GA Sec of State Raffensperger Ghosted Lindsey Graham Following Odd Request

• Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger ghosted Senator Lindsey Graham’s November 2020.
• Raffensperger stated that Graham made an odd request during Georgia’s recount in a newly-released transcript.
• Graham suggested that Georgia’s signature verification system should be similar to credit card companies.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad RaffenspergerHe stated that his office never called South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham in November 2020, after he claimed the lawmaker tried inserting himself in Georgia’s recount.

Additional transcriptsThe following were made public Tuesday by the January 6 committee the release of the committee’s 845-page final reportLast week.

The transcript of Raffensperger’s interview with the committee shows that he said that Graham called his office on November 13, 2020 to report that a recount by hand was taking place in Georgia. He also made an unusual request. Raffensperger stated that Graham’s request was unfair and that he gave him the cold shoulder.

Insider requested comment from Raffensperger’s offices but he did not immediately respond.

Raffensperger said that Raffensperger mentioned credit card companies to the committee in an interview on November 30, 2021. “He said that they get millions of signatures every single day and they run that through the machines.”

Raffensperger stated in the transcript that Gabe Sterling was Raffensperger’s staff member and handled the talking portion of the call. Graham tried to pitch an alternative signature matching process to the audit and hand recount. which was underway at the time.

After Raffensperger’s office had been harassed for weeks and Georgia’s ballot workers had suffered weeks of election conspiracies and harassment, Sterling was born in December 2020. received a noose at his home.

Raffensperger maintained that there wasn’t an outright ask for additional votes like Trump requested in Jan 2021, but that the conversation was still ominous. 

Raffensperger stated that Raffensperger was talking about a process for using companies and that he didn’t know where he was going. “I just didn’t want to go where he was — where I thought he might want to go. I thought it best to not call him back.”

Graham’s office did in fact not immediately respond to Insider’s request. 

“And so I told him — we finished up the call, and I said, ‘Well, let me talk to our general counsel,’ who wasn’t on the call, ‘and we’ll get back to you,'” Raffensperger said in his November interview with the committee, of the conversation with Graham. “And we just never got him back.”

Donald Trump asked Raffensperger for his opinion in January 2021. to “find” 11,780 votesRaffensperger stated that Raffensperger was threatened with death if he attempted to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. In an interview with Insider, Raffensperger stated that election misinformation was the greatest threat to democracy in America.