WASHINGTON — Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger fielded a flood of demands from then-President Donald Trump after the 2020 election to address alleged election fraud, according to testimony from Tuesday's hearing on the insurrection.
"'I just want to find 11,780 votes,' " Raffensperger said Trump told him during a phone call. "I need 11,000 votes, give me a break."
The audio played by the the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack depicted an increasingly frantic Trump, with the former president's requests to Raffensperger growing more explicit as time went on. Members of the audience in the Cannon Caucus Room, where the Jan. 6 hearings are taking place, laughed throughout the audio clips.
"I think you're gonna find that they are shredding ballots, because they have to get rid of the ballots," Trump said on one phone call to Raffensperger. "The ballots are corrupt."
Raffensperger said that he maintained his stance that the election in Georgia was not rigged or subject to fraud.
"What I knew is that we didn't have any votes to find," Raffensperger told the panel Tuesday. "There was no shredding of ballots."
Tuesday was the fourth day of hearings on the Jan. 6 insurrection. The next hearing, led by a nine-member House select committee, is on Thursday.
