Raffensperger to Jan. 6 committee: 'I love my country and I will follow the Constitution'

The Jan. 6 committee has released the transcript of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s interview with House investigators.

The U.S. House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol and it spoke with Raffensperger at length about his role in the 2020 Presidential Election, the voting process in Georgia, his now-infamous phone call with then-President Donald Trump, and threats he and his staff received following the election.

In the 148-page transcript, the Secretary of State explained to the committee how the Dominion voting machines were used in the 2020 Presidential Election in Georgia. He refuted claims about vote switching in the machine, denied Venezuelan former dictator Hugo Chavez had anything to do with Dominion, and told them how they came to choose the system.

Raffensperger explains why he thinks President Trump called him

The committee went in-depth with Raffensperger on his side of the hour-long conversation with Trump in a phone call on Jan. 2, 2021. During the call, Trump told Raffensperger, "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."

At one point in the call, Raffensperger said, "President Trump, we’ve had several lawsuits, and we’ve had to respond in court to the lawsuits and the contentions. We don’t agree that you have won."

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and several Trump attorneys were also on the call. Also listening were several staffers from the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office, including its legal counsel.

Raffensperger also revealed to the committee why he believed Trump made the now-infamous hour-long phone call.

"I was on the Neil Cavuto show, and we were talking about the election. And I think -- I shared some data points with FOX News, Neil Cavuto, and I said that there was 20,000 Georgians, Republicans, that voted in the June primary that did not come out and vote in the November election, and I shared that about 19,000 -- Senator David Perdue got 19,000 more votes in the metropolitan area than President Trump, and in the Republican congressional areas the Republican Congressmen got about 33,000 more votes than President Trump. And I believe that President Trump was watching FOX News and he didn't care for my comments on those three data points," Raffensperger was quoted in his response to the committee.

Raffensperger went into detail about voting claims made by Trump and his associates on the call, but in the end he came to one conclusion.

"If you looked at all the numbers, it never added up to anywhere near what could throw the election in doubt in the State of Georgia," he told the committee.

Raffensperger then was asked by the committee what he thought the president was asking him to do.

"To somehow recalculate and somehow pull a rabbit out of my hat and say, ‘We found this.’ There was nothing to find," he told the committee.

Raffensperger talks about Trump’s ‘veiled reference’

Raffensperger added that he did not have the legal authority to change the outcome anyway.

He told the committee he "heard" what the president was saying to him on the call about "some criminality" and defined it to the committee as a "veiled reference." 

"I understood the positional power that the President of the United States of America has, and I heard what he was saying. And so I heard what he said, but I also knew that we followed the law, we followed the Constitution. And he was alleging, really, accusing of us of doing something illegal, something criminal, but I knew we followed the law. It was a hollow threat, but it was, I feel, a threat," Raffensperger said.

"Having people knock on your door and make your life miserable, you know, asking you, you know, the same question 25 times and, you know, somehow twisting you into a pretzel and making your life miserable and making you spend all sorts of money on personal legal defense fees when you've done nothing wrong, you've just done your job, you've followed the law, you've followed the Constitution. And I'm sorry he's disappointed, but he lost the election in Georgia," Raffensperger continued.

Raffensperger said he "had high confidence in the integrity" of Byung J. "BJay" Pak, who at the time was the U.S. Attorney for the Norther District of Georgia. Pak would abruptly resign two days after the Raffensperger-Trump phone call. When Raffensperger was questioned by the committee about Pak’s departure, he could not offer any further insight.

What Raffensperger thought of Trump’s attacks

One particular exchange between Raffensperger and the committee shows what the Secretary of State thought of the president’s call and post-election push to overturn the results.

Committee: "Okay. He continues, 'You're not allowed to harvest, but I understand the Secretary of State, who is really-- he's an enemy of the people, the Secretary of State.' Sounds like he's referring to you there. I'll give you a chance to respond. Are you, in fact, an enemy of the people?"

Raffensperger: "No."

Committee: "Okay. Do you know what he's referring to there?"

Raffensperger: "What part?"

Committee: "The referring to you as being an enemy of the people."

Raffensperger: "I think he, somewhere in life, has this learned behavior that if he attacks people, makes up stuff, and disparages them that he'll get what he wants."

Committee: "Did he, with you?"

Raffensperger: "No."

Committee: "Why not?"

Raffensperger: "Because I love my country, and I will follow the Constitution."

Committee: "What do you think he –"

Raffensperger: "I'll follow the law, and I'll respect every single American who has ever given his life, who has died for this country. And that's what I'll stand for. I'll stand for the truth."

Committee: "What do you think he wanted you to do?"

Raffensperger: "You'd have to interview him and ask what his intentions were."

Jan. 6 committee sends Justice Department criminal referral for Trump

That is something the committee now hopes the former president will be answering soon for a federal prosecutor. The committee’s final report asserts Trump criminally engaged in a "multi-part conspiracy" to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol, concluding an extraordinary 18-month investigation into the former president and the violent insurrection two years ago.

The 814-page report released Thursday comes after the panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, held 10 hearings and obtained more than a million pages of documents. The witnesses — ranging from many of Trump’s closest aides to law enforcement to some of the rioters themselves — detailed what they called former president Trump’s "premeditated" actions in the weeks ahead of the attack and how his wide-ranging efforts to overturn his defeat directly influenced those who brutally pushed past the police and smashed through the windows and doors of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The central cause, according to the report, was "one man" and the committee puts the blame squarely on former president Trump.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

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