"FELLAS, I ONLY NEED 11,000 VOTES. GIVE ME A BREAK!"

TRUMP: And I could tell you by our rallies, I could tell you by the rally I’m having on Monday night, the place, they already have lines of people standing out front waiting. It’s just not possible to have lost Georgia. It’s not possible. When I heard it was close, I said there’s no way. But they dropped a lot of votes in there late at night, you know that Brad. And that’s what we are working on very, very stringently. But regardless of those votes, with all of it being said, we lost by 11 to –  essentially 11,000 votes. And we have many more votes already calculated and certified too.

TRUMP: We have, we have, we have won this election in Georgia based on all of this. And there’s, there’s nothing wrong with saying that, Brad. You know, I mean, having the, having a correct — the people of Georgia are angry and these numbers are going to be repeated on Monday night, along with others that we’re going to have by that time, which are much more substantial even. And the people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.

BRAD RAFFENSPERGER (Georgia Secretary of State) : Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong. We, we talked to the congressmen, and they were surprised. But they — I guess, there’s a person named Mr. Brainard that came to these meetings and presented data and he said that there was dead people, I believe it was upward of 5,000. The actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted. And so, that’s wrong, that was two.

MARK MEADOWS, White House chief of staff: What I’m hopeful for is there are some way that we can, we can find some kind of agreement to, to, to look at this a little bit more fully. As you know, the president mentioned Fulton County, but in some of these areas where there seems to be a difference of where the facts seem to lead. And so, Mr. Secretary, I was hopeful that, you know, in a spirit of cooperation and compromise is there, there’s something that we can at least have a discussion to look at some of these allegations to find a path forward that’s less litigious.

TRUMP: Now, do you think it’s possible that they shredded ballots in Fulton County? Because that’s what the rumor is. And also that Dominion took out machines. That Dominion is really moving fast to get rid of their, uh, machinery. Do you know anything about that? Because that’s illegal, right?

RYAN GERMANY, lawyer for Georgia secretary of state’s office: This is Ryan Germany. No, Dominion has not moved any machinery out of Fulton County.

TRUMP: But have they moved the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts?

GERMANY: No.

TRUMP: Are you sure, Ryan?

GERMANY: I’m sure. I’m sure, Mr. President.

TRUMP: What about, what about the, what about the ballots? The shredding of the ballots. Have they been shredding ballots?

GERMANY: The only investigation that we have into that — they have not been shredding any ballots. There was an issue in Cobb County where they were doing normal office shredding, getting rid of old stuff, and we investigated that. But this stuff from, you know, from, you know, past elections.

TRUMP: It doesn’t pass the smell test because we hear they’re shredding thousands and thousands of ballots, and now what they’re saying, “Oh, we’re just cleaning up the office.” Yeah.

RAFFENSPERGER: Mr. President, the problem you have with social media, they — people can say anything.

TRUMP: Oh, this isn’t social media. This is Trump media. It’s not social media. It’s really not, it’s not social media. I don’t care about social media. I couldn’t care less. Social media is Big Tech. Big Tech is on your side, you know. I don’t even know why you have a side, because you should want to have an accurate election. And you’re a Republican.

RAFFENSPERGER: We believe that we do have an accurate election.

TRUMP: No, no, you don’t. No, no, you don’t. You don’t have, you don’t have. Not even close. You’re off by hundreds of thousands of votes.

TRUMP: But the ballots are corrupt. And you’re 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.

TRUMP: So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.

To read rest of conversation, click on link below:  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/03/us/politics/trump-georgia-call-excerpts.html