At the same time, Trump and his allies railed against election officials, and some officials received a wave of violent threats.
On December 1, 2020, Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s implementation manager for the electoral system, begged on television that “death threats, physical threats, intimidation” should be stopped.
After the January 2 phone call, Raffensperger also said his wife had received death threats.
According to The Daily Beast, Trump was briefed on the threats several times, but remained unmoved and even made frivolous.
“There was this one time that I heard [Trump] suggest they may be exaggerating the types of threats they were receiving. But more often he made fun of them and said they were bad people who got what they deserved, “said a former agent at the outlet.
Another person close to Trump told The Daily Beast that Trump noted that if officials wanted the threats to stop, they would simply have to grant him his wish.
Trump also praised those who made the threats, calling them “my people,” the source said, according to The Daily Beast.
The story goes on
Trump officials did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Death threats sent to officials included promises to “make the Boston bombings look like a breeze,” reported The Daily Beast.
Reuters reported that Raffensperger’s wife, Tricia, received text messages in April saying “You and your family are being killed very slowly” and “We are planning the deaths of you and your family every day.”
Trump and his campaign went to court to challenge election results in multiple states, and all of them failed. He and his allies still claim the election was stolen from him.
Read the original article on Business Insider
