Georgia starts investigation into Trump's election interference

Do you have babyhands?

 

pretty straightforward explanation of the alternative interpretation

Yes, Trump was Seeking Another Recount or Investigation in Georgia: A Response to the Washington Post

https://jonathanturley.org/2023/08/...in-georgia-a-response-to-the-washington-post/

excerpt:

For that reason, it is telling that pundits have again made “the call” the focus of this sprawling racketeering theory.

First, a brief reminder of what “the call” is. This was not some back-room, smoke-filled political wheel-and-deal call. It was similar to a settlement discussion between largely antagonistic figures and their opposing teams. State officials and the Trump team were seeing if they could resolve their differences without further litigation. The Trump team wanted a new statewide recount. Trump had lost the state by less than 12,000 votes and was making the case that he could still show that he had won the state. He stated, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”

If you are going to argue for another recount or continued investigation, the obvious argument is that it would not take statistically many votes to make a difference.

I have long disagreed with Trump over his claim of systemic voting fraud. I criticized Trump’s Jan. 6 speech while he was giving it. I supported Vice President Mike Pence and his certification of the election of Joe Biden. I have also regularly criticized Trump when I felt that such criticism was warranted. This does not change my view of whether the call is compelling evidence of a crime.

When the Washington Post first reported this call, I posted a critical tweet based on its initial, erroneous account that Trump had ordered Georgia officials to just “find” the needed votes. I noted that such a demand would be breathtaking and further noted that, even if they did so, it would not stop Biden from winning the presidency.

But a few hours later, the actual transcript of the call was released, showing a strikingly different context for the “find” comment than the Post had reported. Trump was clearly referring to his objective in finding votes and the threshold he needed to meet. That is a predictable argument for a candidate in pushing for a continued investigation.

The Post also ran a misleading story on a separate, related call that left the same false impression. By the initial account, Trump had supposedly told investigator Frances Watson to “find the fraud” and promised that she would be “a national hero.” In fact, Trump had stated that, if the officials did a neutral investigation, “you’re going to find things” including “dishonesty.” The Post had to issue a correction at the top of this second story after the Wall Street Journal found a recording of the call. “The recording revealed that The Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call, based on information provided by a source,” the paper acknowledged.

Phillip Bump’s recent Washington Post column continues to cite the paper’s original, skewed account of that call in order to criticize my commentary on it. Yet even in doing so, Bump inadvertently demonstrates the danger of using this call to prosecute Trump.

As a threshold matter, Bump suggests (and many have repeated) that Trump was not seeking another recount because the recount had already occurred and Trump never uses the word “recount” in the first call. The argument shows the lack of good faith in the criticism. Obviously, Trump was seeking another recount or investigation. We all know that he completed the recount. I wrote out it at the time and considered that recount to end reasonable doubts over the election. Trump, however, was making the case for another investigation or recount. That was the subject of the call. He wanted the state to take another look. That is further born out in the second call when he again asks them to take another look.

Trump’s demand is as simple and obvious as it was wrong. He wanted maintain a challenge the election in the courts and in Congress. Just a couple days after the election, I wrote a column predicted this strategy based on what the Democrats had done in prior years. I called it the Death Star strategy. To make it work, Trump needed to find evidence of fraud and delay or undermine state certifications. A new recount or continued investigation would achieve that purpose.

So, yes, Trump was seeking a recounting or continued investigation. Bump and others continue to push the original flawed account that Trump was ordering them to simply declare the existence of the votes as the only possible interpretation despite that fact that these were antagonistic parties and Trump was pushing them to look at various areas for possible votes. The call can clearly be read different ways by different people. The question is whether it is a crime.
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I am pretty sure the phone call is not the only evidence Trump was trying to overturn the result of an election. It's a pretty damning call - he wasn't looking for a recount, it's clear he was trying to say the result was wrong and the guy should use his power to get the right result.

 

The argument that you can’t know Trump’s intention is a popular defense from the right. Yet here we are today, with Turley, prominent right-leaning scholar and a favorite of the MAGA movement, arguing definitively that he can know Trump's intention, asserting that Trump was just asking for a recount.

Make up your mind.

 

Found @Salvy ’s Twitter

 

Wow, what a response. LOL about the whole Trump IQ thing. Like any IQ gives someone absolute immunity from being held accountable for violating the law. It's easier for people like that to just attack a black woman. What a racist take on the whole thing. My guess is that Fani could probably beat Trump on any academic test.

 

Except that the article ignores other parts of the conversation. That part might be enough by itself but there's so much more. Trump also threatened Raffensperger with legal trouble, and told him what he needed to do. Trump told him to announce that he was holding things up. Then Trump told him to investigate again with the "right people" instead of the wrong people. Trump then referred to the lawyer who was on the call earlier saying that Georgia had already done what was legal and what Trump wanted wouldn't be legal. Trump said that specific lawyer was the "wrong type of people".

Of course the article leaves that part out of it.

So yes, there can be an explanation if only certain things are cherry-picked from the conversation and then twisted. But when the whole conversation is examined with the context, it's pretty clear.

 

Can somebody please escort their auntie back to the mental institution?

 

Yeah, I came here to post a similar sentiment. Anyone who cares can read the hour-long phonecall. It was, um, perfect. (For the record, I have not read the entire thing, but find what I've read very interesting, especially the repetition of disproven claims.)

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7340548-Trump-Transcript-A
(the highlighted segments are fact-checked by the non-profit that posted the transcript.)

It's so huge, that people on all sides can pick their favorite lines and guess what was meant. The Republican secretary of state, Raffenperger, thought he understood the intent pretty well. [deleting further editorializing -- just check out the transcript!]

 

Again . . . the question is what can be demonstrated--and proven--in court. It is not a slam dunk.

 

Words of a mad man. He's completely unhinged.

 

I don't disagree, or at least that's one very big question. I'm not sure it's "the" question for Turley exactly, since he's not representing DJT in court but he's interfacing with a significant following and, in part, a business model (as so many influencers and celebrity talking heads do, including Laurence Tribe, who also preaches to choirs, IMHO).

Anyway, I don't think much of anything is a slam dunk in court.

Mainly I just wanted to share the whole transcript. Pretty interesting, I thought. I'd never looked it up before, though I'd read many people reference, "the entire phone call."

 

So..... should we start call them X-tians? X-ians? Shins?

Clearly the Jesus part of the religious right is whatever you want to make it be.

 

Huh?

 

Just like a mafioso doesn't actually say "kill the guy," there are ways of showing someone is trying to commit a crime without actually outright verbalizing it.

There are a lot of other people involved, and a lot of witness testimony as well that will go into a trial. But a prosecutor isn't likely to go after a case they believe they will lose.

 

There's been a massive culling of Republicans standing up for principles over party. At some point MAGA will take their mob label and run with it.