Ray Bradbury as prophet: Risk of Fahrenheit 451 in real time

 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/30/books/book-ban-us-schools.html?referringSource=articleShare

“I didn’t know that was something you could do, file a criminal complaint against a book,” said George Johnson, author of the memoir “All Boys Aren’t Blue.”Credit...Bethany Mollenkof, for The New York Times.

Book Ban Efforts Spread Across the U.S.- An echo report published in The New York Times, with Maine Writer opinion commentary.

Maine Writer asks if Americans should be reading about how to memorize books?  

Challenges to books about sexual and racial identity are nothing new in American schools, but the tactics and politicization are.

Fahrenheit 451- This prophetic novel by Ray Bradbury, first written and published in the early 1950s, is set in a future where books, and the ideas they represent and manifest, are burned to prevent disruptions in society. Its central character, Guy Montag, is a fireman responsible to that society for ensuring those burnings takes place, but an unexpected chain of events leads him to question both himself and the society in which he lives. Through its intense, action-packed telling of Montag's story, the narrative explores themes relating to the need for and power of independent thought, humanity's capacity for self-limitation, and the value of courage.

The novel begins with a graphic description of the pleasure and satisfaction experienced by Montag as he burns a house and the collection of books it once concealed. Later, as he walks home, he encounters a beautiful young woman who disturbs him with probing questions about happiness. Over the next week, Montag has regular encounters her, causing him to question who he is and what he does. At the end of that week, he is disturbed to discover that the woman, along with the rest of her family, has disappeared.

Montag's disquiet increases when he participates in a burning at the home of an elderly woman who, much to the surprise of Montag and his fellow firemen, watches calmly as they douse her home and precious books with kerosene and then lights a match, setting herself on fire as well. During the confusion of this burning, Montag conceals a book under his coat, later concealing it at home as well.

After a troubled night's sleep that results in him absenting himself from work, Montag is visited by his captain who, while reminding him that books are dangerous, implies that any fireman who finds himself curious about what books are actually like can have one for as long as twenty four hours, but it must eventually be burned. Meanwhile, Montag's wife discovers the concealed book, which narration reveals is a Bible. Montag later confesses that he has a concealed collection of books, eventually convincing his wife (who is worried that their home will be destroyed if anyone finds out what they've got) to read with him. She is unable, or unwilling, to get any meaning out of the books, eventually returning her attention to the house's expensive, addictive entertainment system. Meanwhile, Montag desperately memorizes verses from the Bible and also makes contact with a man with whom he had once had an unguarded conversation about books, the elderly Professor Faber. Together, the two men begin to plan a subversive attack on the book-burning system.

When he gets home after his conversation with Faber, Montag discovers that his wife has invited friends to join her for an evening of entertainment. Montag's frustration with the superficiality and violence of that entertainment leads him to confront his wife and her friends with a reading of poetry. This causes upset in the friends, who both leave. At the firehall that night, a potential argument over the value of books and the thoughts they contain (an argument which Beatty fuels with strings of literary quotes) is interrupted by an alarm which, Montag is dismayed to learn, has been called in by his wife. After she flees the scene (and her marriage), and after being forced to torch his own home, Montag's anger, frustration and fear lead him to turn his flamethrower onto his captain, who is incinerated. Montag then flees himself, making his way to Professor Faber's, where the two men plot his escape.

Pursued by authorities desperate to demonstrate that his crime of independent thinking cannot and will not go unpunished, Montag flees to the countryside, where he eventually evades capture and finds himself drawn into a group of learned men, themselves escapees from society and each of who carries, in his memory, the text of an important piece of writing. As the men compare notes and dream of the future, the city from which Montag just escaped is destroyed by airborne bombers, fighting a war that has been looming over the action throughout the narrative. As he watches the dust settle from the bombing raid, Montag recalls the Bible verses he memorized and vows to one day live by them.

New York Times echo report By Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter, Jan. 30, 2022

In Wyoming, a county prosecutor’s office considered charges against library employees for stocking books like “Sex Is a Funny Word” and “This Book Is Gay.”

In Oklahoma, a bill was introduced in the State Senate that would prohibit public school libraries from keeping books on hand that focus on sexual activity, sexual identity or gender identity. (Maine Writer: HELLO? Like, Catcher in the Rye?)

In Tennessee, the McMinn County Board of Education voted to remove the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel “Maus” from an eighth-grade module on the Holocaust because of nudity and curse words.

Parents, activists, school board officials and lawmakers around the country are challenging books at a pace not seen in decades. The American Library Association said in a preliminary report that it received an “unprecedented” 330 reports of book challenges, each of which can include multiple books, last fall.

Mukilteo, Washington schools removed the Pulitzer-prize winning novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" from its required reading list.

“It’s a pretty startling phenomenon here in the United States to see book bans back in style, to see efforts to press criminal charges against school librarians,” said Suzanne Nossel, the chief executive of the free-speech organization PEN America, even if efforts to press charges have so far failed.

Such challenges have long been a staple of school board meetings, but it isn’t just their frequency that has changed, according to educators, librarians and free-speech advocates — it is also the tactics behind them and the venues where they play out. 

Conservative groups in particular, fueled by social media, are now pushing the challenges into statehouses, law enforcement and political races.

“The politicalization of the topic is what's different than what I’ve seen in the past,” said Britten Follett, the chief executive of content at Follett School Solutions, one of the country’s largest providers of books to K-12 schools. “It’s being driven by legislation, it’s being driven by politicians aligning with one side or the other. And in the end, the librarian, teacher or educator is getting caught in the middle.”

Among the most frequent targets are books about race, gender and sexuality, like George M. Johnson’s “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” Jonathan Evison’s “Lawn Boy,” Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer” and Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.”

Several books are drawing fire repeatedly in different parts of the country — “All Boys Aren’t Blue” has been targeted for removal in at least 14 states — in part because objections that have surfaced in recent months often originate online. Many parents have seen Google docs or spreadsheets of contentious titles posted on Facebook by local chapters of organizations such as Moms for Liberty. From there, librarians say, parents ask their schools if those books are available to their children.

“If you look at the lists of books being targeted, it’s so broad,” Ms. Nossel said. Some groups, she noted, have essentially weaponized book lists meant to promote more diverse reading material, taking those lists and then pushing for all the included titles to be banned.

The advocacy group No Left Turn in Education maintains lists of books it says are “used to spread radical and racist ideologies to students,” including Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Those who are demanding certain books be removed insist this is an issue of parental rights and choice, that all parents should be free to direct the upbringing of their own children.

Others say prohibiting these titles altogether violates the rights of other parents and the rights of children who believe access to these books is important. Many school libraries already have mechanisms in place to stop individual students from checking out books of which their parents disapprove.

The author Laurie Halse Anderson, whose young adult books have frequently been challenged, said that pulling titles that deal with difficult subjects can make it harder for students to discuss issues like racism and sexual assault.

“By attacking these books, by attacking the authors, by attacking the subject matter, what they are doing is removing the possibility for conversation,” she said. “You are laying the groundwork for increasing bullying, disrespect, violence and attacks.”

Tiffany Justice, a former school board member in Indian River County, Fla., and a founder of Moms for Liberty, said that parents should not be vilified for asking if a book is appropriate. Some of the books being challenged involve sexual activity, including oral sex and anal sex, she said, and children are not ready for that kind of material.

“There are different stages of development of sexuality in our lives, and when that’s disrupted, it can have horrible long-term effects,” she said.

“The bottom line is if parents are concerned about something, politicians need to pay attention,” Ms. Justice added. “2022 will be a year of the parent at the ballot box.”

Christopher M. Finan, the executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship, said he has not seen this level of challenges since the 1980s, when a similarly energized conservative base embraced the issue. This time, however, that energy is colliding with an effort to publish and circulate more diverse books, as well as social media, which can amplify complaints about certain titles.

“It’s this confluence of tensions that have always existed over what’s the proper thing to teach kids,” Mr. Finan said.

Tobacco Road is a novel by acclaimed writer Erskine Caldwell. Tobacco Road is the story of one family's inability to move on when life does not go as planned. (Maine Writer- At the Dundalk Maryland public library, when I was in school, during the 1960s, this book was hidden behind the librarians' desk, because a patron had to be over 21 years old to check it out on loan!

“These same issues are really coming alive in a new social environment,” he added, “and it’s a mess. It’s a real mess.”

Book challenges aren’t just coming from the right: “Of Mice and Men” and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” for example, have been challenged over the years for how they address race, and both were among the library association’s 10 most-challenged books in 2020.

In the Mukilteo School District in Washington State, the school board voted to remove “To Kill a Mockingbird” — voted the best book of the past 125 years in a survey of readers conducted by The New York Times Book Review — from the ninth-grade curriculum at the request of staff members! Their objections included arguments that the novel marginalized characters of color, celebrated “white saviorhood” and used racial slurs dozens of times without addressing their derogatory nature.

While the book is no longer a requirement, it remains on the district’s list of approved novels, and teachers can still choose to assign it if they wish.

In other instances, efforts to ban books are more sweeping, as parents and organizations aim to have them removed from libraries, cutting off access for everyone. Perhaps no book has been targeted more vigorously than “The 1619 Project,” a best seller about slavery in America that has drawn wide support among many historians and Black leaders and which arose from the 2019 special issue of The New York Times Magazine. It has been named explicitly in proposed legislation.

Political leaders on the right have seized on the controversies over books. The newly elected governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, rallied his supporters by framing book bans as an issue of parental control and highlighted the issue in a campaign ad featuring a mother who wanted Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” to be removed from her son’s high school curriculum.

In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott demanded that the state’s education agency “investigate any criminal activity in our public schools involving the availability of pornography,” a move that librarians in the state fear could make them targets of criminal complaints. The governor of South Carolina asked the state’s superintendent of education and its law enforcement division to investigate the presence of “obscene and pornographic” materials in its public schools, offering “Gender Queer” as an example.

The mayor of Ridgeland, Miss., recently withheld funding from the Madison County Library System, saying he would not release the money until books with L.G.B.T.Q. themes were removed, according to the library system’s executive director.

George M. Johnson, the author of “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” a memoir about growing up Black and queer, was stunned in November to learn that a school board member in Flagler County, Fla., had filed a complaint with the sheriff’s department against the book. Written for readers aged 14 and older, it includes scenes that depict oral and anal sex and sexual assault.

“I didn’t know that was something you could do, file a criminal complaint against a book,” Johnson said in an interview. The complaint was dismissed by the sheriff’s office, but the book was subsequently removed from school libraries while it was reviewed by a committee.

At a school board meeting where the book was debated, a group of students protested the ban and distributed free copies, while counter protesters assailed it as pornography and occasionally screamed obscenities and anti-gay slurs, according to a student who organized the protest and posted video footage of the event.

Johnson made a video appearance at the meeting and argued that the memoir contained valuable lessons about consent and that it highlighted difficult issues that teenagers are likely to encounter in their lives.

A district committee reviewed the book and determined it was “appropriate for use” in high school libraries, but the decision was overruled by the county superintendent, who told the school board that “All Boys Aren’t Blue” would be kept out of libraries, while new policies are created to allow parents to have more control over which books their children can access. Several other young adult titles that had been challenged and removed were restored.

Jack Petocz, a 17-year-old student at Flagler Palm Coast High School who organized the protest against the book ban, said that removing books about L.G.B.T.Q. characters and books about racism was discriminatory, and harmful to students who may already feel that they are in the minority and that their experiences are rarely represented in literature.

“As a gay student myself, those books are so critical for youth, for feeling there are resources for them,” he said, noting that books that portray heterosexual romances are rarely challenged. “I felt it was very discriminatory.”

So far, efforts to bring criminal charges against librarians and educators have largely faltered, as law enforcement officials in Florida, Wyoming and elsewhere have found no basis for criminal investigations. And courts have generally taken the position that libraries should not remove books from circulation.

Nonetheless, librarians say that just the threat of having to defend against charges is enough to get many educators to censor themselves by not stocking the books to begin with. Even just the public spectacle of an accusation can be enough.

“It will certainly have a chilling effect,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s office for intellectual freedom. “You live in a community where you’ve been for 28 years, and all of a sudden you might be charged with the crime of pandering obscenity. And you’d hoped to stay in that community forever.”

She said that aggressively policing books for inappropriate content and banning titles could limit students’ exposure to great literature, including towering canonical works.

“If you focus on five passages, you’ve got obscenity,” Ms. Caldwell-Stone said. “If you broaden your view and read the work as a whole, you’ve got Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved.’”

Elizabeth A. Harris writes about books and publishing for The New York Times. @Liz_A_Harris

Alexandra Alter writes about publishing and the literary world. Before joining The Times in 2014, she covered books and culture for The Wall Street Journal. Prior to that, she reported on religion, and the occasional hurricane, for The Miami Herald. @xanalter

Immigration is American history!

Echo opinion published in the Las Vegas Sun: 

Immigration reform is the right thing to do
By Selena Torres

Sunday, Jan. 30, 2022

Nevada is a state where almost everyone is from somewhere else — it is a state of opportunity both built by immigrants and fueled by a largely immigrant labor force. In fact, the Census Bureau's Racial and Ethnic Diversity Index puts Nevada as the third most diverse state in the country, behind only California and Hawaii. 

According to the Census Bureau, there is a 68.8% chance that two Nevadans chosen at random will be from different racial and ethnic groups.Aug 16, 2021

According to the American Immigration Council, 1 in 5 Nevadans are immigrants, and 1 in 6 “native-born” U.S. citizens have immigrant parents. These Nevadans are our neighbors, friends, colleagues, nurses, or maybe your child’s teacher.

For years, activists, Dreamers (DACA) and advocacy groups have been fighting to create a pathway to citizenship for recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and other undocumented immigrants. While President Joe Biden’s plan to add immigration into his Build Back Better bill is currently not looking like a promising vehicle, there are still opportunities to pass desperately needed protections for undocumented immigrants who have lived in our country for an average of 20 years.

Despite some disappointing setbacks, including rulings made by the Senate parliamentarian, expanding protections for undocumented immigrants in Nevada and across the country must be a priority for our leaders in the Senate. They should explore the various options available in order to secure protections for undocumented immigrants through this legislation.

As our late former senator, Harry Reid, told The Hill in October, “Americans want legal status for immigrants who have worked hard, paid taxes and made their lives in the United States.”

He’s right. Data shows that the immigration provisions in the Build Back Better Act are supported by 75% of Americans overall, including 88% of Democrats, 81% of independents and 58% of Republicans.

As an assemblywoman, it is my duty to advocate for all those in my community who need it, and I stand with the Dreamers, Temporary Protective Status holders and other undocumented immigrants who have stood with us in difficult times.

It is well past time for us all to stand with them. Nevadans deserve better, Americans deserve better.

I know Nevada Sens. Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto care about solving this issue. We are lucky to have leaders who listen to us, and I urge them to push their colleagues to take any and all steps necessary to ensure that this gets done now.

We are tired of empty promises when there are lives and livelihoods at stake, vulnerable to deportation and separation — when the chance to relieve them of their worries is here. 

Congress must pass robust immigration relief, whether in the Build Back Better Act or in any vehicle necessary to deliver for millions of American families and help keep our economy recovering. 

As the late Harry Reid said about immigration relief, “the time is now.”

Assemblywoman Selena Torres
Party: Democratic

Selena Torres was elected to the Nevada Assembly in 2018, and re-elected in 2020. She serves District 3.

Roman Catholics must look to the human condition and avoid culture wars

Echo letter to the editor published in the Tulsa World newspaper, in Oklahoma!

Maine Writer- As a registered nurse and a practicing Roman
Catholic woman, I support this echo opinion letter written by Deryl Pais, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“Morality is seldom a safe guide for human conduct.”
― Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop.

So, Deryl Pais writes, "I was baptized a Catholic on fifth day after I was born. My three uncles were priests, and two aunts were nuns. 

I was the altar boy of the diocese of Mangalore in the year 1955.

"I am appealing to the good Catholics of Oklahoma, if you want to reduce the abortions, then we need to reduce unwanted pregnancies.

"One way is through promoting abstinence from sex. But even the Catholic clergy have found this not working. Other one is through promoting birth control. Catholic doctrine forbids that.

"During the Zika outbreak in Brazil, Pope Francis suggested women to delay pregnancies, for which the Catholic Bishops of America accused him of promoting birth control.

"One more item I want appeal to my Catholic family, is that of gays and lesbians. They have a right for some happiness.

"Again, I recall a meeting the Pope had with a man from Portugal when he confessed of being gay. You were born that way; pray and be good to others. These are human issues, not political. Politicians are using these issues with no concern for human suffering."

Maine Writer post script:  Amen!

January 6 intends to uncover truth about the Trump inspired insurrection

A powerful echo opinion letter echo published in the Idaho State Journal!  From Pocatello, Idaho.

January 6 - Certainly NOT ordinary Capitol tourists #theBigLie

Idaho Second District Rep. Mike Simpson made some comments in the ISJ (1-9-22) which is difficult for some of us to swallow. 

His comment as to how could such a disturbing event take place at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, absolutely “floored” anybody with the ability to reason, reads anything other than social media, watches anything other than (fake!) Fox News, focuses on the truth and refutes the “big lie”. 

January 6th insurrectionists

To find the honest answer, Rep. Simpson needs to look no further than the White House occupant at the time (i.e., Trump) who made every effort to overturn a well-documented, essentially fraud free and fair election. With regard to Rep. Simpson’s reference to HR 3233, the sources of, and backgrounds of the committee members is irrelevant. The republican party would have made every effort to discourage ANY republican from being on the committee and sanction and berate any of those who chose to be members (Cheney and Kinzinger). Keeping any republicans off the committee, to the maximum extent possible, enables them to claim that it was strictly a partisan effort by the democrats out to “get” Trump. WRONG! 

He goes on to say that Pelosi and the democrats are strictly trying to politicize the insurrection, and Rep. Simpson, using some of mentor Trump’s favorite words, says they are on a “witch hunt”. NOT TRUE! Instead, the intent of the January 6th committee is to get to the bottom of the INSURRECTION, find the “unvarnished truth” wherever it may lead and prosecute ALL individuals that had ANY part in it so it will not happen again. Rep. Simpson also tries to shift attention away from the Trump inspired insurrection by essentially saying that the insurrection was all the fault of security resources failing to accurately predict the events which transpired on January 6 and take the appropriate action! Total hogwash! 

Until the Republicans find the courage, honor and honesty to do what is right for the United State of American and distance themselves from Trump instead of supporting him and his thousands of lies and autocratic philosophy, they will continue to create more divisiveness in the country. The Republican goal is to have one, and only one political party controlling the future of America. They have taken legislative action in states they control to suppress votes that don’t support their philosophy. 

Instead, they are doing everything possible in Congress to prevent the passage of nationwide voter rights legislation! Such legislation would create a “level playing field”. That, and the truth, are something the right wing Republicans cannot accept. 

It’s going to take time for the right wing Republican party to “right” itself from the severe damage caused by Trump, his lies and adverse and anti-democratic influence! Much of the above is reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s. The republican party is in desperate need of NEW LEADERSHIP which can get its priorities straight, putting the fate of America, FIRST, instead of continuing to support the “big lie” and it’s creator!

From Steve Bevan in Pocatello, Idaho

https://www.idahostatejournal.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/simpsons-opinion-on-jan-6-hard-to-swallow/article_02690563-c90d-5bd4-80f0-fcb98cdb5c95.html

Mass shootings in America- echo opinion

Opinion Letter echo: Only in America- They commit atrocities because they can: 

https://www.southbendtribune.com/story/opinion/2022/01/08/america-gunman-can-fire-random-public-place/9092172002/

Only in the United States can an unchecked narcissist acquire a weapon of mass destruction — usually, a high-powered gun — with relative ease and virtually no legal resistance. 

Only in the United States can said narcissist take this easily acquired weapon of mass destruction and walk into a mall, restaurant, movie theater, nightclub or any other public place and start firing at random at people — a prospective slew of victims.

When this happens, news sources, law enforcement and psychologists recite the usual question: What was the motive?

Mass shootings are such a common occurrence in the United States that very few people even bat an eye when they hear of one. 

Sadly, the most common response is “We pray for their family” or “We pray for the victims and their families,” and little or nothing of substance then occurs. And, of course, this passive reaction enables another shooting on top of another shooting, which is followed by yet another shooting.

The motive should be clear to anyone because it is always the same: They commit these atrocities because they can.

Michael Snyder, Bremen- South Bend Tribune in South Bend, Indiana

Voting rights and Republican hypocrisy

"The fact that not one Republican senator voted for the voting-rights act, speaks volumes", opinion by John Mandeville published in the Barre Montpelier Times Argus newspaper, in Vermont.

52 Senators allow filibuster to block Freedom to Vote Act, despite a majority of voters supporting the bill.

Majority of American voters, both Republicans and Democrats, support the Freedom to Vote Act and further voter rights legislation.
This is the endgame of what the Republicans have been trying to do ever since it became clear that demographics were against them and unfettered voting would ultimately lead to their demise at the ballot box.

You can't stop racial demographics, but you can change the ability to vote. The first thing they did was getting the Supreme Court to declare the voting rights act passed in the 1960s was no longer needed, so they threw it out.

By making all the absurd and completely debunked claims about voting fraud in the last election and convincing voters that it really happened, backstopped by Trump and his sycophants' never-ending litany that he won and Biden's win was illegitimate, they made it all plausible to the great unwashed.

Now, refusing as a solid block to approve the new voting rights act, they have sealed the deal. Republicans have been playing the long game ever since the late-1960s and Nixon's Southern Strategy, so that the Democrats never even see this stuff coming. 

Now that they even have the progressives, and independents blaming Biden for not being able to pull off new voting rights and BBB, they have not only hit a home run but a (politically gruesome) grand slam one, at that!

John Mandeville, East Hardwick, Vermont

P. S. Maine Writer- Republicans have always supported voting rights in the past.  What has changed their support, now morphed into hypocrisy? Makes no sense but, somehow, just reinforces the underlying sense that racism is now rooted in the Republican establishment.

January 6th insurrectionists are domestic terrorists!

 What has happened to America?  Echo opinion letter published in the Helena, Montana in the Independent Record.

https://helenair.com/opinion/letters/what-has-happened-to-america/article_6e5a7827-1a64-5846-8d97-972312913176.html

January 6th tourists ! ??  

The lies have become the truth and the truth doesn't seem to matter. One year has passed from the Jan. 6th, 2021, insurrection, an attack on the Capitol of the United States. According to some it was just a group of tourists visiting the Capitol in Washington. 

 OMG! I wonder if this same group believes that on Dec. 7th, a group of tourists from Japan just visited Hawaii but just happened to drop a few bombs and killed 2,403 Americans.

What has happened to America? Are we doomed? We pay the politician big money to defend, protect and support America. But it seems the name of the game in Washington is hate and get even.

The two political parties don't work together. The Republicans don't seem to be working for America. In fact, Republicans oppose just about everything. Moreover, Republicans never come up with new and progressive ideas.

Will we ever recover? Will we ever get back to the good old days? Yes, did we ever have the good days in the first place?

Is democracy going to survive?

LaVon D. Brillhart, in Dillon, Montana   

Ramblings of a mentally ill person- The Former Guy transcript

Here’s the full transcript and audio of the call between Trump and Brad Raffensperger-  #LockTrumpUp

What really fries my &*#%!ss is the reality that no citizen of the United States could get away with such a threat to a public election official. So, why is #TFG able to get away with this illegal activity?

Reading this transcript is like putting your mind in a proverbial centrifuge! I am impressed by how Secretary of State Raffensperger was able to stay focused.  Indeed, maybe the purpose of Trump's incoherent call was to create crazy responses from Raffensperger, but, instead, the Georgia Secretary of State was amazingly cool and confident.

By Amy Gardner and Paulina Firozi
January 5, 2021- Echo report published in The Washington Post

About 3 p.m. Saturday, the former President Trump held an hour-long call with Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, in which he repeatedly urged him to alter the outcome of the presidential vote in the state. He was joined on the call by White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and several lawyers, including longtime conservative attorney Cleta Mitchell and Georgia-based attorney Kurt Hilbert. Raffensperger was joined by his office’s general counsel, Ryan Germany, and Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs.

The Washington Post obtained a copy of a recording of the call. This transcript has been edited to remove the name of an individual about whom Trump makes unsubstantiated claims.

Meadows: Okay. Alright. Mr. President, everyone is on the line. This is Mark Meadows, the chief of staff. Just so we all are aware. 

On the line is secretary of state and two other individuals. Jordan and Mr. Germany with him. You also have the attorneys that represent the president, Kurt and Alex and Cleta Mitchell — who is not the attorney of record but has been involved — myself and then the president. So Mr. President, I’ll turn it over to you.

Trump: Okay, thank you very much. Hello Brad and Ryan and everybody. We appreciate the time and the call. So we’ve spent a lot of time on this, and if we could just go over some of the numbers, I think it’s pretty clear that we won. We won very substantially in Georgia. You even see it by rally size, frankly. We’d be getting 25-30,000 people a rally, and the competition would get less than 100 people. And it never made sense.

But, we have a number of things. We have at least 2 or 3 — anywhere from 250 to 300,000 ballots were dropped mysteriously into the rolls. Much of that had to do with Fulton County, which hasn’t been checked. We think that if you check the signatures — a real check of the signatures going back in Fulton County — you’ll find at least a couple of hundred thousand of forged signatures of people who have been forged. And we are quite sure that’s going to happen.

Another tremendous number. We’re going to have an accurate number over the next two days with certified accountants. But an accurate number will be given, but it’s in the 50s of thousands — and that’s people that went to vote and they were told they can’t vote because they’ve already been voted for. And it’s a very sad thing. They walked out complaining. But the number’s large. We’ll have it for you. But it’s much more than the number of 11,779 that’s — the current margin is only 11,779. Brad, I think you agree with that, right? That’s something I think everyone — at least that’s a number that everyone agrees on.

But, that’s the difference in the votes. But, we’ve had hundreds of thousands of ballots that we’re able to actually — we’ll get you a pretty accurate number. You don’t need much of a number because the number that in theory I lost by, the margin would be 11,779. But you also have a substantial numbers of people, thousands and thousands, who went to the voting place on November 3, were told they couldn’t vote, were told they couldn’t vote because a ballot had been put on their name. And you know that’s very, very, very, very sad.

We had, I believe it’s about 4,502 voters who voted but who weren’t on the voter registration list, so it’s 4,502 who voted, but they weren’t on the voter registration roll, which they had to be. 

You had 18,325 vacant address voters. The address was vacant, and they’re not allowed to be counted. That’s 18,325.

Smaller number — you had 904 who only voted where they had just a P.O. — a post office box number — and they had a post office box number, and that’s not allowed. We had at least 18,000 — that’s on tape, we had them counted very painstakingly — 18,000 voters having to do with [name]. She’s a vote scammer, a professional vote scammer and hustler [name]. That was the tape that’s been shown all over the world that makes everybody look bad, you, me and everybody else.

Where they got — number one they said very clearly and it’s been reported that they said there was a major water main break. Everybody fled the area. And then they came back, [name] and her daughter and a few people. There were no Republican poll watchers. Actually, there were no Democrat poll watchers, I guess they were them. But there were no Democrats, either, and there was no law enforcement. Late in the morning, early in the morning, they went to the table with the black robe and the black shield, and they pulled out the votes. Those votes were put there a number of hours before — the table was put there — I think it was, Brad, you would know, it was probably eight hours or seven hours before, and then it was stuffed with votes.

They weren’t in an official voter box; they were in what looked to be suitcases or trunks, suitcases, but they weren’t in voter boxes. The minimum number it could be because we watched it, and they watched it certified in slow motion instant replay if you can believe it, but slow motion, and it was magnified many times over, and the minimum it was 18,000 ballots, all for Biden.

You had out-of-state voters. They voted in Georgia, but they were from out of state, of 4,925. You had absentee ballots sent to vacant, they were absentee ballots sent to vacant addresses. They had nothing on them about addresses, that’s 2,326.

And you had drop boxes, which is very bad. You had drop boxes that were picked up. We have photographs, and we have affidavits from many people.

I don’t know if you saw the hearings, but you have drop boxes where the box was picked up but not delivered for three days. So all sorts of things could have happened to that box, including, you know, putting in the votes that you wanted. So there were many infractions, and the bottom line is, many, many times the 11,779 margin that they said we lost by — we had vast, I mean the state is in turmoil over this.

And I know you would like to get to the bottom of it, although I saw you on television today, and you said that you found nothing wrong. I mean, you know, and I didn’t lose the state, Brad. People have been saying that it was the highest vote ever. There was no way. A lot of the political people said that there’s no way they beat me. And they beat me. They beat me in the . . . As you know, every single state, we won every state. We won every statehouse in the country. We held the Senate, which is shocking to people, although we’ll see what happens tomorrow or in a few days.

And we won the House, but we won every single statehouse, and we won Congress, which was supposed to lose 15 seats, and they gained, I think 16 or 17 or something. I think there’s a now difference of five. There was supposed to be a difference substantially more. But politicians in every state, but politicians in Georgia have given affidavits and are going to that, that there was no way that they beat me in the election, that the people came out, in fact, they were expecting to lose, and then they ended up winning by a lot because of the coattails. And they said there’s no way, that they’ve done many polls prior to the election, that there was no way that they won.

Ballots were dropped in massive numbers. And we’re trying to get to those numbers and we will have them.

They’ll take a period of time. Certified. But, but they’re massive numbers. And far greater than the 11,779.

(Maine Writer to blog readers, are you dizzy yet?)

The other thing, dead people. So dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number, and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.

Maine Writer- So, to blog readers- you are not reading "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". This transcript is verbatim, incoherent rambling from #TFG!)

The bottom line is, when you add it all up and then you start adding, you know, 300,000 fake ballots. Then the other thing they said is in Fulton County and other areas. And this may or may not be true . . . this just came up this morning, that they are burning their ballots, that they are shredding, shredding ballots and removing equipment. They’re changing the equipment on the Dominion machines and, you know, that’s not legal.

And they supposedly shredded I think they said 300 pounds of, 3,000 pounds of ballots. And that just came to us as a report today. And it is a very sad situation.

But, Brad, if you took the minimum numbers where many, many times above the 11,779, and many of those numbers are certified, or they will be certified, but they are certified. And those are numbers that are there, that exist. And that beat the margin of loss, they beat it, I mean, by a lot, and people should be happy to have an accurate count instead of an election where there’s turmoil.

I mean there’s turmoil in Georgia and other places. You’re not the only one, I mean, we have other states that I believe will be flipping to us very shortly. And this is something that — you know, as an example, I think it in Detroit, I think there’s a section, a good section of your state actually, which we’re not sure so we’re not going to report it yet. But, in Detroit, we had, I think it was, 139 percent of the people voted. That’s not too good.

In Pennsylvania, they had well over 200,000 more votes than they had people voting. And that doesn’t play too well, and the legislature there is, which is Republican, is extremely activist and angry. I mean, there were other things also that were almost as bad as that. But they had as an example, in Michigan, a tremendous number of dead people that voted. I think it was, I think, Mark, it was 18,000. Some unbelievably high number, much higher than yours, you were in the 4-5,000 category.

And that was checked out laboriously by going through, by going through the obituary columns in the newspapers.

So I guess with all of it being said, Brad, the bottom line, and provisional ballots, again, you know, you’ll have to tell me about the provisional ballots, but we have a lot of people that were complaining that they weren’t able to vote because they were already voted for. These are great people.

And, you know, they were shell shocked. I don’t know if you call that provisional ballots. In some states, we had a lot of provisional ballot situations where people were given a provisional ballot because when they walked in on November 3, and they were already voted for.

So that’s it. I mean, we have many, many times the number of votes necessary to win the state. And we won the state, and we won it very substantially and easily, and we’re getting, we have, much of this is a very certified, far more certified than we need. But we’re getting additional numbers certified, too. And we’re getting pictures of dropboxes being delivered and delivered late. Delivered three days later, in some cases, plus we have many affidavits to that effect.

Election results under attack: Here are the facts

Meadows: So, Mr. President, if I might be able to jump in, and I’ll give Brad a chance. Mr. Secretary, obviously there is, there are allegations where we believe that not every vote or fair vote and legal vote was counted, and that’s at odds with the representation from the secretary of state’s office.

What I’m hopeful for is there some way that we can, we can find some kind of agreement to look at this a little bit more fully? You know the president mentioned Fulton County.

But, in some of these areas where there seems to be a difference of where the facts seem to lead, and so Mr. Secretary, I was hopeful that, you know, in the spirit of cooperation and compromise, is there something that we can at least have a discussion to look at some of these allegations to find a path forward that’s less litigious?

Raffensperger: Well, I listened to what the president has just said. President Trump, we’ve had several lawsuits, and we’ve had to respond in court to the lawsuits and the contentions. We don’t agree that you have won. And we don’t — I didn’t agree about the 200,000 number that you’d mentioned. I’ll go through that point by point.

What we have done is we gave our state Senate about one and a half hours of our time going through the election issue by issue and then on the state House, the government affairs committee, we gave them about two and a half hours of our time, going back point by point on all the issues of contention. And then just a few days ago, we met with our U.S. congressmen, Republican congressmen, and we gave them about two hours of our time talking about this past election. Going back, primarily what you’ve talked about here focused in on primarily, I believe, is the absentee ballot process. I don’t believe that you’re really questioning the Dominion machines. Because we did a hand re-tally, a 100 percent re-tally of all the ballots, and compared them to what the machines said and came up with virtually the same result. Then we did the recount, and we got virtually the same result. So I guess we can probably take that off the table.

I don’t think there’s an issue about that.

Trump: Well, Brad. Not that there’s not an issue, because we have a big issue with Dominion in other states and perhaps in yours. But, we haven’t felt we needed to go there. And just to, you know, maybe put a little different spin on what Mark is saying, Mark Meadows, yeah we’d like to go further, but we don’t really need to. We have all the votes we need.

You know, we won the state. If you took, these are the most minimal numbers, the numbers that I gave you, those are numbers that are certified, your absentee ballots sent to vacant addresses, your out-of-state voters, 4,925. You know when you add them up, it’s many more times, it’s many times the 11,779 number. So we could go through, we have not gone through your Dominion. So we can’t give them blessing. I mean, in other states, we think we found tremendous corruption with Dominion machines, but we’ll have to see.

But, we only lost the state by that number, 11,000 votes, and 779. So with that being said, with just what we have, with just what we have, we’re giving you minimal, minimal numbers. We’re doing the most conservative numbers possible; we’re many times, many, many times above the margin. And so we don’t really have to, Mark, I don’t think we have to go through . . .

Meadows: Right

Trump: Because, what’s the difference between winning the election by two votes and winning it by half a million votes. I think I probably did win it by half a million. You know, one of the things that happened, Brad, is we have other people coming in now from Alabama and from South Carolina and from other states, and they’re saying it’s impossible for you to have lost Georgia. We won. You know in Alabama, we set a record, got the highest vote ever. In Georgia, we set a record with a massive amount of votes. And they say it’s not possible to have lost Georgia.

And I could tell you by our rallies. I could tell you by the rally I’m having on Monday night, the place, they already have lines of people standing out front waiting. It’s just not possible to have lost Georgia. It’s not possible. When I heard it was close, I said there’s no way. But they dropped a lot of votes in there late at night. You know that, Brad. And that’s what we are working on very, very stringently. But regardless of those votes, with all of it being said, we lost by essentially 11,000 votes, and we have many more votes already calculated and certified, too.

And so I just don’t know, you know, Mark, I don’t know what’s the purpose. I won’t give Dominion a pass because we found too many bad things. But we don’t need Dominion or anything else. We have won this election in Georgia based on all of this. And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, Brad. You know, I mean, having the correct — the people of Georgia are angry. And these numbers are going to be repeated on Monday night. Along with others that we’re going to have by that time, which are much more substantial even. And the people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, that you’ve recalculated. Because the 2,236 in absentee ballots. I mean, they’re all exact numbers that were done by accounting firms, law firms, etc. And even if you cut ’em in half, cut ’em in half and cut ’em in half again, it’s more votes than we need.

Raffensperger: Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong. We talked to the congressmen, and they were surprised.

But they — I guess there was a person named Mr. Braynard who came to these meetings and presented data, and he said that there was dead people, I believe it was upward of 5,000. The actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted. So that’s wrong.

Trump: Well, Cleta, how do you respond to that? Maybe you tell me?

Mitchell: Well, I would say, Mr. Secretary, one of the things that we have requested and what we said was, if you look, if you read our petition, it said that we took the names and birth years, and we had certain information available to us. We have asked from your office for records that only you have, and so we said there is a universe of people who have the same name and same birth year and died.

But we don’t have the records that you have. And one of the things that we have been suggesting formally and informally for weeks now is for you to make available to us the records that would be necessary —

Cleta Mitchell, a key figure in president’s phone call, was an early backer of Trump’s election fraud claims

Trump: But, Cleta, even before you do that, and not even including that, that’s why I hardly even included that number, although in one state, we have a tremendous amount of dead people. So I don’t know — I’m sure we do in Georgia, too. I’m sure we do in Georgia, too.

But, we’re so far ahead. We’re so far ahead of these numbers, even the phony ballots of [name] , known scammer. You know the Internet? You know what was trending on the Internet? “Where’s [name]?” Because they thought she’d be in jail. “Where’s [name]?” It’s crazy, it’s crazy. That was. The minimum number is 18,000 for [name] , but they think it’s probably about 56,000, but the minimum number is 18,000 on the [name] night where she ran back in there when everybody was gone and stuffed, she stuffed the ballot boxes. Let’s face it, Brad, I mean. They did it in slow motion replay magnified, right? She stuffed the ballot boxes. They were stuffed like nobody has ever seen them stuffed before.

So, there’s a term for it when it’s a machine instead of a ballot box, but she stuffed the machine. She stuffed the ballot. Each ballot went three times, they were showing: Here’s ballot No 1. Here it is a second time, third time, next ballot.

I mean, look. Brad. We have a new tape that we’re going to release. It’s devastating. And by the way, that one event, that one event is much more than the 11,000 votes that we’re talking about. It’s, you know, that one event was a disaster. And it’s just, you know, but it was, it was something, it can’t be disputed. And again, we have a version that you haven’t seen, but it’s magnified. It’s magnified, and you can see everything. For some reason, they put it in three times, each ballot, and I don’t know why. I don’t know why three times. Why not five times, right? Go ahead.

Raffensperger: You’re talking about the State Farm video. And I think it’s extremely unfortunate that Rudy Giuliani or his people, they sliced and diced that video and took it out of context. The next day, we brought in WSB-TV, and we let them show, see the full run of tape, and what you’ll see, the events that transpired are nowhere near what was projected by, you know —

Trump: But where were the poll watchers, Brad? There were no poll watchers there. There were no Democrats or Republicans. There was no security there.

It was late in the evening, late in the, early in the morning, and there was nobody else in the room. Where were the poll watchers, and why did they say a water main broke, which they did and which was reported in the newspapers? They said they left. They ran out because of a water main break, and there was no water main. There was nothing. There was no break. There was no water main break. But we’re, if you take out everything, where were the Republican poll watchers, even where were the Democrat poll watchers, because there were none.

And then you say, well, they left their station, you know, if you look at the tape, and this was, this was reviewed by professional police and detectives and other people, when they left in a rush, everybody left in a rush because of the water main, but everybody left in a rush. These people left their station.

When they came back, they didn’t go to their station. They went to the apron, wrapped around the table, under which were thousands and thousands of ballots in a box that was not an official or a sealed box. And then they took those. They went back to a different station. So if they would have come back, they would have walked to their station, and they would have continued to work. But they couldn’t do even that because that’s illegal, because they had no Republican pollwatchers. And remember, her reputation is — she’s known all over the Internet, Brad. She’s known all over.

I’m telling you, “Where’s [name] ” was one of the hot items . . . [name] They knew her. “Where’s [name]?” So Brad, there can be no justification for that. And I, you know, I give everybody the benefit of the doubt. But that was — and Brad, why did they put the votes in three times? You know, they put ’em in three times.

Raffensperger: Mr. President, they did not put that. We did an audit of that, and we proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times.

Trump: Where was everybody else at that late time in the morning? Where was everybody? Where were the Republicans? Where were the security guards? Were the people that were there just a little while before when everyone ran out of the room. How come we had no security in the room. Why did they run to the bottom of the table? Why do they run there and just open the skirt and rip out the votes. I mean, Brad. And, they were sitting there, I think for five hours or something like that, the votes.

Raffensperger: Mr. President, we’ll send you the link from WSB.

Trump: I don’t care about the link. I don’t need it. Brad, I have a much better —

Mitchell: I will tell you. I’ve seen the tape. The full tape. So has Alex. We’ve watched it. And what we saw and what we’ve confirmed in the timing is that they made everybody leave — we have sworn affidavits saying that. And then they began to process ballots. And our estimate is that there were roughly 18,000 ballots. We don’t know that. If you know that —

Trump: — it was 18,000 ballots, but they used each one three times.

Mitchell: Well, I don’t know about that, but I know —

Trump: — well, I do, because we had ours magnified out —

Mitchell: I’ve watched the entire tape.

Trump: — but nobody can make a case for that, Brad. Nobody. I mean, look, that’s, you’d have to be a child to think anything other than that. Just a child. I mean you have your never-Trumper U.S. attorney there —

Mitchell: — how many ballots, Mr. Secretary, are you saying were processed then?

Raffensperger: We had GBI . . . investigate that.

Germany: We had our — this is Ryan Germany. We had our law enforcement officers talk to everyone who was, who was there after that event came to light. GBI was with them as well as FBI agents.

Trump: Well, there’s no way they could — then they’re incompetent. They’re either dishonest or incompetent, okay?

Mitchell: Well, what did they find?

Trump: There’s only two answers, dishonesty or incompetence. There’s just no way. Look. There’s no way. And on the other thing, I said too, there is no way. I mean, there’s no way that these things could have been, you know, you have all these different people that voted, but they don’t live in Georgia anymore. What was that number, Cleta? That was a pretty good number, too.

Mitchell: The number who have registered out of state after they moved from Georgia. And so they had a date when they moved from Georgia, they registered to vote out of state, and then it’s like 4,500, I don’t have that number right in front of me.

Trump: And then they came back in, and they voted.

Mitchell: And voted. Yeah.

Trump: I thought that was a large number, though. It was in the 20s.

Germany: We’ve been going through each of those as well, and those numbers that we got, that Ms. Mitchell was just saying, they’re not accurate. Every one we’ve been through are people that lived in Georgia, moved to a different state, but then moved back to Georgia legitimately. And in many cases —

Trump: How may people do that? They moved out, and then they said, “Ah, to hell with it, I’ll move back.” You know, it doesn’t sound like a very normal . . . you mean, they moved out, and what, they missed it so much that they wanted to move back in? It’s crazy.

Germany: They moved back in years ago. This was not like something just before the election. So there’s something about that data that, it’s just not accurate.

Trump: Well, I don’t know, all I know is that it is certified. And they moved out of Georgia, and they voted. It didn’t say they moved back in, Cleta, did it?

Mitchell: No, but I mean, we’re looking at the voter registration. Again, if you have additional records, we’ve been asking for that, but you haven’t shared any of that with us. You just keep saying you investigated the allegations.

Trump: Cleta, a lot of it you don’t need to be shared. I mean, to be honest, they should share it. They should share it because you want to get to an honest election.

I won this election by hundreds of thousands of votes. There’s no way I lost Georgia. There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes. I’m just going by small numbers, when you add them up, they’re many times the 11,000. But I won that state by hundreds of thousands of votes.

Do you think it’s possible that they shredded ballots in Fulton County? Because that’s what the rumor is. And also that Dominion took out machines. That Dominion is really moving fast to get rid of their, uh, machinery.

Do you know anything about that? Because that’s illegal, right?

Germany: This is Ryan Germany. No, Dominion has not moved any machinery out of Fulton County.

Trump: But have they moved the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts?

Germany: No.

Trump: Are you sure, Ryan?

Germany: I’m sure. I’m sure, Mr. President.

Trump: What about, what about the ballots. The shredding of the ballots. Have they been shredding ballots?

Germany: The only investigation that we have into that — they have not been shredding any ballots. There was an issue in Cobb County where they were doing normal office shredding, getting rid of old stuff, and we investigated that. But this stuff from, you know, from you know past elections.

Trump: It doesn’t pass the smell test because we hear they’re shredding thousands and thousands of ballots, and now what they’re saying, “Oh, we’re just cleaning up the office.” You know.

Raffensperger: Mr. President, the problem you have with social media, they — people can say anything.

Trump: Oh this isn’t social media. This is Trump media. It’s not social media. It’s really not; it’s not social media. I don’t care about social media. I couldn’t care less. Social media is Big Tech. Big Tech is on your side, you know. I don’t even know why you have a side because you should want to have an accurate election. And you’re a Republican.

Raffensperger: We believe that we do have an accurate election.

Trump: No, no you don’t. No, no you don’t. You don’t have. Not even close. You’re off by hundreds of thousands of votes. And just on the small numbers, you’re off on these numbers, and these numbers can’t be just — well, why wont? — Okay. So you sent us into Cobb County for signature verification, right? You sent us into Cobb County, which we didn’t want to go into. And you said it would be open to the public. So we had our experts there, they weren’t allowed into the room. But we didn’t want Cobb County. We wanted Fulton County. And you wouldn’t give it to us. Now, why aren’t we doing signature — and why can’t it be open to the public?

And why can’t we have professionals do it instead of rank amateurs who will never find anything and don’t want to find anything? They don’t want to find, you know they don’t want to find anything. Someday you’ll tell me the reason why, because I don’t understand your reasoning, but someday you’ll tell me the reason why. But why don’t you want to find?

Germany: Mr. President, we chose Cobb County —

Trump: Why don’t you want to find . . . What?

Germany: Sorry, go ahead.

Trump: So why did you do Cobb County? We didn’t even request — we requested Fulton County, not Cobb County. Go ahead, please. Go ahead.

Germany: We chose Cobb County because that was the only county where there’s been any evidence submitted that the signature verification was not properly done.

Trump: No, but I told you. We’re not, we’re not saying that.

Mitchell: We did say that.

Trump: Fulton County. Look. Stacey, in my opinion, Stacey is as dishonest as they come. She has outplayed you . . . at everything. She got you to sign a totally unconstitutional agreement, which is a disastrous agreement. You can’t check signatures. I can’t imagine you’re allowed to do harvesting, I guess, in that agreement. That agreement is a disaster for this country. But she got you somehow to sign that thing, and she has outsmarted you at every step.

And I hate to imagine what’s going to happen on Monday or Tuesday, but it’s very scary to people. You know, when the ballots flow in out of nowhere. It’s very scary to people. That consent decree is a disaster. It’s a disaster. A very good lawyer who examined it said they’ve never seen anything like it.

Raffensperger: Harvesting is still illegal in the state of Georgia. And that settlement agreement did not change that one iota.

Trump: It’s not a settlement agreement, it’s a consent decree. It even says consent decree on it, doesn’t it? It uses the term consent decree. It doesn’t say settlement agreement. It’s a consent decree. It’s a disaster.

Raffensperger: It’s a settlement agreement.

Trump: What’s written on top of it?

Raffensperger: Ryan?

Germany: I don’t have it in front of me, but it was not entered by the court, it’s not a court order.

Trump: But Ryan, it’s called a consent decree, is that right? On the paper. Is that right?

Germany: I don’t. I don’t. I don’t believe so, but I don’t have it in front of me.

The Trump-Raffensperger call was big news — unless you were following conservative media

Trump: Okay, whatever, it’s a disaster. It’s a disaster. Look. Here’s the problem. We can go through signature verification, and we’ll find hundreds of thousands of signatures, if you let us do it. And the only way you can do it, as you know, is to go to the past. But you didn’t do that in Cobb County. You just looked at one page compared to another. The only way you can do a signature verification is go from the one that signed it on November whatever. Recently. And compare it to two years ago, four years ago, six years ago, you know, or even one. And you’ll find that you have many different signatures. But in Fulton, where they dumped ballots, you will find that you have many that aren’t even signed and you have many that are forgeries.

Okay, you know that. You know that. You have no doubt about that. And you will find you will be at 11,779, within minutes because Fulton County is totally corrupt, and so is she totally corrupt.

And they’re going around playing you and laughing at you behind your back, Brad, whether you know it or not, they’re laughing at you. And you’ve taken a state that’s a Republican state, and you’ve made it almost impossible for a Republican to win because of cheating, because they cheated like nobody’s ever cheated before. And I don’t care how long it takes me, you know, we’re going to have other states coming forward — pretty good.

But I won’t . . . this is never . . . this is . . . We have some incredible talent said they’ve never seen anything . . . Now the problem is they need more time for the big numbers. 

But, they’re very substantial numbers. But, I think you’re going to find that they — by the way, a little information — I think you’re going to find that they are shredding ballots because they have to get rid of the ballots because the ballots are unsigned. The ballots are corrupt, and they’re brand new, and they don’t have seals, and there’s a whole thing with the ballots. But the ballots are corrupt.

And you are going to find that they are — which is totally illegal — it is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know, what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. And that’s a big risk. But they are shredding ballots, in my opinion, based on what I’ve heard. And they are removing machinery, and they’re moving it as fast as they can, both of which are criminal finds. And you can’t let it happen, and you are letting it happen. You know, I mean, I’m notifying you that you’re letting it happen. So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780, votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.

And flipping the state is a great testament to our country because, you know, this is — it’s a testament that they can admit to a mistake or whatever you want to call it. If it was a mistake, I don’t know. A lot of people think it wasn’t a mistake. It was much more criminal than that. But it’s a big problem in Georgia, and it’s not a problem that’s going away. I mean, you know, it’s not a problem that’s going away.

Germany: This is Ryan. We’re looking into every one of those things that you mentioned.

Trump: Good. But if you find it, you’ve got to say it, Ryan.

Germany: . . . Let me tell you what we are seeing. What we’re seeing is not at all what you’re describing. These are investigators from our office, these are investigators from GBI, and they’re looking, and they’re good. And that’s not what they’re seeing. And we’ll keep looking, at all these things.

Trump: Well, you better check on the ballots because they are shredding ballots, Ryan. I’m just telling you, Ryan. They’re shredding ballots. And you should look at that very carefully. Because that’s so illegal. You know, you may not even believe it because it’s so bad. But they’re shredding ballots because they think we’re going to eventually get there . . . because we’ll eventually get into Fulton. In my opinion, it’s never too late. . . . So, that’s the story. Look, we need only 11,000 votes. We have are far more than that as it stands now. We’ll have more and more. And . . . do you have provisional ballots at all, Brad? Provisional ballots?

Raffensperger: Provisional ballots are allowed by state law.

Trump: Sure, but I mean, are they counted, or did you just hold them back because they, you know, in other words, how many provisional ballots do you have in the state?

Raffensperger: We’ll get you that number.

Trump: Because most of them are made out to the name Trump. Because these are people that were scammed when they came in. And we have thousands of people that have testified or that want to testify. When they came in, they were proudly going to vote on November 3. And they were told, “I’m sorry, you’ve already been voted for, you’ve already voted.” The women, men started screaming, “No. I proudly voted till November 3.” They said, “I’m sorry, but you’ve already been voted for, and you have a ballot.” And these people are beside themselves. So they went out, and they filled in a provisional ballot, putting the name Trump on it.

And what about that batch of military ballots that came in. And even though I won the military by a lot, it was 100 percent Trump. I mean 100 percent Biden. Do you know about that? A large group of ballots came in, I think it was to Fulton County, and they just happened to be 100 percent for Trump — for Biden — even though Trump won the military by a lot, you know, a tremendous amount. But these ballots were 100 percent for Biden. And do you know about that? A very substantial number came in, all for Biden. Does anybody know about it?

Mitchell: I know about it, but —

Trump: Okay, Cleta, I’m not asking you, Cleta, honestly. I’m asking Brad. Do you know about the military ballots that we have confirmed now. Do you know about the military ballots that came in that were 100 percent, I mean 100 percent, for Biden. Do you know about that?

Germany: I don’t know about that. I do know that we have, when military ballots come in, it’s not just military, it’s also military and overseas citizens. The military part of that does generally go Republican. The overseas citizen part of it generally goes very Democrat. This was a mix of ’em.

Trump: No, but this was. That’s okay. But I got like 78 percent of the military. These ballots were all for . . . They didn’t tell me overseas. Could be overseas, too, but I get votes overseas, too, Ryan, in all fairness. No they came in, a large batch came in, and it was, quote, 100 percent for Biden. And that is criminal. You know, that’s criminal. Okay. That’s another criminal, that’s another of the many criminal events, many criminal events here.

I don’t know, look, Brad. I got to get . . . I have to find 12,000, votes, and I have them times a lot. And therefore, I won the state. That’s before we go to the next step, which is in the process of right now. You know, and I watched you this morning, and you said, well, there was no criminality.

But, I mean all of this stuff is very dangerous stuff. When you talk about no criminality, I think it’s very dangerous for you to say that.

I just, I just don’t know why you don’t want to have the votes counted as they are. Like even you when you went and did that check. And I was surprised because, you know . . . And we found a few thousand votes that were against me. I was actually surprised because the way that check was done, all you’re doing, you know, recertifying existing votes and, you know, and you were given votes and you just counted them up, and you still found 3,000 that were bad. So that was sort of surprising that it came down to three or five, I don’t know. Still a lot of votes. But you have to go back to check from past years with respect to signatures. And if you check with Fulton County, you’ll have hundreds of thousands because they dumped ballots into Fulton County and the other county next to it.

So, what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000, votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. You know, we have that in spades already. Or we can keep it going, but that’s not fair to the voters of Georgia because they’re going to see what happened, and they’re going to see what happened. I mean, I’ll, I’ll take on anybody you want with regard to [name] and her lovely daughter, a very lovely young lady, I’m sure. But, but [name] . . . I will take on anybody you want. And the minimum, there were 18,000 ballots, but they used them three times. So that’s, you know, a lot of votes. And they were all to Biden, by the way, that’s the other thing we didn’t say. You know, [name] , the one thing I forgot to say, which was the most important. You know that every single ballot she did went to Biden. You know that, right? Do you know that, by the way, Brad?

Every single ballot that she did through the machines at early, early in the morning went to Biden. Did you know that, Ryan?

Germany: That’s not accurate, Mr. President.

Trump: Huh. What is accurate?

Germany: The numbers that we are showing are accurate.

Trump: No, about [name] . About early in the morning, Ryan. Where the woman took, you know, when the whole gang took the stuff from under the table, right? Do you know, do you know who those ballots, do you know who they were made out to, do you know who they were voting for?

Germany: No, not specifically.

Trump: Did you ever check?

Germany: We did what I described to you earlier —

Trump: No no no — did you ever check the ballots that were scanned by [name] , a known political operative, balloteer? Did ever check who those votes were for?

Germany: We looked into that situation that you described.

Trump: No, they were 100 percent for Biden. 100 percent. There wasn’t a Trump vote in the whole group. Why don’t you want to find this, Ryan? What’s wrong with you? I heard your lawyer is very difficult, actually, but I’m sure you’re a good lawyer. You have a nice last name.

But, but I’m just curious, why wouldn’t, why do you keep fighting this thing? It just doesn’t make sense. We’re way over the 17,779, right? We’re way over that number, and just if you took just [name] , we’re over that number by five, five or six times when you multiply that times three.

And every single ballot went to Biden, and you didn’t know that, but now you know it. So tell me, Brad, what are we going to do? We won the election, and it’s not fair to take it away from us like this. And it’s going to be very costly in many ways. And I think you have to say that you’re going to reexamine it, and you can reexamine it, but reexamine it with people that want to find answers, not people that don’t want to find answers. For instance, I’m hearing Ryan that he’s probably, I’m sure a great lawyer and everything, but he’s making statements about those ballots that he doesn’t know. But he’s making them with such — he did make them with surety. But now I think he’s less sure because the answer is, they all went to Biden, and that alone wins us the election by a lot. You know, so.

Raffensperger: Mr. President, you have people that submit information, and we have our people that submit information. And then it comes before the court, and the court then has to make a determination. We have to stand by our numbers. We believe our numbers are right.

Trump: Why do you say that, though? I don’t know. I mean, sure, we can play this game with the courts, but why do you say that? First of all, they don’t even assign us a judge. They don’t even assign us a judge. But why wouldn’t you . . . Hey Brad, why wouldn’t you want to check out [name] ? And why wouldn’t you want to say, hey, if in fact, President Trump is right about that, then he wins the state of Georgia, just that one incident alone without going through hundreds of thousands of dropped ballots. You just say, you stick by, I mean I’ve been watching you, you know, you don’t care about anything. “Your numbers are right.” But, your numbers aren’t right. They’re really wrong, and they’re really wrong, Brad. And I know this phone call is going nowhere other than, other than ultimately, you know — Look, ultimately, I win, okay? Because you guys are so wrong. And you treated this. You treated the population of Georgia so badly. You, between you and your governor, who is down at 21, he was down 21 points. And like a schmuck, I endorsed him, and he got elected, but I will tell you, he is a disaster.

The people are so angry in Georgia, I can’t imagine he’s ever getting elected again, I’ll tell you that much right now. But why wouldn’t you want to find the right answer, Brad, instead of keep saying that the numbers are right? ’Cause those numbers are so wrong?

Mitchell: Mr. Secretary, Mr. President, one of the things that we have been, Alex can talk about this, we talked about it, and I don’t know whether the information has been conveyed to your office, but I think what the president is saying, and what we’ve been trying to do is to say, look, the court is not acting on our petition. They haven’t even assigned a judge. But the people of Georgia and the people of America have a right to know the answers. And you have data and records that we don’t have access to.

And you can keep telling us and making public statement that you investigated this and nothing to see here. But we don’t know about that. All we know is what you tell us. What I don’t understand is why wouldn’t it be in everyone’s best interest to try to get to the bottom, compare the numbers, you know, if you say, because . . . to try to be able to get to the truth because we don’t have any way of confirming what you’re telling us. You tell us that you had an investigation at the State Farm Arena. I don’t have any report. I’ve never seen a report of investigation. I don’t know that is. I’ve been pretty involved in this, and I don’t know. And that’s just one of 25 categories. And it doesn’t even. And as I, as the president said, we haven’t even gotten into the Dominion issue. That’s not part of our case. It’s not part of, we just didn’t feel as though we had any to be able to develop —

Trump: No, we do have a way, but I don’t want to get into it. We found a way . . . excuse me, but we don’t need it because we’re only down 11,000 votes, so we don’t even need it. I personally think they’re corrupt as hell. But we don’t need that. All we have to do, Cleta, is find 11,000-plus votes. So we don’t need that. I’m not looking to shake up the whole world. We won Georgia easily. We won it by hundreds of thousands of votes. But if you go by basic, simple numbers, we won it easily, easily. So we’re not giving Dominion a pass on the record. We don’t need Dominion because we have so many other votes that we don’t need to prove it any more than we already have.

Hilbert: Mr. President and Cleta, this is Kurt Hilbert, if I might interject for a moment. Ryan, I would like to suggest that just four categories that have already been mentioned by the president that have actually hard numbers of 24,149 votes that were counted illegally. That in and of itself is sufficient to change the results or place the outcome in doubt. We would like to sit down with your office, and we can do it through purposes of compromise and just like this phone call, just to deal with that limited category of votes. And if you are able to establish that our numbers are not accurate, then fine. However, we believe that they are accurate. We’ve had now three to four separate experts looking at these numbers.

Trump: Certified accountants looked at them.

Hilbert: Correct. And this is just based on USPS data and your own secretary of state data. So that’s what we would entreat and ask you to do, to sit down with us in a compromise and settlements proceeding and actually go through the registered voter IDs and the registrations. And if you can convince us that 24,149 is inaccurate, then fine. But we tend to believe that is, you know, obviously more than 11,779. That’s sufficient to change the results entirely in and of itself. So what would you say to that, Mr. Germany?

Germany: I’m happy to get with our lawyers, and we’ll set that up. That number is not accurate. And I think we can show you, for all the ones we’ve looked at, why it’s not. And so if that would be helpful, I’m happy to get with our lawyers and set that up with you guys.

Trump: Well, let me ask you, Kurt, you think that is an accurate number. That was based on the information given to you by the secretary of state’s department, right?

Hilbert: That is correct. That information is the minimum, most conservative data based upon the USPS data and the secretary of state’s office data that has been made publicly available. We do not have the internal numbers from the secretary of state. Yet we have asked for it six times. I sent a letter over to . . . several times requesting this information, and it’s been rebuffed every single time. So it stands to reason that if the information is not forthcoming, there’s something to hide. That’s the problem that we have.

Germany: Well, that’s not the case, sir. There are things that you guys are entitled to get. And there’s things that under law, we are not allowed to give out.

Trump: Well, you have to. Well, under law, you’re not allowed to give faulty election results, okay? You’re not allowed to do that. And that’s what you done. This is a faulty election result. And honestly, this should go very fast. You should meet tomorrow because you have a big election coming up, and because of what you’ve done to the president — you know, the people of Georgia know that this was a scam — and because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote. And a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative because they hate what you did to the president. Okay? They hate it. And they’re going to vote. And you would be respected. Really respected, if this thing could be straightened out before the election. You have a big election coming up on Tuesday. And I think that it is really is important that you meet tomorrow and work out on these numbers. Because I know, Brad, that if you think we’re right, I think you’re going to say, and I’m not looking to blame anybody, I’m just saying, you know, and, you know, under new counts, and under new views, of the election results, we won the election. You know? It’s very simple. We won the election. As the governors of major states and the surrounding states said, there is no way you lost Georgia. As the Georgia politicians say, there is no way you lost Georgia. Nobody. Everyone knows I won it by hundreds of thousands of votes. But I’ll tell you it’s going to have a big impact on Tuesday if you guys don’t get this thing straightened out fast.

Meadows: Mr. President, this is Mark. It sounds like we’ve got two different sides agreeing that we can look at those areas, and I assume that we can do that within the next 24 to 48 hours, to go ahead and get that reconciled so that we can look at the two claims and making sure that we get the access to the secretary of state’s data to either validate or invalidate the claims that have been made. Is that correct?

Germany: No, that’s not what I said. I’m happy to have our lawyers sit down with Kurt and the lawyers on that side and explain to him, hey, here’s, based on what we’ve looked at so far, here’s how we know this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong.

Meadows: So what you’re saying, Ryan, let me let me make sure . . . so what you’re saying is you really don’t want to give access to the data. You just want to make another case on why the lawsuit is wrong?

Germany: I don’t think we can give access to data that’s protected by law. But we can sit down with them and say —

Trump: But you’re allowed to have a phony election? You’re allowed to have a phony election, right?

Germany: No, sir.

Trump: When are you going to do signature counts, when are you going to do signature verification on Fulton County, which you said you were going to do, and now all of a sudden, you’re not doing it. When are you doing that?

Germany: We are going to do that. We’ve announced —

Hilbert: To get to this issue of the personal information and privacy issue, is it possible that the secretary of state could deputize the lawyers for the president so that we could access that information and private information without you having any kind of violation?

Trump: Well, I don’t want to know who it is. You guys can do it very confidentially. You can sign a confidentiality agreement. That’s okay. I don’t need to know names. But on this stuff that we’re talking about, we got all that information from the secretary of state.

Meadows: Yeah. So let me let me recommend, Ryan, if you and Kurt will get together, you know, when we get off of this phone call, if you could get together and work out a plan to address some of what we’ve got with your attorneys where we can we can actually look at the data. For example, Mr. Secretary, I can you say they were only two dead people who would vote. I can promise you there are more than that. And that may be what your investigation shows, but I can promise you there are more than that. But at the same time, I think it’s important that we go ahead and move expeditiously to try to do this and resolve it as quickly as we possibly can. And if that’s the good next step. Hopefully we can, we can finish this phone call and go ahead and agree that the two of you will get together immediately.

Trump: Well, why don’t my lawyers show you where you got the information. It will show the secretary of state, and you don’t even have to look at any names. We don’t want names. We don’t care. But we got that information from you. And Stacey Abrams is laughing about you. She’s going around saying these guys are dumber than a rock. What she’s done to this party is unbelievable, I tell you. And, I only ran against her once. And that was with a guy named Brian Kemp, and I beat her. And if I didn’t run, Brian wouldn’t have had even a shot, either in the general or in the primary. He was dead, dead as a doornail. He never thought he had a shot at either one of them. What a schmuck I was. But that’s the way it is. That’s the way it is. I would like you . . . for the attorneys . . . I’d like you to perhaps meet with Ryan, ideally tomorrow, because I think we should come to a resolution of this before the election. Otherwise you’re going to have people just not voting. They don’t want to vote. They hate the state, they hate the governor, and they hate the secretary of state. I will tell you that right now. The only people that like you are people that will never vote for you. You know that, Brad, right? They like you, you know, they like you. They can’t believe what they found. They want more people like you. So, look, can you get together tomorrow? And, Brad, we just want the truth. It’s simple.

And everyone’s going to look very good if the truth comes out. It’s okay. It takes a little while, but let the truth come out. And the real truth is, I won by 400,000 votes. At least. That’s the real truth. But we don’t need 400,000 votes. We need less than 2,000 votes. And are you guys able to meet tomorrow, Ryan?

Germany: I’ll get with Chris, the lawyer who’s representing us in the case, and see when he can get together with Kurt.

Raffensperger: Ryan will be in touch with the other attorney on this call, Mr. Meadows. Thank you, President Trump, for your time.

Trump: Okay, thank you, Brad. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you very much. Bye.

An earlier version of the full audio of Trump’s call inadvertently left in a reference to an individual about whom he has made unsubstantiated claims. It has since been updated.

This transcript has been updated to clarify crosstalk in which Trump refers to a “never-Trumper U.S. attorney.”

Update: Lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who advised Trump on Saturday phone call, resigns from law firm

Reaction: The Trump-Raffensperger call was big news — unless you were following conservative media

Election results under attack: Here are the facts