Feb. 8 (UPI) -- Georgia election officials opened an investigation into a January phone call in which former President Donald Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the state's presidential election results.
The investigation will examine the one-hour call between Trump and Raffensperger on Jan. 2, during which Trump called on Raffensperger to "find" enough votes to overturn President Joe Biden's 12,000-vote victory in the state, spokesman Walter Jones confirmed to CNN and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
"The secretary of state's office investigates complaints it recieves. The investigations are fact-finding and administrative in nature. Any further legal efforts will be left to the attorney general," said Jones.
During the call, Trump asserted there was "no way" he lost Georgia, telling Raffensperger that failure to overturn the election would harm Republicans in a pair of runoff Senate races and that Georgia election officials would be held criminally liable if they did not conclude that thousands of ballots in Fulton County were illegally destroyed.
Related
"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," Trump said during the call.
Raffensperger office's general counsel, Ryan Germany, repeatedly told Trump the data his challenge was based on "is wrong" and that voting machines had not been tampered with.
A case document states that the investigation was prompted by a complaint from George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf III, AJC reported.
David Worley, the sole Democrat on Georgia's five-member State Election Board, told CNN he had requested the secretary of state's office open an investigation and will now "wait to get the report before requesting further action."
