Obama's solicitor general said Trump talked 'like a mafia boss, and not a particularly smart mafia boss' one in his call with Georgia's elections chief

President Donald Trump boarding Air Force One.

REUTERS/Tom Brenner

• Neal Katyal, President Barack Obama's former acting solicitor general, said President Donald Trump talked "like a mafia boss" during his leaked call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
• On Sunday, The Washington Post published audio of a call in which Trump asked Raffensperger to "find" 11,780 votes so that the state's election result could be overturned.
• "There's nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you've recalculated," Trump told Raffensperger, according to the audio.
• Katyal told MSNBC on Sunday: "This is the way that people in organized crime rings talk."
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Neal Katyal, the former acting solicitor general to President Barack Obama, has said that President Donald Trump talked "like a mafia boss" during his leaked call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

On Sunday, The Washington Post published a recording of a Saturday call in which Trump asked Raffensperger to "find" 11,780 votes so that his election loss in the state could be challenged. President-elect Joe Biden won Georgia by nearly 13,000 votes out of about 5 million votes cast.

Trump has claimed that he was robbed of thousands of votes in Georgia, and urged Raffensperger to locate the so-called missing votes.

"The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry," Trump said, according to the audio. "And there's nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you've recalculated."

In response to Trump's advances, Raffensperger said: "The data you have is wrong."

Appearing on MSNBC on Sunday, Katyal said: "It sounds like Donald Trump is talking like a mafia boss, and not a particularly smart mafia boss at that. This is the way that people in organized crime rings talk."

"You know, maybe that works in the Soviet Union or something. It certainly hasn't been the way that America, the American government has operated."

—MSNBC (@MSNBC) January 3, 2021

Katyal went on to say that the president's demands were "truly an impeachable offense," a characterization echoed by a number of other Democratic Party figures.

"I absolutely think it's an impeachable offence," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday, with Rep. Hank Johnson also saying that Trump's conduct was "a violation of state and federal law."

Speaking on Sunday, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris called the phone call "a bald-faced, bold abuse of power by the president of the United States."

Noah Bookbinder, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said Sunday: "If this isn't impeachable conduct, then literally nothing is."

Trump supporters seen in Pasadena, California, on January 1, 2021.

Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images

Trump, meanwhile, was displeased at Raffensperger's lack of support on the call, tweeting on Sunday: "He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the "ballots under table" scam, ballot destruction, out of state 'voters', dead voters, and more. He has no clue!"

Read the full transcript of the president's leaked call with Raffensperger here or listen to the full recording published by The Post here.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Contributer : Business Insider https://ift.tt/3b7mPOj

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