Trump, on tape, asks Georgia to 'find' votes

WASHINGTON－US President Donald Trump pressured Georgia's top election official, a fellow Republican, in an extraordinary phone conversation to "find" enough votes to overturn Joe Biden's victory in the southern state, US media reported on Sunday.

In the conversation with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Saturday, a recording of which was first obtained by The Washington Post, Trump warns Raffensperger that he and his general counsel could face "a big risk" if they failed to pursue his request.

"The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry," Trump is heard saying on the tape, which was also aired by other media.

"All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have," Trump says, according to audio of the call. "There's nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you've recalculated," the president says. "You're off by hundreds of thousands of votes."

Raffensperger is heard responding: "Well, Mr President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong."

The state conducted three separate ballot counts, resulting in two official certifications of Biden's victory. Final results show Biden won 11,779 more votes than Trump out of nearly 5 million cast.

Word of the recording came at an extraordinary juncture, just before special runoff elections in Georgia that will decide control of the US Senate, and before the US Congress is to certify the results of the Nov 3 election.

'Legal' record

The New York Times reported that aides to Raffensperger had recorded the call. Under Georgia law, Raffensperger can legally have taped the conversation without Trump's consent.

On Sunday, before the audio was released, Trump tweeted about the call, saying that Raffensperger "was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the 'ballots under table' scam, ballot destruction, out of state 'voters', dead voters, and more".

Raffensperger tweeted back, also ahead of the release of the audio, saying: "Respectfully, President Trump: What you're saying is not true. The truth will come out."

Democrats were quick to condemn the call.

"Trump's contempt for democracy is laid bare. Once again. On tape," Representative Adam Schiff said on Twitter.

Some political commentators compared the call to the Watergate tapes that led to the fall of past US president Richard Nixon.

Carl Bernstein, one of the reporters who helped bring down Nixon's presidency, called it "the ultimate smoking gun tape".

Agencies via Xinhua