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brad raffensperger stood up, did the right thing, was under direct threat on tape by the president of the united states to find 11,000 votes so he could win the election. raffensperger was kneekneecappe his own political party and now republican congress men are running to hold that office so the next time, they would do the will of the trumpist figure. that's why we need to keep our eye on the ball because this is not over. what we've learned, it's going the opposite way in some critical states. it's interesting, this is so egregious, what the president did, and the systems republicans are putting in place because of a lie. in many places it's working and who knows what effect it's going to have on elections to come. mr. harwood, we're getting so many new details about just how far the former president went in his attempts to overturn the election. do you think republicans just don't care that he was essentially attempting a coup? are they good with coups now? >> look, the republican party is gripped with fear that they are not going to be able to win elections fair and square. and s

and got no help in his fraudulent scheme from brad raffensperger and the truth is coming out. the facts can be twisted, but they can't be denied. opponents of mask mandates in one tennessee school district showing their rage. up next, two medical professionals who attended the school-board meeting talk about their experience. >> we know who you are. >> we know who you are. >> you can leave, freely, but we will find you and we know who you are. >> you will never be allowed in public, again. (vo) how do you know when you've found your team? they all might look a little different. they might find each other for different reasons. maybe you're trying something new, or you've done this before. whether you're winning, or just doing your best. when you're on the lanes, they're right behind you. reunite with your team. go bowling. [sfx: radio being tuned] welcome to allstate. ♪ [band plays] ♪ a place where everyone lives life well-protected. ♪ and even when things go a bit wrong, we've got your back. here, things work the way you wish they would. and better protection costs a whole lo

because you know, brad raffensperger stood up, did the right thing, was under direct threat on tape by the president of the united states to find 11,000 votes to effectively flip the election. he held. but we don't want to underestimate what means for the guardrails of our democracy. raffensperger was kneecapped by his own political party and now trump congressmen are running to hold that office implicitly so that the next time this might occur they would do the will of a trumpist figure. and that's the real danger here. that's why we've got to keep our eye on the ball because this is not over. there needs to be real accountability. and then an implementation of what we've learned to help avoid it again. but it's going the opposite way in some critical states. >> and it's just interesting. this is so egregious, what the former president did, and the systems that republicans are putting in place because of a lie. and in many places it's working and who knows what effect it's going to have on elections to come. mr. harwood, we're getting so many new details about just how far the former

those who had the courage to stand up to trump, people like brad raffensperger, secretary of state ofeing replaced with people and laws that will make it easier to subvert the will of the people if that's what the political pressure puts on them to make them do. >> i think people look at that and say in the words of sinclair lewis, can't happen here. but it can. i don't think people understand how out of date our federal election laws are, frankly the constitution is in terms of presidential elections, at least. but these states, they can get away with it, right? >> well, you know, the constitution itself says that states -- state legislatures can literally take away the power of voters to choose the president and they can choose the president themselves. so you can have a state pass a law that says we're not going to have an election for president. that's right there in article 2. i think that would be politically unpopular, but this is kind of getting the same way in the back door where there's been at least in arizona, a proposal that if the state legislature doesn't agree that the

forget about whether it was or not, just say it, then you can apply that to what he said to brad raffensperger, just as you said. and then becomes more nefarious. that's why these notes, and i'm sure there's more, lawrence -- washington report said he was calling over every days before january. 60 think brad raffensperger was the only republican official in any of the states that he was trying to overturn in which he was trying to overturn the election that he was calling? of course not. he brought in the republican legislators from michigan to the white house to try to convince them to overturn the election. i am certain if you dug a little deeper -- deeper, what is not public is a lot more can spiritual confidence like he said to the department of justice. >> another place where there is more, and you know as a prosecutor, if you got these notes and you are looking an investigation of donald trump, you know they are just notes and they are actually incomplete sentences and there are symbols instead of words. it is entirely likely that jeffrey rosen, donahue, the people who were hearing this

trump himself was strong armor bill barr, strong armor brad raffensperger, strong arming state legislatorshe strong man. they've now weaponized through appointments of election appointments, state law and others. they're institutionalizing lots of little strong men and women so they don't need a strong man so they can subvert and suppress the vote in all these small and large way at the local, state and national level. and so this is a big problem. and it's a little unclear, lawrence, where exactly this process is going to go. but i can tell you what you said the biggest democratic county, the most voters of color. if any county in the state voted for biden, over 70%. and this diverse county now has a three white man majority republican panel that's going to come in to review what they've been up to. and then they have broad powers to go back to the state election board, an unelected body -- brad raffensperger himself pointed out these are unelected unaccounted for folks that are going to be able to potentially take over that process. so this is going to be potentially a long process. we'r

then, you can apply that to what he said to brad raffensperger, just as you said, and it becomes much more nefarious. and that's why these notes and, i'm sure, there's more, lawrence. i mean, "the washington post" reported that he was calling over to the department of justice every day in the lead-up to january 6th. and do you think that brad raffensperger was the only republican official, in any of the states that he was trying to overturn -- in which he was trying to overturn the election that he was calling? of course not. he brought in the republican legislators from michigan to the white house to try to convince them to overturn the election. i am certain that if you dug a little bit deeper, what is not public is a lot more conspiratorial comments, like what he said to the department of justice. >> well, another place where there's more, you know as a prosecutor, if you -- if you got these notes. and you're looking at an investigation of donald trump. you know that they're just notes, and they're actually incomplete sentences and there's symbols, instead of words. and so, in fact

>> well, i think that's a great question, and specifically let's talk about brad raffensperger. to be a person of integrity in the midst of that election, seemingly. i don't know him. seemingly a decent person that was going to stand up for the principles that we did push back on the republicans, but the republican pressure and the republican base pressure to put in place vote impediments and also vote nullification -- and we can talk about in a minute why they're doing that, why they're doing it has been relentless. in the end, brad raffensperger is not strong enough to stand up to that heat over a relentless amount of time, to keep pushing, pushing, pushing. so i think he folded on this because from that pressure, even though i think originally he is a decent guy who has integrity, he folded. this is an organized national plan that the republicans are doing, and it is because -- and we've had this conversation before and, as i mentioned yesterday, the census bureau numbers pointed this out, why this is happening. it is because they know they can't win elections if the electora

again, we know about the phone call to brad raffensperger and that he asked him to find 11,000 votes and asked for favor, told the justice department, you don't have to find anything, just say this, leave the rest to me. and we know they actually wanted georgia republicans to basically throw out the election, to elect a slate of pro-trump members of the congress. in context of the voter suppression laws going on today, brings it all into sharper relief. >> it sure does, and this guy jeff clark was writing or drafting these letters to all the six states that ended up going for joe biden. and i think that what we see is the beginning of the effort to overturn the election. and i think that now voter suppression efforts are just a continuation of the efforts and unfortunately what we're probably going to see more of in run up to 2024. all the more reason we need transparency as to what happened in aftermath of the 2020 election as well. >> i'm pleased we've seen someone willing to stand up to injustice, and jeffrey rozen was willing to stand out. other people i have interviewed say ther

. >> secretary of state brad raffensperger says the election integrity act protects voters and keep elections safe told the judge you compare our state georgia, 2 other states such as new york, new jersey, wardell work. we have very progressive lenient election loss. we have 17 days of early voting. none of those states match that. but yet the department of justice is not sought filing lawsuits. these democrats states just last week democratic lawmakers spoke at a hearing in atlanta, including senator raphael warnock and amy klobuchar. >> on how senate bill 2 '02 disenfranchises people, especially african american voters. but republicans say the law is being misinterpreted. you look at her our election process. it's far more accessible that all these liberal states that want us to emulate. none of them have the accessibility and the security that you do. we also have no excuse absentee voting. if you look at how easy it is to vote. we've now are asking for people to use a driver's license. so we can and i've got to tell democrats say the law limits drop boxes and prevent voters from getting f

the phone and calls georgia action top election officials, including the secretary of state brad raffensperger>> all i want to the do is this, i just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. because we won the state. >> okay. and that was just one of 18 attempted calls to the secretary of state since election day. and that weekend, january 3rd, trump appears to abandon his threats to replace rosen after top justice officials threatened to resign en mass. two days before the election, this is what we heard from trump publicly. >> over the past few weeks, we've demonstrated that we've won the election in a happened slide. the fact is we won the presidential election. we won it big and we're going to win tomorrow. >> what was tomorrow? hmm. january 6th. the day of the insurrection. trump's efforts to overturn the election then came to a head. his supporters gathering in washington and trump taking matters into his own hands as he whips them up into a frenzy and unleashes them onto the capitol where the lawmakers were meeting to validate the election results. >> we fight like he

meadows set up the infamous phone call in which trump would ask georgia secretary of state, brad raffensperger to find 11,780 votes. meadows was a willing participant in the call. >> mr. secretary, obviously there is -- there are allegations where we believe that not every vote or fair vote and legal vote was counted, and that's at odds with the representation from the secretary of state's office. what i'm hopeful for, is there some way that we can -- we can find some kind of an agreement to look at this a little bit more fully? 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 the spirit of cooperation and compromise, is there something that we can at least have a discussion to look at some of these allegations to find a path forward that's less litigous? >> the day after "the washington post" released that extraordinary phone call, bjay pak abruptly resigned. at the time we did not know why. now we do. today in testimony to the senate judicia

he's the chief operating officer for georgia's secretary of state, brad raffensperger. mr.perger oversees elections across georgia. i asked him about fulton county in our conversation. here's part of what mr. sterling said. >> look at june and the primary election, there were thousands of georgians, thousands of democrats, probably hundreds or thousands of republicans that were disen franchised by the incompetence of the office, unfortunately, in a very stressful time of covid. i'm not going to discount that, but every other large county managed to get their work done. fulton department and they have a history of it. >> chairman, what's your response to that? >> well, let me put this in perspective. mr. sterling, first of all, is a former opponent of mine who lost. so keep that in mind. it's no secret that georgia and more specifically fulton county is under attack and we're not going to stand for it. the 2020 elections are over. the votes are counted three times, one time by hand. the results were substantially the same in each of the three recount. that election has been

closely what was happening january 6th what trump was up to and listened to the phone call with brad raffensperger in georgia, this is in news this week, every day we hear of concrete and specific empties to actually overturn the election results >> yeah it's a constant drip, right. to your point we've heard about it. there's been little pieces coming out here and there. but this week i think to your point is very accurate, that we are with hearing a -- much more concrete efforts that was systematic. trying to go forward and push forward. i think what's going to be -- what got my attention on capitol hill what's interesting is what does the january 6th commission and committee they are going to investigate into this? are they getting into this or stay more closely aligned on what happened january 6th? because this predates that but could help the investigative and subpoena power to uncover more >> renae, part of the smu is the republicans in congress are trying to rewrite the story of january 6th, each day we get more evidence that it wasn't only that but worse. at some point mainstream republican

that becomes a little harder than that weird christmas-time phone call from donald trump to brad raffenspergerto prevent against this happening. it depended on good people of goodwill to say i'm not doing this. >> it is frightening. we should all be frightened. i think it's easy to discount events when you're living through them. roland is dead on the money. we need to be very focused on what's happening now. i don't say that in an alarmist fashion, just pragmatically as an american. what trump and his cronies tried to do after this election with getting state legislators to throw the election to trump that's become law in a number of states. >> yes. >> for instance, georgia, which permits the legislature to intervene. the good comparison isn't watergate. it's the civil war. you made that point at the top of the show, an effort to run the union usunder. the difference is at the end of the civil war, there were people who came forward and surrendered, who acknowledged they were wrong. trump has never done that. trump is dedicated to moving forward. he will do it again. he will subvert the law.

for example, the georgia secretary of state, brad raffensperger.eff rosen. those people stood up to trump and refused to carry out his -- his coup attempt. but we may not be that lucky, next time around because right now, republicans are purging anybody from the party who will put loyalty to the constitution above loyalty to donald trump. they are setting the stage for another coup attempt, in 2024. >> michael, you wrote all about the chaos in the final days of the trump presidency. and how even white house officials were worried that trump was -- was a danger. when you see this new reporting, what does it say about the president's desperation just to remain in power? >> yeah, that's right, don. i mean, it is well beyond chaos in these last -- in these last -- in this last month, this last couple of months. the people around him were worried about what lengths he was willing to go to, to hold onto power. i mean, i have a story in the book here about in the early november, don, was when trump started talking about getting rid of bill barr. when he o

georgia, and the fact that he was trying to get the military involved and that he was pressuring brad raffensperger in georgia and other state officials, what i would do as a prosecutor is take a step back and look at all of the different efforts that donald trump undertook himself to overturn this election and i would put everything this context and then with january 6th as kind of the culmination of that effort. but if you narrow it to january 6th, it's a much tougher case, and i think you feed to broaden it out and see if there is a conspiracy among donald trump and others, perhaps some involved in january 6th on the front lines, but some involved perhaps behind the scenes. >> 30 seconds left. i want to ask. you mentioned others. the citizens for responsibility and ethics submitted a request to investigate jeffrey clark who they say played a significant role in trying to overturn the election. >> absolutely of the department of justice said that the inspector general's office is investigating jeffrey clark. he is an employee -- was an employee of the department of justice. so that is a natural e

the first time and replaced them with flunkies and even people who were being praised like brad raffenspergergia are now playing ball. if we have people in the states willing to overturn elections even if the justice department is not willing to go along, if no one is prosecuted for trying it before, do you worry as much as i do that they'll just do it again but now will have done a dry run and know how to do it successfully? >> if nobody is prosecuted for this criminal, this corrupt attempt to overthrow our government, because let's be clear. we think of a governmental overthrow as ousting the sitting president. but the sitting president not permitting the lawfully elected president from assuming power is a governmental overthrow. and if we don't address it now with aggressive investigations and criminal prosecutions, we can expect more of the same in the future. and i think the one fail safe we still have is the courts have shown an inclination to hold. so even if this letter from jeffrey clark had the desired result and the georgia state legislature started playing with the electors, that

read this story and looked back to when that call came out of donald trump on the phone with brad raffensperger resigned two days after that calm. i wonder what else you find significant in terms of what we know now about an event at the time was suspicious but we didn't have a lot of visibility into it? >> you know, i do feel like i am putting out in big pink letters mystery solved because it was something i had tried to understand as well. b.j. pack, the timing was so interesting. as reporters we were all sniffing and wondering what has happened. now he told senate investigators what was really going on behind the scenes. and what also is fascinating about this, nicole is, it's a part of a pattern, not just regarding election fraud claims that the president was trying to make. but also of a pattern of u.s. attorneys that trump either directly or indirectly drove out of office when they didn't do what he wanted. so, first things first, the election fraud. this is the president sort of grasping at the 20th straw for how to stay in power and it follows, you know, some sort of nutty ideas of mich

anyone who watched what donald trump tried to do in 2020 knows that brad raffensperger is anxious aboutng if he is telling the truth. republican election officials in michigan should be very anxious if they're telling the truth. republicans in congress who don't like what the ex-president did trying to turn the entire government inside out to overturn the most secure election in history should be in this fight with you and with the rev and with cory booker. how do we get there? >> well, i think there's two approaches that we use, and you know from the last time i visited with you i'm a nut it and bolts guy. the first is to remember where all of this comes from, where all of the bills whether in texas or elsewhere come from, and it comes from this idea that the sitting president isn't really the president and that donald trump should be the president. i think we can all agree that's not the case. so if you don't get on board with this voting rights agenda, you are giving credence to that. second though, and this has been the fact with us with some of the congress people and senators, thi