Brad Raffensperger wants apology from David Perdue for death threats on his wife following Trump's recount bid
The Republican Party is witnessing a serious implosion over the results of the 2020 presidential election and one state where the party’s inner rift has become too prominent is Georgia. President Donald Trump and his allies have slammed the Peach State’s GOP leadership over certifying the results that narrowly went to Joe Biden.
Now, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has slammed one of the poll-bound incumbent senators, David Perdue, saying he is yet to receive an apology from the latter for the death threats his wife received after Perdue asked the former to step down in November.
Speaking on Fox News on Monday, December 4, Raffensperger countered Perdue when asked about the senator calling him “disgusting” after a call between him and Trump was leaked. The controversial call was obtained by the Washington Post in which the secretary of state was pressured to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Biden won the state by less than 12,000 votes and became the first Democrat to bag the red state after 28 years.
Raffensperger denied that he recorded the phone call with Trump that got leaked and only made notes while speaking with the president from his home. Perdue, on the other hand, claimed that the leaked phone call would have little impact on the outcome of the Senate runoffs.
Trump 'has bad data', says Raffensperger
Raffensperger was not afraid to take on the president and said that the POTUS “is just plain wrong” about his allegations of mass voter fraud in the Peach State and “has bad data” to back the claims and conspiracy theories that came up during their hour-long call during the weekend. Trump later slammed Raffensperger saying he was clueless about the voter fraud.
During the call, Trump said it was actually he who won Georgia and wanted the secretary of state to recalculate the votes because he wanted to find “11,780 votes”.
On Monday, January 4, Raffensperger said in an interview with ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ that Trump did most of the talking during the call but he made sure to put across the point that the president’s data was wrong.
“He had hundreds and hundreds of people he said that were dead that voted. We found two, that's an example of just – he has bad data,” Raffensperger said. When the host of the show, George Stephanopoulos, asked Raffensperger whether he felt pressure when Trump asked him to “find” the votes, the latter said “no” and that they only had to follow the process and law. "Truth matters," he said.
'Senator Perdue owes my wife an apology'
Speaking about Perdue who took on Jon Ossoff in one of the Senate election runoffs on Monday, January 4, along with Kelly Loeffler (she took on Raphael Warnock), Raffensperger said: “Senator Perdue still owes my wife an apology for all the death threats she got after he asked for my resignation. “I have not heard one peep from that man since. If he wants to call me, face to face, man to man, I'll talk to him, off the record. But he hasn't done that.”
Perdue and Loeffler asked Raffensperger to quit from the post after the presidential election on November 3 as the incumbent said he wasn’t putting in enough efforts to combat voter fraud and the Democrats’ alleged cheating in the state. The duo, facing a critical election, issued a joint statement just days after the election seeking Raffensperger’s resignation.
The 65-year-old Raffensperger dismissed the senators’ calls as “laughable” immediately. The man, who is serving since January 2019, said: “Let me start by saying that is not going to happen.”
He alleged that in the middle of November, his wife Tricia started receiving threatening text messages about Georgia’s recount of votes which was then underway. He said the threats were mostly originating from the GOP, his own party. While one of those messages read: “You better not botch this recount. Your life depends on it”, another read: “Your husband deserves to face a firing squad”.
The secretary of state also told NBC News on Monday that he considered it to be inappropriate to talk to Trump about the 2020 results and the conversation Trump had with him and other officials could lead to a conflict-of-interest scenario and eventually a probe.