The Hoax

Trump Told Raffensperger To “Find” Him Votes So That He Could Win Georgia

The “Find Votes hoax” refers to a narrative spun around a phone call between then-President Donald Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2, 2021. In this call, Trump urged Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes,” which was the margin by which he lost Georgia in the 2020 election. Critics, including media outlets and Democratic figures, often cite this as Trump pressuring Raffensperger to illegally manufacture votes to alter the election outcome.

---

What Really Happened

Trump Believed Georgia Would Find 11,780 Fraudulent Votes If They Conducted An Audit

Trump was asking for an investigation into alleged voter irregularities, not for creating or finding votes out of thin air. Trump and his team believed that an audit that included signature matches that spanned recent election cycles would find at least 11,780 fraudulent votes. Reading the transcript of the hour long phone call shows that Trump never wanted Raffesperger to illegally produce votes to hand Trump the victory as the media and prominent Democrats want you to believe.

The media made it look like Trump is asking for fraud, but when you include the full context, he says a recount or better count would find him to be the legitimate winner of Georgia.

See the quote with it’s proper context below:

Trump: OK, 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.

OK, 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 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.

Here is the full transcript from CNN.

---

Hoaxology | How The Hoax Was Made

Here’s how this hoax was made.

Out-of-Context Quote

The quote “I just want to find 11,780 votes” was extracted from the hour-long phone call, and since has been the basis of claims that Donald Trump was pressuring Georgia officials to overturn the 2020 election results by fabricating illegal votes. Media reports and critics often used this quote to suggest Trump was asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to illegally create the exact number of votes needed for him to win the state.
However, when examined in the full context of the phone call, it becomes clear that Trump was not calling for the illegal creation of votes, but rather expressing his belief that a proper audit or investigation into alleged fraud would uncover enough illegal or improperly counted votes to change the outcome.

The media made it look like Trump is asking for fraud, but when you include the full context, he says a recount or better count would find him to be the legitimate winner of Georgia.

Selective Reporting

In all the media’s reporting, you’ll notice that they never report on the rest of the hour-long phone call. In fact, out of the entire phone call, they only report on one thing that Trump said: “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state“.

This alone is telling, and is proof that the media and Democrats weaponized this one sentence against Americans, many who were already primed by years of propaganda to believe Trump would try to steal an election.

---

𝕏 @AmericanDebunk