Last Updated on March 15, 2021
The Washington Post has retracted fictional quotes that were falsely misattributed to then-President Donald Trump in an early January story about Trump’s phone call with the top elections investigator in Georgia, after audio was released this week that proved the quotes were wholly fictional.
In the original story, which was reported on by multiple mainstream far-left publications, President Trump was quoted telling the elections investigator to “find the fraud,” promising that she would be be “a national hero” if she complied with his demands.
Now, over two months after the story went viral, the Washington Post issued a correction that admitted the story had “misquoted” Trump.
“Two months after publication of this story, the Georgia secretary of state released an audio recording of President Donald Trump’s December phone call with the state’s top elections investigator,” The Washington Post correction stated. “The recording revealed that The Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call, based on information provided by a source.”
“Trump did not tell the investigator to ‘find the fraud’ or say she would be ‘a national hero’ if she did so. Instead, Trump urged the investigator to scrutinize ballots in Fulton County, Ga., asserting she would find ‘dishonesty’ there,” the correction continued. “He also told her that she had ‘the most important job in the country right now.’ A story about the recording can be found here. The headline and text of this story have been corrected to remove quotes misattributed to Trump.”
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"Trump did not tell the investigator to “find the fraud” or say she would be “a national hero” if she did so."https://t.co/PnQm0aJyOu pic.twitter.com/GEzAJmhWDY— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) March 15, 2021
President Trump’s phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was leaked in January, shining a light on the conflict within the Republican party following the controversial November election:
President Trump was speaking to Georgia officials, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and told them that Fulton County and others were shredding ballots, allegedly of Republican voters, to hide the fact that the President won the state, and not Joe Biden.
“I’m just telling you Ryan [Germany, Raffensperger’s lawyer], they’re shredding ballots,” President Trump said. “You should look at that very carefully, because that’s so illegal. You may not even believe it because it’s so bad. They’re shredding ballots because they think we’re going to eventually get there, because we’ll eventually get into Fulton [County]. In my opinion it’s never too late.”
The President noted that only 11,000 votes needed to be recovered in order to flip the state back to him. “We have far more than that as it stands now. We’ll have more and more,” Trump added. The President has faced criticism from the mainstream media and liberal commentators, claiming that the focus on “finding” 11,000 votes is proof he is trying to create votes out of thin air.
