Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger (R) on Sunday took aim at his challenger Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA), who was endorsed by former President Trump after Raffensperger rebuffed his election fraud falsehoods, for boosting the Big Lie of a “stolen” election.
Raffensperger characterized the Trump-endorsed Hice, who objected to certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory, as someone who is “double minded” during an interview on CBS
“The person I’m running against, congressman Hice, he’s been in Congress for several years, he’s never done a single piece of election reform legislation, then he certified his own race with the same machines, those same ballots — and yet for President Trump he said you couldn’t trust that,” Raffensperger said. “That is a double-minded person, and as a pastor, he should know better.”
“So I’m going to run on integrity and I’m going to run on the truth. I don’t know what he is going to run on,” Raffensperger continued.
Raffensperger then brushed off the idea that Republicans in Georgia could try to manipulated the results of an upcoming election.
“The laws that we have in place, there have been concerns raised, that but no. The results will be the results. And those results will be certified,” Raffensperger said. “You cannot overturn the will of the people. And so that won’t matter. But at the end of the day, I will be re-elected and (Hice) will not be.”
Trump’s endorsement of Hice last year is part of the former president’s vow to support challengers of any Republican lawmakers who refused to play along with his election fraud falsehoods, which includes GOP lawmakers who voted to impeach him for “incitement of insurrection.”
Raffensperger is among the Republican officials who bucked Trump’s bogus claims of election fraud. Days before the Senate runoff that handed Democrats control of the upper chamber last year, Trump demanded Raffensper to “find 11,780 votes” during a now-infamous call in an unsuccessful attempt by the former president to subvert the battleground state’s election results.
In November, Raffensperger was interviewed by the Jan. 6 committee for hours. Raffensperger reportedly discussed his infamous call with Trump on Jan. 2, 2021.
Last month, while detailing damning texts it retrieved from chief of staff Mark Meadows’ phone as he worked with Trump to subvert the election results before and during the deadly Capitol insurrection, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), vice chair of the committee, revealed that Meadows participated in the infamous phone call between Trump and Raffensperger.
Meadows “was on the phone when President Trump asked the secretary of state to ‘find 11,780 votes’ to change the election results in Georgia,” Cheney said last month.
Current and former staffers of Raffensperger’s office have also reportedly been interviewed by the committee, which includes Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system implementation manager who spoke out forcefully about the impact of Trump’s election fraud falsehoods.
Additionally, the committee reportedly spoke with Frances Watson, who at the time of Trump’s effort was a top investigator for Raffensperger’s office and who spoke with Trump herself for six minutes in late December. The Wall Street Journal later obtained a recording of the call, in which Trump could be heard pressuring Watson to investigate bogus claims of fraud. “When the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised,” he said.
Watch Raffensperger’s remarks below:
