AP Photo/Ben Gray
- Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger ghosted Sen. Lindsey Graham in November 2020.
- In a newly-released transcript, Raffensperger said Graham made an odd request during Georgia's recount.
- Graham insinuated that Georgia's signature verification should work similar to credit card companies.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said that his office never called South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham back in November 2020 after he said the lawmaker tried to insert himself in Georgia's recount of 2020 election results.
Additional transcripts were made public by the January 6 committee on Tuesday, following the release of the committee's 845-page final report last week.
In the transcript of the committee's interview with Raffensperger, he testified that Graham called his office on November 13, 2020, as a vote recount by hand was underway in Georgia, with an odd request. Raffensperger said that he was rubbed the wrong way by Graham's ask and that he gave the senator the cold shoulder.
Raffensperger's office did not immediately return Insider's request for comment.
"He mentioned about credit card companies," Raffensperger told the committee in a November 30, 2021, interview. "He says, they get millions of signatures every day and they run that through their machines."
In the transcript, Raffensperger explained that his staff member Gabe Sterling handled the talking on the call where Graham tried to pitch an alternate signature matching process to the hand recount and audit, which was underway at the time.
In December 2020, after Raffensperger's office and Georgia ballot workers had endured weeks of harassment and election conspiracies from Trump's camp, Sterling received a noose at his home.
During the call with Graham, Raffensperger said that there hadn't been an outright ask to find additional votes like Trump requested in January 2021 but maintained the conversation was ominous.
"He was talking about a process of using companies, and I didn't know exactly where he was going," Raffensperger said. "I just didn't want to go where he was — where I thought he might want to go. I just thought it best not to call him back."
Graham's office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
"And so I told him — we finished up the call, and I said, 'Well, let me talk to our general counsel,' who wasn't on the call, 'and we'll get back to you,'" Raffensperger said in his November interview with the committee, of the conversation with Graham. "And we just never got back to him."
In January 2021, Raffensperger was asked by former President Donald Trump to "find" 11,780 votes to overturn the state's 2020 election results, a move which Raffensperger said led to months of death threats to him and his family. In an interview with Insider, Raffensperger maintained that election misinformation was the biggest threat to democracy in the US.
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