Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he has little to say to David Perdue about his criticism of a phone call with President Trump regarding a dispute over election results that was released to the public.
“Sen. Perdue still owes my wife an apology for all the death threats she got after he asked for my resignation,” Raffensperger told Fox News host Martha MacCallum on Monday. “I have not heard a peep from that man since. If he wants to call me … I’ll talk to him off the record. But he hasn’t done that.”
Perdue, along with Sen. Kelly Loeffler, both face runoff elections in Georgia against Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, which are set to determine which party will control the Senate. Both GOP Senate incumbents have called on Raffensperger to resign over his handling of the Georgia election, which they claim was riddled with problems. Raffensperger said he and his wife were receiving death threats shortly after the election by angry voters.
Perdue, whose last term ended over the weekend, accused Raffensperger, also a Republican, of providing audio of the call, in which Trump talked about election fraud claims, to the media.
“To have a statewide elected official, regardless of party, tape without disclosing a conversation, a private conversation, with the president of the United States and then leaking it to the press is disgusting,” Perdue said.
Raffensperger denied recording the conversation and said he had the call on speakerphone and was making notes. Several lawyers were also on the call, including Raffensperger’s legal counsel.
Raffensperger said Trump made the conversation public when he tweeted about it and that the release of the audio was a way of responding to the president’s tweet, which accused the secretary of state of not being able to answer questions about election integrity.
“We had to respond to the president’s Twitter, and we responded to the facts in the call,” Raffensperger said. “That’s how it got out there. Now, the world can make up their own decisions, listen to both sides. Both sides of the aisle, right down the middle. They can make their own decisions.”
In the call, Trump urged Raffensperger and other officials in the secretary of state’s office to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the Georgia presidential race in his favor from President-elect Joe Biden.
State officials stood by their assertions that the election was carried out securely and no mass voter fraud took place.
Trump has yet to concede to Biden and has encouraged Republicans in Congress to object to the Electoral College results on Wednesday. Biden won Georgia by around 12,000 votes, making him the first Democrat in decades to flip Georgia blue.
Trump has promised a big protest to take place on Wednesday, when Congress meets to certify the election results, and is rallying in Georgia on Monday night.
