ATLANTA — It's been nearly three years since then-President Donald Trump placed a phone call to Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger with an apparent request that would mark the beginning of a political watershed moment: "find 11,780 votes" and declare Trump -- not Biden -- the winner of Georgia's 2020 presidential election.
The suggestion, recorded during a Jan. 2, 2021 phone call between the two elected officials, became a key part of an investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who launched an inquiry shortly after to determine whether President Trump and his former allies attempted to criminally interfere in Georgia's election.
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In the hour-long call, Trump can be heard berating Georgia's top election official and insisting that he won the state of Georgia.
“There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump said on the phone recording, obtained by 11Alive through a state government source. “There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”
Trump also can be heard suggesting that Raffensperger, who is a Republican, "find" the votes needed to put him ahead of Biden.
Trump ultimately lost the election in the state, the results of which were confirmed three separate times between audits and a full re-count of all of Georgia's ballots.
Raffensperger would later describe the situation with the former president as feeling like "David going up against Goliath" fighting misinformation.
Click the player below to listen to the full phone call between Trump and Raffensperger. Click here to read the full transcript of that call.