Brad Raffensperger is Georgia’s foreign minister and is expected to testify before the January 6 committee before a January 6 subpoena.
As the top official overseeing elections in Georgia, Raffensperger was responsible for running the 2020 election in the state, which Joe Biden won by a narrow margin. In the ensuing months, Raffensperger would come under pressure from then-President Donald Trump to change the outcome of the election, including being told to “find” enough votes to reverse Biden’s victory.
READ MORE: Who are the witnesses testifying at the January 6 hearings?
At the June 16 hearing, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., Said the committee will soon hear testimony from government officials who came under pressure from Trump to help him change the outcome of the 2020 election.
“We will investigate all those threats, and we will investigate the Trump team’s determination to convey a substantially false electoral list from various states to officials of the executive and legislative branches of our government. “We will examine the pressure placed on state legislators to come together to reverse legitimate election results,” Cheney said.
On January 2, 2021, Raffensperger received a personal phone call from Trump claiming he had won Georgia and asked the Secretary of State to “find” thousands of votes that would sway Biden’s victory.
“So, what are we going to do here, people? I only need 11,000 votes. Guys, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break, ”Trump can be heard saying in a recording released later.
Raffensperger told CBS’s 60 Minutes in an interview in January 2021 that he saw Trump’s words as an attempt to “intimidate” him into changing the outcome of the Georgia election.
“I think maybe they were just trying to intimidate me and lead me to something. That would not happen, “he said.
Trump was apparently not the only Republican pushing Raffensperger. Sen. Lindsey Graham, RS.C., asked the Secretary of State if he could “throw” ballots from provinces that had higher-than-average non-matching signatures.
Raffensperger said he did not have the power to do so. Graham denied that he had proposed throwing out legal ballots.
For more information on the key players in the January 6 committee hearings, click here.
