Seth Abramson Provides an Excellent Criminal Analysis of the Full Tape

[berni_mccoy]

I’m linking the thread-unroll of this tweet:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1345844414250442753.html

Essentially, Trump exposes his own knowledge of his loss making a legal defense based on the belief he won impossible. Additionally, he makes direct threats and CoS Mark Meadows follows through in one place.

1/ In the full audio, Trump claims—insufficient to overcome the "willful ignorance" doctrine, of course—that "crowd size" proves he won Georgia. He also falsely claims "a couple hundred thousand forged signatures" in Fulton County, falsely claiming the county was never "checked."

2/ He falsely claims "at least 250,000 to 300,000" ballots were "dropped mysteriously into the rolls" in Fulton County, which" (he falsely insists) "hasn't been checked." Raffensperger *unambiguously* tells him all of this is wrong—yet again piercing any Trump defense to a crime.

3/ He confirms he knows the "margin" is 11,779—he cites the specific number multiple times—so when he later says "I want to find 11,780 votes" he's clearly indicating that his concern is to win the election, not election security. And he wants Raffensperger to "find" those votes.

4/ He says to Raffensperger, "you don't need [to 'find'] much of a number [of new votes]" because "in theory the number I lost by was 11,779." This is him *explicitly* directing—later trying to coerce—a government official into finding exactly the number of votes he needs to win.

5/ Much of this is nonsense—almost incomprehensible. He's complaining about a woman in Georgia named "Ruby" who he says is a "scammer and hustler," reviving the "water main break canard" whose usage by the GOP has been repeatedly debunked. He's monologuing like a cartoon villain.

6/ Everything Trump raises was litigated in state/federal court. He's taking cases he lost in their proper fora and trying to resurrect them with a man he feels he has power over and aims to threaten. That he tried the cases in court means—legally—he knows it's where they belong.

7/ Meadows is clear that he's trying to subvert the courts—asking Raffensperger to find a "less litigious" way to resolve Trump's complaints re: the Georgia results. It's an acknowledgment by Meadows that he wants an extrajudicial agreement between GOP executive-branch officials.

8/ At one point Trump says to Raffensperger, "What's the difference between winning the election by 2 votes and winning it by half a million votes?" This is in the context of him pleading with (later trying to coerce) Raffensperger into finding *just enough votes* for him to win.

9/ Trump's criminal intent in the #TrumpTapes is clear, as is the fact that (under the law's objective "reasonable person" standard) he had sufficient information to *know* with "high likelihood" that his claims that the election results in Georgia were somehow wrong was *false*.

10/ Trump claims to Raffensperger, in the #TrumpTapes, that from his "rallies" *alone* he knows that it's "not possible" he lost Georgia. No state/federal prosecutor would deem such statements to survive the "willful ignorance" doctrine—they fail the "reasonable person" standard.

11/ The call isn't the only evidence of criminality—the context surrounding it is likewise key. It's unthinkable that Trump wasn't told by WH counsel what he heard publicly—calls of this sort may be criminal. Trump seemed to acknowledge it by trying to get ahead of the call leak:



12/ Trump has a history of doing this: believing he can escape criminal liability by making public acts he originally conducted in secret—and very much aimed to *keep* secret. His prior use of the NSC Intelligence Collaboration Environment (NICE) server to hide calls is relevant.

13/ Trump repeatedly emphasizes to Raffensperger on the #TrumpTapes that he is giving the Georgia SoS "exact numbers" that he can use to "recalculate" the results so that Trump wins. He wants this elections official to *take data from the Trump campaign*. That's also legally key.

14/ It's under a third of the way into the call that Raffensperger tells Trump—saying this with all the knowledge and authority of his position as Georgia's chief elections official—that "the data that you have is wrong." Trump can't legally persist beyond that point—but he does.

15/ Trump's *own lawyer* says on the call—in Trump's hearing—that "we" (the Trump campaign) "don't have the records" to establish the exact number of "dead people" the campaign says voted.

This is seconds after Trump tells Raffensperger to *use the campaign's fraudulent data*(!)

16/ Trump confirms that he's heard what his lawyer said by *interrupting her* to reply to her statement that, in fact, the number Trump just gave Raffensperger *wasn't*—as Trump had insisted—an "exact number" that Raffensperger could add to Trump's tally.

This is election fraud.

17/ The #TrumpTapes audiotape only gets legally worse for Trump the more you listen to it. There's very, very little exculpatory evidence here. This tape is terrible—and we need some courageous state and federal prosecutors to make this unambiguous to American news-watchers. Now.

18/ When Georgia's chief elections official tells Trump that he will send the president *confirmed evidence* establishing that Trump's claims are *false*, Trump responds, "I don't care." I'm sorry to any other attorneys out there who may be timid, but there's clear mens rea here.

19/ When Trump's attorney says, "we don't know that" (regarding Trump's claim that there were 18,000 fraudulent ballots), Trump responds to her by saying, "It was 18,000 ballots—and each was run three times." Raffensperger had *just told him* a recount confirmed that was *false*.

20/ So we know Trump had been told the truth by both his own attorney *and* by Georgia's chief elections official, yet persisted in trying to threaten the latter to "recalculate" Georgia's tally, anyway—doing so just enough to change the election results.

This is election fraud.

21/ When Georgia SoS Brad Raffensperger tells Trump that he (Trump) is getting inaccurate information about the election in Georgia from social media, Trump replies, "This isn't social media [that I'm getting this information from], it's *Trump* media."

Yes. He really said that.

22/ Raffensperger tells Trump that Georgia law enforcement *and the FBI* have done forensic work to establish that Trump's data is wrong. Trump says law enforcement is either "dishonest or incompetent" and cites "Trump media." If you think the law says this is okay, you're wrong.

23/ You can't commit a federal crime and say, "Well, I had this *deranged, objectively unreasonable belief* that what I was doing was okay—despite *repeatedly* being told otherwise by the authorities."

Or, rather, you can only claim that via an *insanity defense*. Not otherwise.
24/ And now the threats start:

Trump tells Raffensperger, "It's more illegal for you [Raffensperger] than it is for them [the alleged vote-fraud plotters], because you know what they did, and you're not reporting. You know, that's a criminal offense. You can't let that happen."

25/ Trump has called himself "the nation's chief law enforcement officer." He believes himself to be so. And in this call he warns Raffensperger—"I'm notifying you"—that he's putting himself at "risk" of federal prosecution by Trump's DOJ if he doesn't change the election result.

26/ This call is incredible. I've never heard anything like it. The Ukraine call was so impeachable and criminal I wrote a whole book about it and all the crimes that surrounded it (Proof of Corruption, Macmillan, 2020) but this goes even straighter to the heart of our democracy.