# Donald Trump — "I just want to find 11,780 votes" > [!quote] "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." > — Donald Trump, phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, January 2, 2021 ## Context On January 2, 2021 — four days before the [[January 6 Capitol Attack]] and seventeen days before President-elect Biden's inauguration — Trump initiated an hour-long conference call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican. Trump had lost Georgia to Biden by 11,779 votes (a margin of ~0.24%, certified after a hand recount and a machine recount). The number Trump named — 11,780 — is precisely "one more than we have." Trump was joined on the call by White House chief of staff [[Mark Meadows]], trade adviser [[Peter Navarro]], attorney [[Rudy Giuliani]], law professor [[John Eastman]] (who had drafted the [[Fake Electors Scheme]] memo days earlier), and outside attorneys [[Cleta Mitchell]], Alex Kaufman, Kurt Hilbert, and DOJ official John Lott. Raffensperger was joined by his general counsel Ryan Germany, who recorded the call in case Trump or his attorneys later misrepresented its contents — a precaution that proved correct when Trump tweeted about the call the next morning, prompting Raffensperger's office to release the audio. The Washington Post broke the recording on January 3, 2021. Across the call, Raffensperger and Germany walked Trump through the empirical refutation of every fraud claim Trump and his attorneys raised: the Fulton County "suitcase ballots," dead voters, out-of-state voters, underage voters, Dominion machines. Each was disposed of in real time. Trump returned, repeatedly, to the same ask in different framings — that Raffensperger announce a different result. ## Why this matters **1. The cleanest documentary evidence of the entire election-denial scheme.** Most of Trump's election-denial conduct is either rhetorical (rallies, tweets, [[Truth Social]]) or filtered through intermediaries (Eastman memos, Giuliani press conferences, fake elector certificates). The Raffensperger call is Trump himself, on tape, asking a Republican state official to produce a specific number of votes that did not exist. There is no plausible reading in which "find 11,780 votes" is a request to do anything other than alter the certified count. **2. Foundation of the [[Georgia RICO Case]].** Fulton County DA Fani Willis's August 2023 RICO indictment of Trump and 18 co-defendants (including [[Rudy Giuliani]], [[John Eastman]], [[Mark Meadows]], [[Kenneth Chesebro]], [[Sidney Powell]], [[Jeffrey Clark]], and [[Jenna Ellis]]) named the Raffensperger call as a predicate act. Trump was charged with solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer for this specific request. The call is also a predicate act in House Select Committee on January 6 evidence. **3. The "find" framing is structural, not slippage.** Trump used variants of "find" repeatedly across the call: "I just want to find 11,780 votes," "you have to find that," "all I want to do is find 11,780 votes." This is the same verb structure he used pressuring DOJ officials in the same period ("just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me"). The grammar of the ask separates Trump from the act: the official does the finding. Trump merely articulates the desired outcome. This is the rhetorical structure of mob-boss communication and the legal architecture later exploited by Eastman's memos and the [[Fake Electors Scheme]]. **4. Republican-on-Republican pressure.** Raffensperger is a conservative Georgia Republican who voted for Trump twice. This is the same dynamic later exemplified by [[Donald Trump - Liz Cheney nine barrels]]: the operative cleavage in [[Stop the Steal]] was never ideology, it was loyalty to the Big Lie. Raffensperger's offense — like Cheney's — was refusing to ratify a false claim about the election. **5. The "but for" hinge of the J6 narrative.** Had Raffensperger said yes — had he announced a recount finding 11,780 additional Trump votes — the post-November 2020 trajectory branches differently. The fake electors scheme, the Eastman memo, the pressure on Pence, and ultimately the mob assault on the Capitol all flow from the failure to produce a state-level pretext for overturning the vote. The Raffensperger call is the moment that pretext was sought directly and refused. ## Verification - **Primary**: Full audio recording released by Raffensperger's office on January 3, 2021. Available via The Washington Post, CNN, Rev.com, 11Alive, and Atlanta News First. - **Wording verified across**: WaPo, CNN, Rev, Atlanta News First, [[Brennan Center]], NPR — identical reproduction. The phrase "I just want to find 11,780 votes" appears verbatim in the recording at approximately the 19:38 mark. - **Trump's defense**: Trump and surrogates have argued the call was "perfect" and that "find" meant "uncover legitimate fraudulent votes already cast." This defense has been rejected by Georgia courts, the Fulton County grand jury, and the Special Counsel investigation. - **Status of legal proceedings**: Charges in [[Georgia RICO Case]] remain in litigation; Trump's role complicated by his return to the presidency in 2025 and DOJ-state interactions still developing. ## Related quotes - [[Donald Trump - enemy from within]] — same election-denial → political-violence pipeline. - [[Donald Trump - seditious behavior punishable by death]] — escalation of the same loyalty-cleavage pattern into open death-penalty rhetoric against Democratic veterans. ## Part of collections - (Not yet in a collection — candidate for an "Election Denial Receipts" or "Authoritarian Asks" collection.)