U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney on Monday said she found President Trump’s phone call disputing election results in Georgia with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “deeply troubling” and encouraged citizens to listen to it.
Cheney was commenting on the audio obtained by CBS News of a private phone call between Trump and Raffensberger where the president asked the Secretary of State to “find” enough votes to overturn the election results.
“I think that it was deeply troubling, and I think everybody ought to listen to the full hour of it,” Cheney said, according to a congressional pool report. “I think that’s it’s deeply troubling, and I’m just going to leave it at that.”
Of the many quotes pulled from the audio recording, the one that appears to have generated the most controversy is where the president asked the secretary of state to “find” the votes.
“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 said.
This is the third time in three days Cheney has commented on the election controversy. On Sunday she sent a 21-page memo to House Republicans stating that there was “no appropriate basis” for Congress to object to the Electoral College votes on January 6.
“Such objections set an exceptionally dangerous precedent, threatening to steal states’ explicit constitutional responsibility for choosing the President and bestowing it instead on Congress. This is directly at odds with the Constitution’s clear text and our core beliefs as Republicans,” she wrote.
On Monday, Cheney explained her opposition to an Electoral College challenge was not about President Trump but rather “following the Constitution.”
“Like all of you, I am thankful for the work President Trump and his administration has accomplished on behalf of Wyoming and our entire nation, and I am not happy about the result of the presidential election,” Cheney said.
“This vote in Congress is not about President Trump. It’s about following the Constitution and recognizing that the authority here rests with the states and the people, not the federal government,” she said.
Regarding the phone call, Raffensperger wouldn’t say during an appearance on Fox News on Monday whether he approved of the audio being leaked to the media.
“The information is out there. It is what it is,” Raffensperger said.
“That’s not an answer to my question,” the FOX News host said “Are you going to answer my question? Were you aware of the decision, and were you in favor of the decision to release the phone call, sir?”
“I think that we had to respond to the president’s Twitter, and we responded with the facts that were in the call,” Raffensperger said. “That’s how it got out there. So now the world can make up their own decisions, listen to the whole thing — both sides of the aisle, right down the middle. And they can make their own decisions.”
