By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com
I have listened to The Call. All of it. I have read every word of it.
My goodness. It was worse than many Americans — chiefly Donald Trump’s defenders — thought it was when word came out that Trump made the phone call to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger.
I have attached a link to the transcript to this blog post. It’s worth reading from beginning to end.
READ: Transcript of Trump phone call with Georgia secretary of state | TheHill
Trump described his phone call to Ukraine’s president as “perfect” even when we learned that Trump solicited Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden. It was “perfectly” criminal, in my mind, what Trump did then. It led to his impeachment.
He’s just 15 days from exiting the White House, so impeachment now is out of the question. Prosecution, though, after he leaves office is quite possible. Its probability, though, relies on what the new leadership at the Justice Department and President Biden decide to do about it.
Donald Trump’s agonizing — for us, not him — departure from the White House has been fraught with phony claims of voter fraud, with his refusal to concede losing a free and fair election and now with possibly criminal coercion of state election officials.
It remains doubtful that Trump could be prosecuted for federal crimes in this Georgia phone call matter. The state, though, has statutes that say it is a crime to ask anyone else to commit a crime. That is what the phone call transcript clearly illustrates transpired when Trump called Raffensperger. The president asked the Georgia secretary of state to “find” enough votes to flip the state’s electoral votes from Biden to Trump.
Let’s be clear. Georgia recounted the votes three times after the polls closed. They all produced a Biden victory over Trump. It wasn’t by a huge margin. However, the margin has remained stable through all the recounts and an audit of the tally. Today, Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling (pictured) took Trump’s complaint apart piece by piece.
I have no clue where this will lead eventually. It’s just that the more we see and hear from the lame-duck president, the worse it gets.
And the more anxiousness I develop while waiting for an end to this presidential nightmare.