Lauro says Trump was asking Raffensperger to 'act appropriately' to find Georgia votes
John Lauro, one of Donald Trump's attorneys in the Jan. 6 case, on Sunday defended the former president's now-infamous call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking him to “find” votes in the 2020 election, arguing that Trump was asking Raffensperger to “get to the truth.”
In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Lauro rejected the suggestion that Trump committed any wrongdoing by asking Raffensperger to find votes and maintained that Trump had the right to petition state governments.
“President Trump had every right to ask the Secretary of State, ‘I believe that this election was conducted improperly. There were deficiencies here, I want to see if there are more than 10,000 votes – or whatever the number was – that were counted illegally. And once again, that's core political speech,” Lauro said.
Lauro denied Trump was issuing a threat to Raffensperger when Trump said there were ballots in Georgia that were corrupt and that Raffensperger was committing a crime by not reporting the so-called “corrupt” ballots.
“That wasn't a threat at all. What he was asking for is for Raffensperger to get to the truth. He believed that there were in excess of 10,000 votes that were counted illegally and what he was asking for is the Secretary of State to act appropriately and find these votes that were counted illegally,” Lauro said. “That was an aspirational ask. He's entitled to petition even state government.”
In 2020, a phone call between Trump and Raffensperger was recorded and captured Trump asking Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”
Trump, in fact, lost Georgia and Raffensperger, who served as the top election official in the state of Georgia, assured Trump at the time that each claim of fraud had been investigated and determined to be baseless.