Phone Call Used To Impeach Trump Over GA Election Was Illegally Recorded, Testimony Confirms

Newly released depositions in Georgia confirm Federalist reporting that Democrats’ attempt to imprison President Donald Trump for his 2020 election challenge in the state was based on a misinterpreted and illegally recorded phone call.

For years, Democrats and the propaganda press claimed President Donald Trump had asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to steal the election, and further claimed their allegations were supported by a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between the two men. In fact, Trump asked Raffensperger to take seriously the legal challenge that his campaign had made, which cited numerous areas where votes were in question. The call became the foundation for an impeachment effort and for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ since-discredited and dismissed racketeering case against Trump and his allies.

The newly released testimony transcript confirms what The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway reported in 2024: The call wasn’t just misconstrued, it was illegally recorded by Raffensperger’s “second in command.”

Jordan Fuchs — Raffensperger’s deputy chief of staff — admitted under oath that she recorded the call while she was in Florida, a two-party consent state that requires all parties on a call to consent to a recording.

During the deposition, special prosecutor Nathan Wade, who was also Fani Willis’ lover, noted that Fuchs received “use immunity” to testify before the grand jury, meaning she could admit what she had done without being prosecuted for any crime.

“I recorded the phone call,” Fuchs admitted to the grand jury, shortly before admitting she immediately leaked it to The Washington Post, which had won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for its role in perpetuating the lie that Trump stole the 2016 election by colluding with Russia.

The call was the centerpiece of Democrats’ and the propaganda press’s “Get Trump” lawfare. Fuchs provided another leak to The Washington Post about another phone call from Trump a few days later. The Post later admitted its source — Fuchs — had provided false information about that call.

“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. He also told her that she had ‘the most important job in the country right now,'” read The Washington Post’s correction.

“Several other major media outlets — including NBC, ABC, USA Today, PBS, and CNN — ‘confirmed’ the fabricated quotes from the Post’s anonymous source by, get this, citing their own anonymous sources,” Mark Hemingway explained. House Democrats would go so far as to cite the fake contents in their impeachment proceedings against Trump.

Raffensperger’s office and the media they leaked to made it seem as though Trump was asking Raffensperger to commit fraud or do something illegal. But as The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway pointed out, “Anyone familiar with the lawsuit knew Trump was saying his team had already ‘found’ nearly 150,000 irregular or fraudulent votes and simply needed the secretary of state’s office to agree … just that fewer than 10 percent of them were problematic.” The provision of information from the secretary of state’s office was sought in part because of the urgent timing issues in play. The court date the Trump team had secured for their legal challenge was Jan. 8, after Congress was scheduled to certify the Electoral College votes.

As Mollie Hemingway further reported, Raffensperger’s team “kept asserting that Trump’s figures were wrong. Trump’s legal team kept asking Raffensperger to provide the state data and information that would enable them to see for themselves. For some reason, Raffensperger and his team have never been willing to share their data or reports.”

Newly released testimony from former Sen. David Perdue speaks to some of the problems faced by Republicans concerned about election administration in Georgia, including obstruction from state officials and legal dismissals of viable cases dealing with the many problems in Fulton County.

Perdue relayed a phone call he had with Vic Reynolds, who was the head of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation at the time. According to Perdue, Reynolds had previously told him about compelling video evidence, testimony, and bank records suggesting improper ballot harvesting. However, “We’re not going to investigate” because “I’m a team player. If the governor doesn’t want to investigate, we’re not going to investigate.” Perdue dryly noted that “For the record, subsequently he’s been promoted to Superior Court Judge of Cobb County.”

The circumstances of Fuchs’ recording of the phone call were detailed in a 2024 book, Find Me the Votes: A Hard-Charging Georgia Prosecutor, a Rogue President, and the Plot to Steal an American Election, by Mike Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman. At the time, Mollie Hemingway reported on the book’s bombshell revelation that Fuchs had illegally recorded the call.

“Fuchs has never talked publicly about her taping of the phone call; she learned, after the fact, that Florida where she was at the time is one of fifteen states that requires two-party consent for the taping of phone calls,” the book reported.

Isikoff and Klaidman went on to note that “Raffensperger’s office asked the January 6 committee not to call [Fuchs] as a witness for reasons the committee’s lawyers assumed were due to her potential legal exposure. The committee agreed.” Fuchs was later granted immunity to speak before the Fulton County grand jury, according to Hemingway’s reporting on the book, which is now confirmed by the released transcript.

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Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2