Democrats ask FBI to open criminal probe into leaked Trump call
"We ask you to open an immediate criminal investigation into the president," Reps. Ted Lieu and Kathleen Rice said in their letter.
Democratic Representatives Ted Lieu and Kathleen Rice are asking FBI Director Christopher Wray to open a criminal probe on President Donald Trump after his phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger leaked over the weekend.
Lieu of California and Rice of New York wrote Wray a letter Monday believing Trump “engaged in solicitation of, or conspiracy to commit, a number of election crimes.”
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“We ask you to open an immediate criminal investigation into the president,” they said in their letter. “The evidence of election fraud by Mr. Trump is now in broad daylight. Given the more than ample factual predicate, we are making a criminal referral to you to open an investigation into Mr. Trump.”
According to NBC News, Trump pleaded with Raffensperger, in the leaked call obtained by the outlet, to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s win in Georgia and find the 11,780 votes needed to secure his win.
“There’s no way I lost Georgia. There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes,” Trump said during the hour-long call. “The people of Georgia are angry. The people in the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying, ‘you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.'”
Trump has spent the past two months since Biden’s victory attempting to overturn the election, claiming voter fraud and pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the Electoral College certification on Jan. 6.
Read More: House Majority Whip Clyburn says Trump impeachment would be ‘waste of time’
On Twitter, Lieu responded to journalist Ana Cabrera’s tweet quoting Raffensperger telling CBS News that Trump didn’t win the state of Georgia.
“Months later and @realDonaldTrump enablers still can’t identify the alleged voter fraud. Did dead people vote? If so, then show the list 11,780 dead voters in GA. Did machines switch votes? If so, how do you explain the hand recount? Is it Hugo Chavez’s fault? Well, he’s dead,” Lieu said.
On Twitter, Rice criticized Trump for “using his final days to denigrate our democracy. He is actively trying to turn America into a dictatorship. And every Republican supporting him in this effort is complicit.”
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