US House Democrats Ask FBI To Open Criminal Probe Into Trump 'Election Crimes' - Letter

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 04th January, 2021) US House Democratic lawmakers Ted Lieu and Kathleen Rice on Monday sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray urging him to open a criminal investigation into President Donald Trump's conspiracy to commit election crimes during a recent telephone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

"We believe Donald Trump engaged in solicitation of, or conspiracy to commit, a number of election crimes. We ask you to open an immediate criminal investigation into the President," the letter said.

Lieu and Rice said the evidence that Trump was trying to solicit election fraud in violation of United States Federal and Georgia state law is now in the open.

On Sunday, the Washington Post published a leaked recording of the January 2 call between Trump and Raffensperger.

Trump said during the call that he won in Georgia by hundreds of thousands of votes but did not need to prove the entire election fraud and asked Raffenserger to "find" 11,780 votes in order to affirm his victory.

According to the transcript, Trump criticized Raffensperger and warned that the voter fraud, on which the president blames his defeat, is a criminal offense, and suggested to Georgia's official that he "can't let that happen."

Georgia, a traditionally Republican state, has already recounted its ballots three times, each time revealing that Democrat Joe Biden beat Trump by a narrow margin. As a result, Biden, whose inauguration is slated for January 20, won all 16 electors from Georgia.