In a letter sent on Friday, Donald Trump insisted that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger decertify President Joe Biden’s election win based on Trump’s obsession over (unsubstantiated) voter fraud claims. In not one, not two, but three separate recounts, it’s been confirmed that Biden beat Trump in Georgia by 12,000 votes.
Surprising no one, the letter is chock-full of lies and incorrect information. The letter, which was sent via email, accused both fellow Republican Raffensperger and Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of “doing a tremendous disservice” to the state and nation. He describes the country as being “systemically” destroyed by an “illegitimate” president and urges that the “truth must be allowed to come out,” as covered by the New York Daily News The truth is, of course, that Trump lost the election. And that he can’t face reality.
"I would respectfully request that your department check this,” the letter reads in part, in reference to a report of what he says are more than 40,000 absentee ballots in violation of the chain of custody rules. “And, if true, along with many other claims of voter fraud and voter irregularities, start the process of decertifying the 2020 Election, or whatever the correct legal remedy is, and announce the true winner.”
Mind you, Georgia prosecutors are already investigating Trump’s fervent attempts to overturn the election results, with the secretary of state’s office looking into phone calls made by Trump, in which he attempted to pressure Raffernsperger into finding the votes needed to make him the winner.
"All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes,” Trump told Raffernsperger during the now infamous Jan. 2 phone call. Beyond this well-covered one-liner, criminal investigators have been gathering documents, interviewing folks, and building out contacts with congressional investigators in order to solidify a case against the national embarrassment.
“The Trump investigation is ongoing,” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis told reporters per CNN. “As a district attorney, I do not have the right to look the other way on any crime that may have happened in my jurisdiction.” Willis added that while she has a team dedicated to investigating Trump, her biggest priority is to keep “violent offenders off the street.”
On the one hand, it’s tempting to let Trump’s endless hysteria fade into the background. Whether or not it’s even worth it to give him national coverage is debatable; does it add or detract from how seriously voters take him? How does it impact the credibility with which people might believe his claims? At what point will people see Trump’s blabbering for what it is: obsessive, baseless delusion with no evidence to back it up?
But the sad reality is Trump does have a fan base and his incessant fraud claims clearly made an impact on at least some folks in the United States. The biggest example? The mob that literally stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election win.