ATLANTA — President Donald Trump badgered and berated Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a call Saturday, repeating falsehoods about his election defeat in Georgia — the latest example of the extraordinary pressure he’s exerted on state Republican officials ahead of critical runoffs for control of the U.S. Senate.
Raffensperger refused pressure from Trump to overturn the election results, telling him that the “data you have is wrong” as he pushed back on Trump’s sham theories of “stuffed ballot boxes” that the president said would reverse Joe Biden’s roughly 12,000-vote victory in Georgia.
A recording of the roughly hourlong call was obtained on Sunday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and was confirmed by two people involved in the conversation. It was disclosed a day before Trump is set to stage a rally in northwest Georgia for U.S. Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
