US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on Sunday said President Donald Trump's phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger showed a 'voice of desperation' from the incumbent president, reported The Hill.
According to The Washington Post, Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to "find" enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call.
Addressing the crowd at a campaign event for Georgia Democratic Senate candidates, Harris said: "Have y'all heard about that recorded conversation?...Well, it was yes certainly the voice of desperation, most certainly that... It was a bald-faced, bold abuse of power by the president of the United States."
In her speech, the Vice President-elect also slammed the president for calling the Georgia runoffs 'illegal' and 'invalid', saying that he was suggesting that the people of Georgia were committing a crime, reported The Hill.
"And I raise all this to remind us to ask a question always when we see these powerful people that are trying to make it difficult, trying to make it confusing, trying to invalidate our voice," she added.
In a recording obtained by The Post, Trump "alternately berated" Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking "a big risk."
"The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry... And there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you've recalculated," Trump said in the recording, to which Raffensperger responded, "Well, Mr President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong."
The Georgia Secretary of State debunked the conspiracy theories by Trump and said President-elect Joe Biden's 11,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.
"There's no way I lost Georgia... There's no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes," Trump claimed.
Trump further told the Georgia Secretary of State that failure to act by Tuesday would jeopardise the political fortunes of David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, Georgia's two Republican senators whose fate in that day's runoff elections will determine control of the US Senate.
Trump's call to Raffensperger came as scores of Republicans have pledged to challenge the Electoral College's vote for Biden when Congress convenes for a joint session on Wednesday.
Trump has urged supporters to travel to Washington to protest the outcome, and state and federal officials are already bracing for clashes outside the Capitol.
President-elect Biden's inauguration is scheduled for January 20.
( With inputs from ANI )
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