Trump’s Perfect Phone Call

Only in Joe Biden’s America can a former President be subject to criminal charges for competently carrying out his constitutional oath of office.  All Presidents when they are sworn into office are called to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States.”  Principal among those duties is to ensure fair and orderly electoral procedures – especially in a close presidential election in an age of widespread polarization.

When President Trump spoke to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2^nd, 2021, he was simply attempting to get to the bottom of a serious problem.  Georgia is one state notoriously plagued by electoral irregularities and widespread corruption.  These problems have acquired a level of national urgency ever since it was announced that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis would be launching a rogue, criminal investigation into President Trump’s harmless inquiries regarding Georgia’s electoral procedures.

Far from being a criminal act to “subvert democracy,” as the Washington Post and other media organs of the ruling class would have us believe, President Trump’s phone call was what any leader fulfilling his oath and exercising due diligence would be expected to do in a constitutional crisis of that magnitude. Georgia is a historically red state – prior to the illegitimate result of 2020, it had not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton won the state by a slim margin in 1992.  Biden’s alleged 0.23 point “victory” was even smaller than Clinton’s 0.59-point victory over Bush in 1996, itself a product of ruling class subterfuge coupled with a third-party candidate insurgency.

Biden’s asserted margin of victory was a razor thin 11,779 votes – this happened to be the main point of inquiry between Trump, his lawyers, and the Georgia Secretary of State on that auspicious phone call.  One of the interesting things about the call, which is prevalent throughout the hour-long conversation between President Trump, his staff and Raffensperger, et al. is how indifferent and dismissive the latter were to President Trump’s straightforward questions about the probe.

How many voters weren’t on the voter registration rolls?  How many were vacant address voters?  How many voters were possible subjects of well-documented voter scams?  How many were out-of-state voters? How many drop boxes were there throughout the state (at the very least, how many in outcome-determinative counties)?

For each of these simple questions (as well as many others), Raffensperger could not produce a single answer: he demurred and deflected, though spoke with a degree of confidence that would be unbecoming of a papal pronouncement, much less a high-stakes election inquiry.

“Those are not accurate,” Raffensperger swore.

Okay, so what were the real numbers?  Raffensperger never once produced any real, tangible data – indeed, any evidenceat all to at least back up his adamant claim that “the data you [President Trump has] is wrong.”

Even agreement on a baseline figure – was it 11,000 votes? 200,000 votes? More? Less? – Raffensperger remained elusive. At best, he could point to a third-party auditor or some unnamed state legislature, who, apparently, was in possession of specific evidence, which of course was not readily at hand for the phone call.

A reasonable person would expect that in a high-stakes phone call with the President of the United States regarding the outcome of a presidential election, that data would be available – or at the very least, soon be accessible for the President and his team on a timely basis.

This is particularly true given the confidence with which Raffensperger spoke about the results.  Even supposing, per impossibile, that Biden had actually won the state outright in 2020, given how close the final tally was, one would at least expect that a Secretary of State would want to have a comprehensive handle of all the data to ensure the election procedures were adequately followed in his own state. That would be the sensible thing to do.

A 0.23 claimed margin of victory is within any margin of error, no matter how one squares the results.  Raffensperger, a Republican, would probably want to have a sufficient grasp over how that outcome materialized, as one would think it would be crucial information to him, as an elected state official, for gauging his own prospects in a future election.

Moreover, whenever asked about every audit, GBI investigation, and requests for footage of polling stations, Raffensperger always failed to come up with anything specific.

“We’ll send you the link from WSB,” he moaned with palpable disinterest in response to a request for video footage of polling stations subject to widespread, verifiable allegations of late-night ballot dumps.

At one point Raffensperger also claimed that “an auditor proved conclusively that votes were not scanned three times,” as was also widely claimed.

But how the auditor “proved conclusively” those results he did not say.  So too was the methodology the auditor used – or even who this auditor was, let alone its reputation for gauging cases of election fraud.

Indeed, given the unprecedented nature of the 2020 race, one can easily question whether any auditor in the country had the adequate training and skills to combat the level of systemic fraud that irremediably corrupted the final results, particularly in close states like Georgia and Arizona.

Perhaps worst of all, however, was the consent decree signed in the lead-up of the race between Governor Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams.  It is truly mind-blowing that Kemp would effectively sign away all his power over election procedures to Stacey Abrams, who to this very day has not acknowledged the legitimacy or outcome of the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, in which she lost by a narrow margin.

In return, Abrams got everything she asked for in one of the most bald-faced and corrupt power grabs in modern election history: most notably of all, signature verification was taken completely off the table, allowing the Abrams-led Georgia Democratic machine to effectively steal votes with impunity.

President Trump seemed to be the only person on the phone call who understood just how bloody awful that deal was.  He rightly admonished the preposterous decree as “unconstitutional” and a “disaster.” Raffensperger’s General Counsel, Ryan Germany was clearly apathetic to the cataclysmic implications of that agreement.  He tried to feebly correct President Trump by calling it “a settlement agreement” (as if dressing it up euphemistically that way would magically turn it from a horrible to good deal) while refusing to acknowledge the President’s true assertion about its corruption of the democratic process.  Indeed, the very reason they were in this dilemma was in large part traceable to that consent decree.

At its core, the indictment relies upon and perpetuates the bogus, but ubiquitous claim that President Trump knowingly sought to “overturn” an election. There is no reason to doubt, based on a cursory reading of the phone call transcript – and the President’s repeated assertions over the past three years – that he believes he won. He could not have been clearer on the phone call, which he began with the words, “I think it’s pretty clear that we won.”

But it is not just a matter of President Trump’s beliefs, or the beliefs of his base. Consider: the margin in Georgia was among the closest of the contested states, and the irregularities were among the most glaring. Trump was performing his due diligence; it would have been negligent, not only for his campaign but the country, to let things slide. Without free and fair elections, democracy is just a buzzword.

 If anyone is on the wrong side of the law, it is incontrovertibly Fani Willis. For a local prosecutor to charge a federal officer and political opponent – who happens to be a presidential candidate in an approaching election – for the “crime” of vetting such a close and questionable outcome is a breathtaking act of hubris.

A belabored analysis is hardly needed to demonstrate the political nature and chilling implications of the indictment, which, like its dubious twin in D.C., attempts to criminalize plainly constitutional conduct. The ridiculousness of the indictment jumps out from its crude construction: Willis makes use of sensational innuendo about a “criminal enterprise” to paint Trump and his allies as members of the mafia, relying upon familiar TV tropes to influence an impressionable and prejudiced jury and ultimately the viewing public.

The most revealing part of the charging sheet is the first sentence, which lays out a dogmatic assertion masquerading as a statement of empirical science: that Trump “lost” the 2020 election. There is no effort made to demonstrate this supposed fact, to demonstrate criminal intent, or to distinguish criminal from lawful behavior.  Virtually any action Trump took to question or verify the election results, from tweeting to presenting evidence of fraud, is part of a “conspiracy” in Willis’ eyes.  The word “false” is tendentiously peppered throughout to cast a pall over entirely lawful acts, many of which did not even take place in Georgia, and bury the lack of substance under a pile of trivial detail. The President’s allegations of fraud throughout the phone call are, absurdly, treated as further evidence of a criminal “conspiracy,” despite his clearly stated conviction that fraud had occurred.

Willis dates the “conspiracy” to the hazy, early morning hours of Election Night, when President Trump – and Biden – both declared victory.  Like Jack Smith’s indictment in D.C, which is based on the federal prosecutor’s godlike knowledge of what President Trump was thinking, and intended, at the time (even better than the man himself), it is clear that the real crime alleged here is that Trump harbored a “false” belief.

To call this “overreach” would be an understatement. The newly released special grand jury report only emphasizes the Orwellian nature of the investigation. To her credit, even Willis could see that it would have been too much to indict a sitting senator, although, under the sweeping prosecution “theory” Willis puts forward, there is no logical reason not to take this step.

“Pride goeth before destruction,” the ancient Proverb goes. Like Alvin Bragg and Jack Smith, Willis wears ambition on her sleeve, but she has shown by far the least restraint. One imagines this is a function of low intelligence: she clearly miscalculated by forcing Trump to take a gratuitous mugshot, which he turned, brilliantly, to his advantage. It is a close competition, but the Georgia indictment is the most absurd, tyrannical, and most damaging to the entire “case” against President Trump, which has been clearly exposed for what it always was: a baseless witch-hunt.

Paul Ingrassia is a Law Clerk at The McBride Law Firm, PLLC. He graduated from Cornell Law School in 2022 and is on the Board of Advisors of the New York Young Republican Club. He is also a two-time Claremont Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @PaulIngrassia, Substack, Truth Social, and Rumble.

Matt Boose is a contributor at American Greatness and 2020 Publius Fellow. Follow him on Twitter at @matt_boose.