It’s not easy to keep track of Donald Trump’s many legal troubles, but among the most interesting is the ongoing criminal probe in Georgia, where members of a grand jury are hearing evidence about the former president’s alleged efforts to intervene in the state’s vote count.
As regular readers know, Team Trump leaned heavily on Georgia officials in January, including a phone conversation in which the then-president told Georgia’s Republican secretary of state that he wanted someone to “find” enough votes to flip the state in Trump’s favor, the will of the voters be damned.
It was deeply scandalous misconduct, which may yet lead to charges. But as the Associated Press reported, what happened in Georgia was not an isolated incident.
Newly released records show the top Republicans in Arizona’s largest county dodged calls from Donald Trump and his allies in the aftermath of the 2020 election, as the then-president sought to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in key battleground states. The records — including voicemails and text messages — shed light on another state where Trump, his attorneys and others mounted a behind-the-scenes pressure campaign on Republican officials overseeing elections.
There’s a recording, for example, of Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Clint Hickman receiving a call shortly before midnight in early January. “Hello, sir. This is the White House operator I was calling to let you know that the president’s available to take your call if you’re free,” the White House operator said in a voicemail. “If you could please give us a call back, sir, that’d be great. You have a good evening.”
Hickman dodged Trump’s outreach, understandably assuming that the then-president would engage in an improper lobbying campaign about changing election results.
“I had seen what occurred in Georgia and I was like, ‘I want no part of this madness and the only way I enter into this is I call the president back,’” Hickman said. It wasn’t just Trump. Rudy Giuliani, in his capacity as the then-president’s lawyer, also made multiple calls to members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. In Georgia, there’s incriminating evidence against Trump because Brad Raffensperger took the call and recorded the conversation. In contrast, Trump must’ve been frustrated when officials in Maricopa County dodged his calls, but all things considered, he has reason to be pleased there aren’t similar recordings out of Arizona right now.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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