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Washington Post: Audio Shows Trump Demanding Georgia Officials "Find" Votes to Tilt Election; WAPO: Audio Shows Trump Demanding Georgia Officials "Find" Votes to Tilt Election. Aired 2-3p ET
Aired January 03, 2021 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:00:17]
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me this Sunday.
Extraordinary breaking developments we are following this hour.
The president of the United States on audiotape pushing a Republican official in Georgia to discard the will of voters. The audio coming from "The Washington Post", and it gives an up-close look at the bully in the Oval Office, and his win-at-all-costs tactics.
In the hour-long call between President Trump and Georgia's secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, the president alternates between threats and compliments, the undercurrent to the president's every word, "find a way to ignore the math and make me the winner". Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have won this election in Georgia based on all of this, and there's nothing wrong with saying that Brad. You know, I mean having a correct -- the people of Georgia are angry, and these numbers are going to be repeated on Monday night, along with others that we're going to have by that time, which are much more substantial even, and the people of Georgia are angry. The people of the country are angry, and there's nothing wrong with saying that, you know, that -- that you've recalculated.
BRAD RAFFENSPERGER, GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong.
TRUMP: Now, 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.
RYAN GERMANY, GENERAL COUNSEL TO GEORGIA SECRETARY FO STATE: This is Ryan Germany. No, Dominion has not moved any machinery out of Fulton County.
(CROSSTALK) TRUMP: No, but if they -- have they moved the inner parts of the machine and replaced them with other parts?
GERMANY: No.
TRUMP: Are you sure, Ryan?
GERMANY: I'm sure.
TRUMP: You should want to have an accurate election, and you're a Republican.
RAFFENSPERBER: We believe that we do have an accurate election.
TRUMP: No, you don't. No, you don't. You don't have it. You don't have it. Not even close. You've got -- you're off by hundreds of thousands of votes.
You know what they did, and you're not reporting it. That's a criminal -- that's a criminal offense. And, you know, you can't let that happen. That's a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That's a big risk, but they are --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: -- shredding ballots in my opinion, based on what I have heard. And they are removing machinery, and moving it as fast as they can, both of which are criminal fines. You can't let it happen and you are letting it happen.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: All right. Let's get straight to "The Washington Post" reporter helping to break this story, Amy Gardner.
Amy, good to see you. All right. So this tape is extraordinary. How did you get it? And is it the attorney and Brad Raffensperger who willingly recorded the conversation?
AMY GARDNER, "THE WASHINGTON POST: I'm not going to say where I got the recording or who taped it. I did not tape it and received it from a source.
I've been covering the voting issues in Georgia in particular for much of the year, so I know a lot of THE folks down there. So I was just fortunate enough to be the person who got my hands on this recording.
WHITFIELD: And it's extraordinary because these are portions. What we just saw was not necessarily one stream of audio, correct? These are edited portions that we are hearing in this one-hour-long conversation?
GARDNER: That's correct. We're trying to publish the whole audio. I can tell you that I've been inundated from readers just in the period since the story published who wanted to hear the whole audio, and we're working on it as fast as we can. It's a technical issue. But yes, it was about an hour-long conversation and these excerpts that you just played are what I consider to be the highlights of the call, because they revealed a couple of astonishing things, right?
They reveal that President Trump has not stopped thinking about his loss. He is not willing to give up. He can't handle the fact that he lost Georgia.
[14:04:51]
GARDNER: And he kind of careens in the conversation from like flattery -- trying to flatter Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, to like begging him to do something different, to giving him talking points on what to say to the public about how to justify change in the outcome, to bullying him and demeaning him and hurling insults at him. I mean it's quite a display.
WHITFIELD: It is quite the display. And in fact, I mean it's all of that arm twisting. It is the president telling them how they may have miscalculated things, even though Brad Raffensperger said hey, we have our numbers and you have yours but we're standing behind and accurate.
And the president is quite forthright saying, no, it's not the case. I mean he also tells them it's with great risk that they continue on the path that they're going.
GARDNER: Yes. I mean I think there's a little bit of potential legal peril in this conversation for the president. I mean obviously it's murky, and you know, finding public officials, you know, guilty or liable for criminal behavior, when it comes to threatening other public officials is hard to do. And so it would probably be subject to prosecutorial discretion.
But it seems pretty clear to me, and I have spoken to a couple of legal experts so far today who agree that this gets right up to the line of sort of threatening Secretary Raffensperger and his general counsel Ryan Germany, saying that they would face criminal liability if they don't act.
The other thing that he does on this call is, he says that if they don't act by Tuesday that he suggests very strongly that Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, the two Republican senators who trying to hang on to their seats in the runoff elections that are coming upon us very quickly on Tuesday, will lose. And that also sounded a little bit like a threat.
And also acknowledging that his turmoil and his sort of stirring and stoking of these unfounded theories about election fraud are harming the Republicans in those races.
WHITFIELD: Right. He does say that, you know if something isn't done by tomorrow, then the same kind of outcome that we saw from November will be repeated in Tuesday's race. And I mean I had to listen to it twice, you know, to really catch what I was hearing rom the president because he's lacking confidence that these Republican incumbents can secure their seats in this Tuesday runoff.
GARDNER: You know, I've talked to a couple of different people over the last couple of days as I chased this story who aren't sure that Trump wants them to win, because if they win, then we get back to a reality that he has already struggled with and you hear him struggling with it on the call which is he becomes the only person who lost Georgia at a statewide level.
And he's been very honest and sort of upfront about how difficult he finds that to take and to accept. How could all of these other Republicans have won Georgia and only he lost?
The other thing that a Loeffler/Perdue win on Tuesday does is it undermines the central argument for his, you know, his justification for losing, that it was rigged and it was stolen. And if they win, that argument kind of goes away in Georgia.
So there are actually Republicans on the ground in Georgia, who are wondering whether Trump even wants them to win, even though the stakes are so enormous for the party if the control of the U.S. Senate is at stake, Mitch McConnell's power as majority leader is at stake, I would be very curious to hear what Mitch McConnell's reaction to this recording was.
WHITFIELD: Oh yes. I mean the list is long of the reactions that we are, you know, waiting with bated breath in which to hear, McConnell being one of them.
You know, you touched on the legalities here, or what kind of, you know, prosecutorial, you know, avenues might be here still unclear. But it is interesting that the president said, you know, it is criminal if you don't do -- meaning he's threatening, you know, Ryan Germany, the attorney and Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state.
It's criminal that they don't do more when it appears to be criminal that the president of the United States is trying to leverage these -- this elected official, this secretary of state and twist the arm, trying to tell them they should not be standing behind, you know, the certification of this free and fair election in Georgia and beyond.
GARDNER: Yes, I mean, I think it's really clear that -- I mean I think at the very least you can say that President Trump is encouraging Secretary Raffensperger and Ryan Germany to commit crimes.
[14:09:47]
GARDNER: You know, is that attempted criminal conspiracy? I mean I'm not a lawyer. The legal experts I have spoken to have raised that possibility, but were also very cautious to say that those are very difficult cases to take on.
And they were more inclined to lean into the simple fact -- the simple interpretation in their view that this was a gross moral failure and maybe less leaning into the potential for criminal liability on the president's part. WHITFIELD: And Amy, this tape is so extraordinary that we do want to
play it again because -- I mean it's so shocking to hear the voice of the president of the United States in this demeanor, and in this method of trying to, you know, twist the arms of the secretary of state of Georgia, trying to throw out a free and fair election.
We're going to play this one more time because we know that people at home are hearing this for the first time and can't believe what they just heard, and they need to hear it again. So here it is.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TRUMP: We have won this election in Georgia based on all of this, and there's nothing wrong with saying that Brad. You know, I mean having a correct -- the people of Georgia are angry, and these numbers are going to be repeated on Monday night, along with others that we're going to have by that time, which are much more substantial even, and the people of Georgia are angry. The people of the country are angry, and there's nothing wrong with saying that, you know, that -- that you've recalculated.
RAFFENSPERGER: Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong.
TRUMP: Now, 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.
GERMANY: This is Ryan Germany. No, Dominion has not moved any machinery out of Fulton County.
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: No, but if they -- have they moved the inner parts of the machine and replaced them with other parts?
GERMANY: No.
TRUMP: Are you sure, Ryan?
GERMANY: I'm sure.
TRUMP: You should want to have an accurate election, and you're a Republican.
RAFFENSPERBER: We believe that we do have an accurate election.
TRUMP: No, you don't. No, you don't. You don't have it. You don't have it. Not even close. You've got -- you're off by hundreds of thousands of votes.
You know what they did, and you're not reporting it. That's a criminal -- that's a criminal offense. And, you know, you can't let that happen. That's a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That's a big risk, but they are --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: -- shredding ballots in my opinion, based on what I have heard. And they are removing machinery, and moving it as fast as they can, both of which are criminal fines. You can't let it happen and you are letting it happen.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: "The Washington Post" reporter helping to break this story, Amy Gardner is back with us. Amy so -- while we're talking about four minutes of a recording involving the president of the United States here that -- the sitting president that we were just listening to, one can't help but think about the 340 hours of recordings involving President Richard Nixon, the White House recordings during the time of Watergate.
How much of that case are you thinking parallels this one?
GARDNER: I mean, you know, it's a little early. And I honestly have no idea what the status is of recorded phone calls are in the White House for this particular administration.
And you know, like I was saying earlier before you replayed the audio, I think that this, as astonishing as this audio is, and as much as it reflects where Donald Trump is in terms of his headspace, as evidence of criminal activities, I think it's gray. I think it's gray.
WHITFIELD: Gray in terms of what?
GARDNER: In terms of it being a murky area of the law to show that he participated in a criminal enterprise. I think, you know, you can imagine him making the argument that he really believes that he won Georgia. And that he's actually expecting Brad Raffensperger to find the truth. And he uses those words in the recording.
So I think it will be very difficult to prove that he's intentionally, criminally encouraging Brad Raffensperger to break the law.
WHITFIELD: Except he has to know by now, after certifications in every state, after recounts -- there were three counts in Georgia to see if all of those votes were valid, legal and true. The outcome was yes.
[14:14:59]
WHITFIELD: The secretary of state Brad Raffensperger said many times, even though he wanted to remind the president that he stood behind him, he voted for him, but there was nothing untoward about the outcome of these elections. And that he should grasp that, believe that. So really, this seems to, Amy, just demonstrate that the president is dug-in in denial.
He knows what he's doing by calling -- by having this phone conversation with the Secretary of State and asking him to somehow find more than 11,780 votes, right? GARDNER: Well, I would say I'm not going to speculate on what's going
on inside President Trump's mind. I would also say that I think, you know, at the very least you could just make the argument that, well, for one thing I think it's important to remember he has surrounded himself by people who only validate what he wants to hear.
And you hear it on this phone call, and hopefully we'll get the phone call in its entirety online really soon. But in the phone call you hear, for instance, chief of staff Mark Meadows say -- respond to Brad Raffensperger that it's not true that there were only two votes cast on behalf of dead people, there were thousands.
And that's one of -- that was one of the allegations that President Trump made in the call. And so that's Mark Meadows, the chief of staff who is leaning into a conspiracy theory that has been debunked and investigated by the secretary of state's office in Georgia.
So President Trump is surrounding himself with people who are only echoing back his conspiracy theories. He's only watching TV that echoes back his conspiracy theories. It's entirely possible that he really believes it.
WHITFIELD: Ok. Amy, thank you so much for this reporting and bringing this to light.
I want to bring in now to this conversation CNN contributor and former White House counsel to President Nixon John Dean, CNN presidential historian Tim Naftali, and CNN White House John Harwood.
John Dean, I got to get to you first because as soon as I heard these tapes, I thought oh my gosh this is reminiscent of Watergate, the recordings, hundreds of hours of recordings that revealed answers as to whether the president knew, the White House knew about the break-in at the Watergate of the Democratic National Committee.
When you heard this recording, I mean, what did you think?
JOHN DEAN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I just heard the four and a half minutes you played. And that's a very small sample. My immediate reaction was that the Secretary of State Raffensperger, he has taken a very safe precaution.
Georgia is a one-party consent state. You can record your telephone calls. He knew he was being pushed, if not extorted by the president in this call so he flipped the switch and he made a record of this call. I think that's very smart.
The president is marching right up to the edges of extortion. There's probably more of this, Fred, given the fact that Trump has been cutting this angle far and wide.
So I think there's more tapes probably elsewhere. I think this is a special situation where the secretary of state wanted to protect himself from a president leaning on him and has done a good job of doing so. WHITFIELD: You used the word "extortion". Do you see other potential
crimes here that can be pursued against the sitting President of the United States? I mean here it is the president who is on tape talking about how it's criminal for the secretary of state to not further look into numbers that the president is certain says he is the winner.
You said extortion. What other crimes do you see here, if any?
DEAN: Well, I heard a very seasoned con man in Donald Trump working his target, the hit he was on. And there was efforts to extort. There was also -- this sounded like something that came out of the middle of a criminal conspiracy.
He's -- maybe he's on a speakerphone. I don't know who else is in the office. I read in the article that I quickly scanned that Mark Meadows was there.
And this is part of a scheme and a plan that is trying to overturn a very legitimate election. I think there's probably more of this. This is the first sort of raw evidence we've had surface.
It's very damning for the president, and it certainly should open the eyes of the American people that the president is trying to -- this is a coup. This is a soft coup. This is a 21st century coup.
We don't have troops at the door anymore. We have people insidiously working on the inside to sort of damage and destroy the system. That's what this is.
[14:19:48]
WHITFIELD: A coup, an attempt to overthrow government.
Tim Naftali, how do you see this? How do you interpret these recordings involving the sitting president, his intent, his state of mind and now his legacy?
TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Well, presidential recordings like this one really focus the public mind and they also raise the costs of those who would work with this president to overturn the election.
We are watching the Cruz 12, the senators who are intent on opposing the certification of the election on January 6th. This call should really focus their minds on what they are going to be helping.
There is no doubt from this call that the president is putting pressure on a state official to find enough votes for him to have won the state of Georgia. At the very least it's an abuse of presidential power, which in a normal period would be impeachable.
It is very much like the behavior he showed toward Ukraine, where he pressured the president of Ukraine to get him data that would help him politically at home. So this is the kind of behavior that is at least abuse of power. Do these 12 Republicans want to be on the side of an abuse of power and perhaps a criminal conspiracy? That's what this recording does. I believe it raises the stakes for January 6th.
WHITFIELD: And in terms -- raising the stakes in terms of certifying the election on January 6th for these members of Congress. In addition, you've got a dozen Republican senators who all say they are on board with refusing to certify.
Is it your view, Tim, that this might change the minds of some of those 12, redirect, or does it make some of them even more steadfast to stand behind the president?
NAFTALI: I don't think that those 12 are going to abandon the president at this point. If they haven't abandoned him by now, they're not going to do it now. In fact, I'm sure they've heard calls like this. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they participated in calls like this.
But what I think it might do is change the rhetoric, and it might prevent more senators from voting with them. It might actually sharpen the rhetoric of Republican senators opposed to their view when they take the floor on January 6th.
WHITFIELD: John Harwood, you know, we were looking a moment ago at a wide shot of this thick fog hanging over the White House, that of that Foggy Bottom fog from Watergate -- here we are making comparisons -- encroaching now right over the White House.
Have we heard from anyone inside the White House about these tapes that have been recorded, and now being made public, thanks to "The Washington Post" reporting. And now all of us talking about the comparisons of the president's behavior to the tapes of Watergate and now potential criminal behavior by the president, even though it's the president accusing Georgia officials of criminal behavior.
JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: No, we haven't. But we have heard, Fred, from the only person who counts in that building behind me and that's Donald Trump.
What we heard on this call -- and I agree with what John Dean and Tim Naftali both said -- is something that sounds in a common sense way like the president was committing a crime, but that's a technical issue. I'm not a lawyer. John Dean is.
I would imagine that the president would also have a decent insanity defense if he chose to take it because he plainly was not in touch with reality on that call.
But setting aside the technicalities of criminal charges, and obviously criminal charges are very difficult to prove in a case like this, we plainly have a demonstration of a president who is not constrained by the difference between right and wrong, not constrained by the difference between what is false and what is true.
It is precisely what we saw in the case of the Ukraine phone call. It means, as a common-sense way, it's further affirmation that the president of the United States is corrupt.
Now, the question is, for the Republican Party -- and this is where I think Tim makes a very good point -- I would doubt any of the 12 Republican senators or the 140 Republican House members who intend to object to these election results will change their mind.
But any Republican who does not speak out against this behavior, which you can hear in a crystal-clear fashion, is wrong, is improper by the president -- any Republican who does not speak out shares responsibility, shares culpability for what the president is attempting to do to American democracy.
WHITFIELD: And I must say it seems extraordinary. It's been about an hour since these tapes were made public.
[14:24:46]
WHITFIELD: And John, we have not heard a peep from any Republicans, you know. Are you hearing anything inside Washington among your colleagues, your Republican colleagues about how blasphemous this is?
DEAN: Is that John Harwood or John Dean?
WHITFIELD: John Dean, sorry. I'm sorry. John Dean, former White House counsel to a Republican president, yes.
DEAN: Right. So far nothing. This is obviously all too new. Its implications are just being grasped.
It clearly is not a tape that came out of the White House, as I said earlier. It's something that the secretary of state did to protect himself. I think whoever has put it out has wisely done so because as Tim said, we have a very important vote coming up on the 6th. And are Republicans going to play it straight or are they going to play with the president, who is showing himself to obviously be contrary to the law. He's trying to overturn an election.
Here is the hardest evidence you could ever have, though he's said some of these things, close to these things in public, it is a campaign he is running. And he's doing it with varying degrees of leverage, public and private. And now we're getting the inside look at what it looks like, and it's pretty ugly on the private inside look.
WHITFIELD: It's very ugly. I mean John Dean, we're hearing the president who's almost prompting, giving instruction almost to Raffensperger and his attorney on, you know, how to look further into potentially changing the outcome of the November race ahead of the Tuesday runoff from, you know, have those ballots been shredded in Fulton County? Have any been shredded in Fulton County? Have the insides of the machine of Dominion, the voting machines, been manipulated? Are you still going to be using those same machines?
I mean, you know, it's around the fringes but then if you really listen intently, he's being very direct about what he wants to happen. John Dean, do you find that extraordinary?
DEAN: I'm sorry. My sound went out, Fred. I didn't hear the first part of your question.
WHITFIELD: No. No problem. It's extraordinary to hear, at least extraordinary to me, that you're hearing the president who is prompting, nearly giving instruction to the secretary of state how to change the outcome, not just of the November election, but of the upcoming Tuesday by talking about shredded ballots in Fulton County, to the insides of the Dominion voting machines, whether they have been manipulated at all by Dominion.
DEAN: It's extraordinary. And the fact that he knows that this is way out of bounds, that Dominion is not engaging in this behavior. Dominion has put out a detailed statement and apparently they're going to filed defamation lawsuits for this continued distortion of what their role and activities are in this election.
Trump is just trying to destroy a company that is a very legitimate organization and make them guilty of some sort of criminal behavior. So that's again what suggests his criminality in this, that he knows otherwise. He knows these are not true facts. He's been told. So we just don't have all that evidence in front of us.
WHITFIELD: Congressman Adam Schiff I believe just tweeted out saying "Trump's contempt for democracy is laid bare once again, on tape, pressuring an election official to find the votes so that he can win is potentially criminal and another flagrant abuse of power by a corrupt man who would be a despot, if we allowed him. We will not."
I mean that's a Democrat we are hearing from. We have yet to hear from any Republicans that we know of.
Amy, have you received any comment, whether it be from the white House -- anyone about your reporting and the release of these audio tapes?
GARDNER: The only person who responded to my request for comment among all of those who were on the call Cleta Mitchell, a conservative lawyer who is working on behalf of Trump in this effort and she was on the call.
And she -- I texted her seeking comment and she texted me back. And she said that she stood by Trump's allegations. And she said that the secretary of state has lied about what happened in Georgia. And that they have not sort of shown transparency about the investigations they have conducted. And there's no way for her to know what their reasoning is for saying that there weren't 5,000 dead people who voted or there weren't 18,000 ballots run three times in Fulton County, which is another one of the things that President Trump alleged on the call.
[14:29:48]
GARDNER: And you know, the secretary of state's office will say -- and they did not comment when I asked them for comment on the call, but they have said many times that they have conducted extensive investigations into all the allegations, and they have explained what they found.
[14:30:02]
They have explained, for instance, why the allegations about dead people are false, because there are people with the same name in the database, and one person who's got a death certificate or obituary in, you know, in the archives of the newspaper might not be the same, you know, John Smith who they're saying is one of the dead people who voted.
They investigated each and every one of those and said they found two dead people, not 5,000. So, I mean, I think that's important to remember.
The other thing that I think is important, to add to what Mr. Dean said about the Dominion allegations, Brad Raffensperger ordered a hand recount audit of the presidential election in Georgia this November. That means that every single paper ballot was counted by hand. Workers looked to see whose name many name was on the ballot, Trump or Biden. They came up with a result that was almost exactly the same as the results the machines came up with.
They did find some irregularities. There were 2,000 votes got misplaced and a person got fired over it. Mistakes do happen, and fraud does happen in small amounts around the country every election cycle. But they absolutely disproved without any shadow of doubt that the Dominion machines are rigged, and yet Trump continues to repeat that allegation.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN HOST: John, again, deafening silence from anyone in the White House. One has to wonder about chief of staff Mark Meadows, what he is going to say, or what his position is since he may have been in the room during that phone call.
All of this while, in general, John, Republicans launching this baseless attack against the election. We do understand that House -- Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has tweeted a response to "The Washington Post" reporting, saying, hey, Senator Ted Cruz and gang, you want to investigate election fraud? Well, start with this.
Again, unclear what will happen with the 12 Republican senators, Ted Cruz among them, who say that they are not going to vote for the certification come Wednesday.
JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Correct.
WHITFIELD: Do you see that this will be influential in the end?
HARWOOD: Fred, if you can hear me, I just want to make one more point about the partisan aspect of this.
WHITFIELD: Yes.
HARWOOD: You heard in that call the president saying to either Raffensperger or his lawyer, Ryan, you're a Republican. That is suggesting a partisan impulse or need for him to act.
Go back to the impeachment trial, after the similar extortion phone call that the president made with the -- President Trump made with the president of Ukraine. Adam Schiff in the summary to the Senate said, you know he's going to do this again in the election if you allow him to. Fifty-two out of 53 Republican senators, all except Mitt Romney, voted to absolve the president of that misconduct. Susan Collins, one of them, said afterwards, well, I think the president has learned a pretty big lesson.
Obviously, the president did not learn a big lesson. And by the president now repeating to the Georgia officials that you need to do this because you are a Republican, if you're a Republican elected official and you don't speak out against this behavior, you are tattooing on your forehead a sign that says, Republican means corrupt if we have to be.
That's the stakes of this for the Republican Party, and the question is, how many of them want to sign up for that?
WHITFIELD: Wow.
And, John Dean, I mean, clearly, the president didn't learn, right? From the Ukraine phone call, it being a perfect phone call, because here we are again.
So who can advise the president at this juncture? I mean, seemingly no one, but will the president once again defend that phone call, which was the perfect phone call, to now this recording, his phone call with the secretary of state of Georgia, is this too -- does this too exemplify a perfect phone call in his view?
JOHN DEAN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: I'm sure it does, Fred. If past is prologue, he repeats -- his behavior just keeps repeating itself. That's why Adam Schiff was exactly right as John Harwood said in predicting what would happen next. It's happened.
He doesn't have any sense or right or wrong. He has no sense of shame. So he'll continue this behavior right up until he's no longer president. Fortunately, the Constitution ends his term at noon on January 20th, regardless of what he does.
Now, if for some reason Biden has not completed the process and electoral votes have been counted, Nancy Pelosi would be the president. She would be acting president, but not Donald Trump.
[14:35:02]
So his efforts are really totally misguided. He's shaming himself. He's shaming the party. It's just remarkable that these senators think this is a positive move that they're joining him along with however 100-plus members of the House are going to try to contest various states that have already been certified, many of them audited and re- audited and put this show on next Wednesday. It's disgraceful, really.
WHITFIELD: Everyone, stick around. I want to talk more about these remarkable recordings of the president of the United States trying very hard assertively to overthrow the Georgia election.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: All right. The breaking news we're following right now, "The Washington Post" just releasing new audiotape where you can hear the president of the United States, Donald Trump, pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, about asking him to find enough votes to overturn Joe Biden's win in that state.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: 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.
So tell me, Brad, what are we going to do? We won the election and it's not fair to take it away from us like this. And it's going to be very costly in many ways.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
WHITFIELD: Georgia officials also rebuffing President Trump's election conspiracy theories over and over on that hour-long phone call. You were just hearing a portion of it.
And we understand "The Washington post" is working on trying to release more of that hour-long phone call.
So, that breaking news happens as the 117th Congress is being sworn in today.
A live look right now at Capitol Hill, where the House of Representatives is in session right now, a joint session of Congress actually this weekend.
For more, let's bring in CNN's Manu Raju on Capitol Hill.
So, Manu, already, with the start of this 117th Congress, A big fight brewing on whether to certificates fit Biden's win. That big fight is supposed to, you know, hit a crescendo on Wednesday.
[14:40:02]
But now you've got this audiotape of the president who is interfering with, trying to add additional pressure to the Georgia secretary of state to overthrow the results of the Georgia election, which has already been certified and counted many times, recounted.
MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, and this is going to cause another divide here within the Republican Party that we are seeing play out over whether to certify Joe Biden's victory.
What we are hearing from most Senate Republicans is opposition to the effort by Donald Trump and conservatives to try to overturn Joe Biden's victory come Wednesday, when the joint session of Congress meets to formally count those electoral votes. There are about a dozen Republican senators who do plan to vote against affirming Joe Biden's victory. That's not going to be enough to change the outcome.
On the House Republican side, it's a big different. We expect potentially up to a majority of the House Republican conference to join with the president as part of an effort to try to overturn the election. And I'm told that the Republican in the House, Kevin McCarthy, has essentially green-lighted these efforts by conservatives, to push, to try to overturn the election. According to two of these members who are leading the charge, Jim Jordan and Mo Brooks, both told me that McCarthy has taken part and most of the conference calls and Brooks said that McCarthy made it clear to the president himself, that he is on the president's side.
Now, not all top Republicans are on the same page here. Liz Cheney, who's a member of the Republican letter in the House, said in a private conference call last week I'm told this is a vote that is more significant than casting a vote to send troops into war. She said there's nothing in the Constitution that suggests Congress can step in and overturn the will of voters.
And she just released a 21-page memo he sent to House Republicans, urging them not to move forward on this count.
Now, also on the Senate side, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has sided with those concerns raised by Cheney and others, urged his conference not to move forward on this, but we expect at least one Republican senator to join with one House Republicans to object on Wednesday, that, of course, Fred, would lead to a vote in both chambers. And, ultimately, that's something Republican leaders don't want to be on the side of picking between Donald Trump and the will of voters. Ultimately, the will of the voter will put out here, but it's putting Republicans in a difficult spot in the opening days of this Congress, Fred.
WHITFIELD: Wow, difficult spot, but even with this audiotape right now, no one seems to be changing their tune about siding with the president to try to overturn elections, whether it'd be in the state of Georgia or just period across the country.
RAJU: Yeah, we haven't heard Republicans speak out yet. Of course, this news just broke. The Senate is adjourned until Wednesday. The House right now is voting for the speaker, trying to retain the gavel for the fourth time, Nancy Pelosi is.
But we heard some Democrats starting to speak out from this report, including Adam Schiff, who said that -- he tweeted Trump's contempt for democracy is laid bare once again on tape, pressuring election official to find the votes so he can win is potentially criminal. Another flagrant abuse of power by a corrupt man who would be a despot if we allowed him. We will not.
And, Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, tweeted, hey, Ted Cruz, referring to the Texas Republican senator, who has suggested there should be an investigation in the elections, he said, you want to start investigating election fraud? Start with this.
But these discussions, Fred, will continue tomorrow. How Democrats are having a conference call in the morning to discuss their strategy for Wednesday. They're expected to meet also with the state delegation that have been started by Republicans, when these election results are contested.
Again, not going to change the outcome, but this is going to lead to a marathon session potentially stretching all the way into Thursday, as Republicans mount this last-ditch effort to try to keep Trump in office, despite the results of the election -- Fred.
WHITFIELD: All right. Pretty out of this world.
All right, Manu Raju, thank you so much. We're going to let you do some more reporting. We'll check back with you.
All right. Back with me now, presidential historian Tim Naftali and former White House counsel, John Dean. Manu Raju, you're sticking around with us, thank you so much.
So, I wonder, you know, Tim Naftali, you know, to you. So here in this recording, we're not only hearing the president of the United States putting pressure on the Georgia secretary of state to overturn the Georgia outcome election from November, after being counted three times, but you do hear him also make the inference of doing this pre- emptive to the Tuesday runoff elections. He does not want to see the same results in the Tuesday runoff elections than what was just experienced in November.
Your thoughts on that?
TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Well, this is once again evidence of Donald Trump's selfishness.
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If he really cared about Tuesday, he would let Brad Raffensperger do his job, and insure that the election was free and fair on Tuesday. Right now, he is casting doubt on the electoral process that Republicans need to retain or hold on to their majority in the Senate. This is just one more example that Trumpism for Donald Trump means Donald Trump and Donald Trump alone.
I wanted to make one other point. In that tape, the president says to Raffensperger and the general counsel of the state of Georgia, at least Raffensperger's general counsel, he puts them on notice, he tells him, you have committed crimes and he puts them on notice. I just want all Americans to think about what it would be like for the president of the United States to call you and tell you that you have committed a crime and he was putting you on notice.
Now, Donald Trump has, you know, 18 days, 17 days left in office. So that threat is not as powerful as it would be last year, but it's still a threat. The fact that the president of the United States is willing to threaten people and use his office to get more votes so that he can overturn a free and fair election is a sign of corruption that we have not seen in the White House, I would argue, since Watergate, and a kind of electoral corruption that we haven't seen since the 19th century. This is a moment of conscience for Republicans.
Brad Raffensperger is a Republican. Mitt Romney is a Republican. Pat Toomey is a Republican. Ben Sasse is a Republican, and all of them are saying the election was fair.
For those Republicans who are not standing up today and saying that what the president is doing is contrary to every fiber of the American being, those Republicans are RINOs. They're the ones who are Republicans in name only.
WHITFIELD: And, John Dean, it's hard to not keep bringing up Watergate because of the parallels. I know you have done a lot in your life beyond being involved in the Watergate investigations. You pled guilty, you know, during your testimony.
But your reflections here on if you were to be in a position of advising the White House, perhaps even advising the chief of staff, Mark Meadows, for the president, what would you be advising at this juncture when there is this very incriminating tape. It's very clear that's the voice of the president of the United States, and he says it quite simply, and quite clearly, what he wants done in overturning the Georgia elections and influencing the upcoming runoff?
DEAN: Fred, one of the sad consequences of Watergate was the number of lawyers who became involved in it. After Watergate, there were concerted efforts to prevent that from happening. Ethics standards were raised. The American Bar Association had a new model code. State exams required for all people who graduated from law school. There was a very concerted effort.
For a long time until Donald Trump got into the White House, those efforts were really very broad and wide. During the Trump presidency, we have seen lawyers increasingly on the wrong side of the law. A friend of mine who was on the House floor during the impeachment or on the Senate floor, said he was stunned at the fact that the president's lawyers were openly lying in front of the chief justice on the floor, with no consequence. No results.
And that's what I'm afraid is going to happen here. We have lawyers involved in this. We have a lawyer, several lawyers apparently, in the Oval Office right now. If I were there, I'm guaranteeing you I would be raising unmitigated hell and thrown out. I wouldn't be there in that meeting.
There are a lot of lawyers in the Senate who are joining this effort to undercut democracy. I don't understand how they hope to keep their license or do it with honor at all in proceeding as they have. So this is a sad day, again, for attorneys in America who are on the wrong side of the law, Fred.
WHITFIELD: Hey, Tim Naftali, before I let you know before we take a short break. I mean, in a rather strange way, do you see that Brad Raffensperger is almost becoming like what the John Dean to Watergate was, and now Brad Raffensperger to this probe of the president's involvement in trying to overturn an election, this recording, this revealing of truth? NAFTALI: Well, I hope John won't mind when I say I compare Brad
Raffensperger to those Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee who voted to impeach Richard Nixon, who felt they had to do what was right, even though they knew back home, there would be a lot of people disappointed in their choice.
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Think of the pressures that Brad Raffensperger must be under. We know that his family has been threatened. And yet he does what he believes is the right thing because he puts his country first. That's the parallel.
And I think that this is one of those moments when we have to look to see which of our elected officials will put our country first. The president wants disorder and chaos on January 6th. He's invited people to loudly demonstrate, which is their right, which is what they're asking for and whether they use violence, but he's asked them to come to Washington.
Why on January 6th? To put pressure on the Congress, and that is extortion, political extortion of a kind we have not seen in this country for 100 years.
WHITFIELD: Wow. This is an amazing chapter but still more to come. Thank you so much, John Dean, Tim Naftali. I appreciate it. We're going to take a short break for now, and we'll be right back.
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WHITFIELD: All right. Getting back to our breaking news. This stunning recording of a phone call between President Trump and Georgia's secretary of state. The president can be heard demanding that Georgia's Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, find, as in fabricate, enough votes to flip the state in his favor from the November elections.
CNN's senior national correspondent Kyung Lah is here with us from Savannah, Georgia.
What has been the reaction from the Democratic who you're following who are crisscrossing the state just ahead of this upcoming runoff election?
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KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's turning a lot of heads here, but we don't have an official response yet from the campaigns yet of Jon Ossoff or Reverend Raphael Warnock. What's scheduled to be happening here is Kamala Harris is scheduled to speak in just a few hours.
This election is two days away. The vice president-elect will be here, Biden will be here tomorrow. Vice President-elect Joe Biden, President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence are scheduled to be here tomorrow as well. So, all of these national figures converging on the state of Georgia, but this election that is just two days away. So, a lot of attention being paid to the state of Georgia, and as far as Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, we don't have an official response from him quite yet.
But I want to turn your attention to this tweet just a few hours ago, about four hours ago, the secretary of state tweeted this, quote: Respectfully, President Trump, what you're saying is not true. The truth will come out.
That tweet was in response to the president's tweet questioning the results here in Georgia. And just a few hours later, Fredricka, then "The Washington Post" audio was released of that phone call between the president and the secretary of state -- Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: All right, yeah, an ominous warning about what was to come.
Kyung Lah, thank you so much, in Savannah, Georgia, which they're doing the warm-up there, getting ready for the Democrats who are campaigning for that Tuesday runoff.
I want to talk now to associate DNC chair, Jaime Harrison.
Good to see you, Jaime Harrison.
So after losing, you know, the Senate race in South Carolina last year, you founded the Dirt Road Super PAC and set your sights out on helping with these Georgia runoffs, and now here you are campaigning in Georgia this weekend.
So, give me your reaction to what you're hearing, this phone call that we believe was made between the president of the United States and the Georgia secretary of state, according to "Washington Post" reporting, the phone call happened yesterday, and now we're hearing the recording of the president trying to pressure the secretary of state to overturn the Georgia election.
JAIME HARRISON, ASSOCIATE CHAIR, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE: Well, Fredricka, it's good seeing you.
Listen, this is criminal. It's illegal. It's treacherous. But, you know, back in 2016, my opponent in the Senate race, Lindsey Graham, said this. He said: If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed, and we will deserve it.
What we are seeing now are the death throes of the Republican Party. And you know, my challenge is to those 12 United States senators, the 140 members of Congress who have stood up and said that they support these types of actions, that means they don't support America. It also means in Georgia, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, and just as early as today, Loeffler was supportive of President Trump's efforts. She said she supports him 100 percent.
Does she support him disenfranchising millions of people in Georgia? Because what he tried to do today was throw out those votes and just find new votes. We don't do that in America. Maybe they do that over in Russia or someplace else, but that does not happen in America.
And folks, good people need to stand up and say enough is enough. We're not going to allow this stuff anymore. I hope we see that type of action. And I hope some of these members look themselves in the mirror and decide that they're not going to stand up and stand behind this.
WHITFIELD: It's very confusing messaging coming from the president because if the president says that the outcome of the Georgia general election, if those votes are invalid, if it is illegal, as he puts it, if all of it needs to be overthrown, then the same would go for the down ballot. It wouldn't just be applicable to the President Trump as well as Joe Biden. But it would be applicable to the incumbent senators who are now in a position in this runoff race.
So, so far, we haven't heard from Loeffler or David Perdue. If they were to say something, what do you believe their comment would be today?
HARRISON: Well, they would spin and spin and spin and find some way to say how much they support this president.
This is what we need. We don't need them to support a president. We need them to support their oath of office, to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, from threats foreign and domestic, because this is a threat to American democracy. There is no equivocation in that. This is a threat to American democracy.
And it makes you really wonder, should we put out a request for every Republican secretary of state in this country, because does the president have these conversations with other secretaries of state? Have there been others that have allowed -- have just gone on with him because of the threat coming from the presidency of the United States?
I mean, this is problematic and we can't just say, oh, well, that's Donald Trump. No.
