NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Sunday, January 3rd, 2021

Leaked audio offers fresh evidence that Trump is a criminal: Impeach him again

Today, the Wash­ing­ton Post, Atlanta Jour­nal-Con­sti­tu­tion, and oth­er media out­lets obtained and pub­lished audio which demon­strates neo­fas­cist Don­ald Trump is not sur­pris­ing­ly break­ing the law in his attempts to sub­vert Amer­i­can democracy.

In the record­ing — a repro­duc­tion of a tele­phone call between Trump’s White House and the Sec­re­tary of State’s office in Geor­gia — Trump can be heard demand­ing that Geor­gia elec­tions offi­cials tam­per with already-cer­ti­fied results of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in Geor­gia to change the out­come in his favor:

Don­ald Trump bad­gered and berat­ed Sec­re­tary of State Brad Raf­fensperg­er in a call Sat­ur­day, demand­ing that he “find” votes to reverse 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 demands 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.

“Fel­las, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. We have that in spades already,” Trump said, sug­gest­ing more legal action. “Or we can keep it going. But that’s not fair to the vot­ers of Georgia.”

Over the course of the hour­long con­ver­sa­tion, Trump vac­il­lat­ed between issu­ing threats and beg­ging Raf­fensperg­er to help him. A few quotes:

TRUMP IN DISBELIEF: I could tell you by our ral­lies. I could tell you by the ral­ly I’m hav­ing on Mon­day night, the place, they already have lines of peo­ple stand­ing out front wait­ing. It’s just not pos­si­ble to have lost Geor­gia. It’s not possible.

TRUMP SPOUTING ABSURD CONSPIRACY THEORIES: You know the Inter­net? You know what was trend­ing on the Inter­net? “Where’s [name]?” Because they thought she’d be in jail. “Where’s [name]?” It’s crazy, it’s crazy. That was. The min­i­mum num­ber is 18,000 for [name] , but they think it’s prob­a­bly about 56,000, but the min­i­mum num­ber is 18,000 on the [name] night where she ran back in there when every­body was gone and stuffed, she stuffed the bal­lot box­es. Let’s face it, Brad, I mean. They did it in slow motion replay mag­ni­fied, right? She stuffed the bal­lot box­es. They were stuffed like nobody has ever seen them stuffed before.

TRUMP REPEATING DEBUNKED CLAIMS: Do you think it’s pos­si­ble that they shred­ded bal­lots in Ful­ton Coun­ty? Because that’s what the rumor is. And also that Domin­ion took out machines. That Domin­ion is real­ly mov­ing fast to get rid of their, uh, machin­ery. Do you know any­thing about that? Because that’s ille­gal, right?

TRUMP’S RESPONSE AFTER RAFFENSPERGER POINTS OUT THAT THE PROBLEM WITH SOCIAL MEDIA IS THAT “PEOPLE CAN SAY ANYTHING”: Oh this isn’t social media. This is Trump media. It’s not social media. It’s real­ly not; it’s not social media. I don’t care about social media. I couldn’t care less. Social media is Big Tech. Big Tech is on your side, you know. I don’t even know why you have a side because you should want to have an accu­rate elec­tion. And you’re a Republican.

TRUMP ON STACEY ABRAMS: Ful­ton Coun­ty. Look. Stacey, in my opin­ion, Stacey is as dis­hon­est as they come. She has out­played you… at every­thing. She got you to sign a total­ly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al agree­ment, which is a dis­as­trous agree­ment. You can’t check sig­na­tures. I can’t imag­ine you’re allowed to do har­vest­ing, I guess, in that agree­ment. That agree­ment is a dis­as­ter for this coun­try. But she got you some­how to sign that thing, and she has out­smart­ed you at every step.

TRUMP ISSUES THREATS: That’s a crim­i­nal, that’s a crim­i­nal offense. And you can’t let that hap­pen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. And that’s a big risk. But they are shred­ding bal­lots, in my opin­ion, based on what I’ve heard. And they are remov­ing machin­ery, and they’re mov­ing it as fast as they can, both of which are crim­i­nal finds. And you can’t let it hap­pen, and you are let­ting it hap­pen. You know, I mean, I’m noti­fy­ing you that you’re let­ting it hap­pen. So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.

TRUMP DEMANDS THAT THE ELECTION BE RIGGED: So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fel­las, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. You know, we have that in spades already. Or we can keep it going, but that’s not fair to the vot­ers of Geor­gia because they’re going to see what hap­pened, and they’re going to see what happened.

TRUMP DEMANDS THE ELECTION BE RIGGED FAST:  It’s very sim­ple. We won the elec­tion. As the gov­er­nors of major states and the sur­round­ing states said, there is no way you lost Geor­gia. As the Geor­gia politi­cians say, there is no way you lost Geor­gia. Nobody. Every­one knows I won it by hun­dreds of thou­sands of votes. But I’ll tell you it’s going to have a big impact on Tues­day if you guys don’t get this thing straight­ened out fast.

TRUMP SETS FORTH HIS EXPECTATIONS (JUST FIND ME ENOUGH VOTES TO CHANGE THE RESULT): Brad, we just want the truth. It’s sim­ple. And everyone’s going to look very good if the truth comes out. It’s okay. It takes a lit­tle while, but let the truth come out. And the real truth is, I won by 400,000 votes. At least. That’s the real truth. But we don’t need 400,000 votes. We need less than 2,000 votes. And are you guys able to meet tomor­row, Ryan?

Vice Pres­i­dent-elect Kamala Har­ris denounced Trump’s crim­i­nal con­duct at a ral­ly in Savan­nah, Geor­gia. “It was a bald-faced, bold abuse of pow­er by the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States,” she told ral­ly attendees.

After hear­ing the record­ing, U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez (D‑New York) said: “I absolute­ly think it’s an impeach­able offense and if it was up to me, there would be arti­cles on the floor, quite quickly.”

We agree. Arti­cles of impeach­ment should be prompt­ly bought against Don­ald Trump. This tape alone pro­vides ample evi­dence that Trump is engaged in crim­i­nal behav­ior and is vio­lat­ing the oath of office he took to pro­tect and defend the Con­sti­tu­tion. Mem­bers of the House all just swore or affirmed an oath today to defend that very same Con­sti­tu­tion. And it needs defend­ing, against all ene­mies, both for­eign and domes­tic. Ene­mies like Don­ald Trump.

Impeach Don­ald Trump again. If the Sen­ate runs out of time to con­sid­er Trump’s removal before Jan­u­ary 20th, so be it. The House, at least, can con­sid­er and act on Arti­cles of Impeach­ment, and take a fresh stand for our democracy.

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