Prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia have opened an investigators into the call Donald Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump told him to find more than 11,000 votes so that Trump could claim the state in the election, the New York Times reports.
Fani Willis, the prosecutor in Fulton County, sent letters to Raffensperger and the Secretary of State’s office instructing them to preserve any evidence and correspondence related to the call with Trump, explicitly stating that the request was due to an open criminal investigation.
During the January 2nd call, Trump explicitly asked Raffensperger to “find” just enough votes to give Trump a victory. Trump also stated that Georgia state officials including Raffensperger, the department general counsel and the governor could face legal repercussions if they did not comply.
Raffensperger stated that he recorded the phone call to memorialize the conversation after he had a questionable conversation with South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham in which the election outcome was questioned. The tape became public after Trump mischaracterized the content of the conversation.
Fulton County is the home of Atlanta, the capital of Georgia and the most populous county in the state. Its votes were key to the false Trump claim that the election was corrupt because many of the votes were submitted via mail-in ballots, which Trump claims were fraudulent.