Trump's lies during his call to the Georgia secretary of state

By Hope Yen, Jeff Amy and Michael Balsamo - AP

President Donald Trump made a dizzying account of confusing numbers and false claims in an extraordinary phone call to Georgia's secretary of state in order to reverse his electoral defeat, fabricating a large number of votes that, according to him, should have been counted to his favor. 

In the one-hour call on Saturday January 2 with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Trump suggested to the Republican official that he "find" enough votes to give him an electoral victory. 

The Associated Press obtained the full audio of Trump's conversation with Georgia officials from a person who participated in the call.

The agency has a policy of not amplifying misinformation and unsubstantiated claims.

The full audio of the call will be published only accompanied by an annotated transcript with verified data. 

Here's a look at Trump's claims during the call with Raffensperger, and how they stack up to reality:

• TRUMP:

  "If we could look at some of the numbers, I think it's pretty clear that we won, we won substantially in Georgia."

THE FACTS

: No, Trump lost Georgia in an election the state has certified in favor of Democrat Joe Biden.

Republican election officials have affirmed that the election was held and accounted for fairly.

After counting the votes three times, including once by hand, Georgia's certified total shows that Trump lost to Biden by 11,779 votes, out of nearly 5 million votes cast.

Raffensperger certified the totals and several officials said they found no evidence that Trump won. 

[Ten former defense secretaries ask by letter not to question the electoral result]

No claims of fraud or systemic errors could be verified.

The judges have rejected the legal claims to the results, although at least one is still pending in court. 

• TRUMP: "People will be happy to have an accurate count ... We have other states that I think are going to reverse in our favor soon."

THE FACTS

: No reversal of the election results is anticipated in Georgia or other states.

Biden defeated Trump by around 7 million votes nationwide and by a margin of 306-232 electoral votes in the Electoral College, with victories in other key states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona. 

Former Trump attorney general William Barr found no evidence of massive voter fraud.

Trump's allegations of massive vote fraud have been dismissed by multiple judges and rejected by state election officials and an arm of his own government's Department of Homeland Security. 

Paul Ryan calls Trump's plan to reverse the election result "undemocratic"

Jan. 4, 202100: 31

A group of Republican senators, led by Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, say they plan to challenge the election results when Congress meets Wednesday to tally up Biden's victory over Trump in the Electoral College.  

The opposition will force votes to be cast in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, but neither is expected to prevail. 

• TRUMP: “The other, dead.

  The dead voted.

  And I think the number is around 5,000 people.

  They reviewed obituaries.

  They used all kinds of methods to arrive at a precise number.

  And the minimum is close to around 5,000 votes ”.

THE FACTS

: Not true.

Georgia officials have denied previous claims by the Trump campaign in November that three people had voted illegally, after finding that others with similar names had voted.

Back then, a local prosecutor announced an investigation into whether a vote had been illegally cast on behalf of a man in Georgia who died in 2015. 

On Saturday, Raffensperger said that two illegal votes on behalf of dead people had been confirmed, not thousands as Trump alleges.

“The number is two.

Two.

Two dead people who voted.

So that's wrong, ”Raffensperger said. 

• TRUMP: "We have between 250,000 and 300,000 ballots that were mysteriously entered on the lists, most of it in Fulton County, that has not been checked."

THE FACTS:

There is nothing mysterious or suspicious.

You are describing a legitimate vote counting process, not a sudden increase in illegal acts. 

Trump appears to be referring to large numbers of votes that were tabulated in the early hours of Wednesday after Election Day and later.

The arrival of those votes was not mysterious, but anticipated, because many of Georgia's 159 counties had large numbers of ballots that were mailed that had to be tabulated after the polls closed and the face-to-face votes had been counted. 

[Congress takes office as Republicans seek to block Biden's rise to power]

In fact, news organizations and officials warned in the days leading up to the elections that the results would surely come out just as they did: in-person votes, which tend to be counted more quickly, would surely favor the president, who had spent months warning his supporters to avoid voting by mail and to vote in person either early or on Election Day. 

Biden aide says Trump's call to Georgia is proof of his attack on democracy

Jan. 4, 202100: 30

 And mail-in ballots, which take longer to count as they must be removed from envelopes and verified before being counted, would favor Biden.

States tend to count postal votes at the end of the process. 

• TRUMP: "We believe ... if (there is) a real signature review in Fulton County, you will find that at least a couple thousand are fake signatures."  

THE FACTS

: There's nothing to support that. 

It would be impossible for anyone to have forged hundreds of thousands of signatures on mailed ballots in Fulton because there were only 147,000 votes by mail in Georgia's most populous county, with around 116,000 in favor of Biden. 

• TRUMP claiming that thousands of voters had moved from Georgia, registered in another state, and voted improperly in Georgia: “They went back and voted.

  That was a great number. "

THE FACTS

.

It was not so.

Trump supporters are using a list whose accuracy is questionable, according to Ryan Germany, the legal adviser for Raffensperger's office.

He told Trump during the call that his arguments had been investigated and that in many cases, voters had “moved back years ago.

It is unlikely to have happened just before the election.

That's something about the data that is not accurate. "

• TRUMP: "You don't pass the smell test, because we've heard that they're shredding thousands upon thousands of ballots and now they're saying 'Oh, we're just cleaning the office.'

THE FACTS:

The shredding in question was done in suburban Cobb County, not Fulton County as Trump alleges.

Cobb County election officials said on Nov. 24 that none of the papers shredded by a contractor was "relevant to the election or recount," but instead were things like old mailing labels, other papers with voter information, mails. old and duplicate electronic absentee ballot requests. 

Georgia goes for the second round to elect its senators

Jan. 4, 202102: 33

• TRUMP, claiming that a Fulton County poll worker ran ballots through a machine three times instead of just once, said his campaign will post a video to prove it: “You can't deny it.

  We have a version that you have not seen, but it is enlarged.

  It is enlarged and you can see everything.

  For whatever reason, they put out the ballots three times each.

  And I don't know why, I don't know why three times and not five times, right? ”.

THE FACTS

: There was no double or triple counting of ballots.

Raffensperger noted that ballots in Georgia had been counted and recounted twice to ensure accuracy, including once by hand, and that no discrepancies arose on the Fulton County ballots, as would have been the case if someone had counted in a manner inappropriate votes multiple times.

"We did an audit of that," Raffensperger told Trump.

"It was conclusively proven that they were not scanned three times."

• TRUMP attacks the legal agreement Georgia signed with the state Democratic Party on how requests for absentee and absentee votes were verified.

  “You can't check the signatures, you can't do that… I suppose that agreement allows you to deliver absentee ballots.

  The agreement is a disaster for this country ”.

THE FACTS:

There is nothing in the March 6 agreement to prevent Georgia's election clerks from scrutinizing the signatures.

The legal settlement addresses allegations about a lack of state standards for evaluating signatures on absentee ballots.

Raffensperger has said that not only is it entirely possible to compare the signatures, but the state requires it. 

The practice of collecting absentee ballots and turning them over to electoral authorities, known as ballot harvesting, remains illegal in Georgia. 

• TRUMP, referring to investigations into his baseless allegations of voter fraud: "There's your anti-Trump prosecutor."

THE FACTS:

Trump was referring to the prosecutor in Atlanta, Byung J. “BJay” Pak.

But the official is a longtime Trump-appointed Republican, who was also a member of the Georgia House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017. He was nominated by Trump to become attorney for the Northern District of Georgia in 2017. In announcing his nomination, the White House said Pak and five other nominees for national prosecutor positions "share the president's vision of 'Making America safe again."

Pak had also previously worked as an assistant district attorney. 

Georgia's Secretary of State, Republican Brad Raffensperger, released the recording of Trump's call after the president attacked him on Twitter.

Brynn Anderson / AP

• TRUMP, citing 18,000 “suspect” votes: “The video that is being seen around the world… clearly said there was a large water leak.

  They all fled that area and then came back ... There were no Republican observers ... And there were no policemen ... It was full of votes.

  They weren't in an official voting box, they were in what looked like suitcases or trunks… The minimum number could be… it was 18,000 ballots, all for Biden. "

FACTS

: That is a total distortion of what really happened.

State and Fulton County election officials say the surveillance video Trump refers to does not show any inappropriate behavior, but rather normal ballot processing using not briefcases, but ballot containers on wheels.

Officials said the full video showed the same workers packing the containers first with valid tickets yet to be counted. 

Republicans have maintained that their observers were told to leave the Fulton County vote counting center, but election officials said they actually left after confusion that arose because poll workers thought they were already finished by that day. 

In fact, an independent observer and investigator monitored the vote counting, according to state and county officials.

Trump also refers to a false confession attributed to a woman who was allegedly involved in the incident that was posted on social media. 

• TRUMP: "In other states we think we found tremendous corruption with Dominion machines, but we will have to see."

THE FACTS:

No “tremendous corruption” has been found.

"There is no evidence that any voting system erased or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised," said the federal agency that oversees electoral counting, in a statement also signed by state authorities and representatives of the electoral industry. 

This article was translated by Andrea López-Cruzado thanks to the FactChat agreement, coordinated by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) with the support of WhatsApp.

The objective of the project is to bring better information in Spanish.

You can receive this and other checks directly by WhatsApp by clicking here or by registering the number +1 727-477-2212 and writing "Hello" in the first message.

We will wait for you.

#Chatbot