Democrats on Jan. 4 suggested they wouldn’t try impeaching President Donald Trump over his phone call with Georgia’s secretary of state, although several asked the FBI to open a criminal probe.
Speaking on Capitol Hill, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, noted that there are only 16 days until Inauguration Day.
“We’re not looking backward; we’re looking forward to the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20,” he said, referring to the Democratic presidential nominee who has claimed victory in the 2020 election.
House Democrats will keep focusing on the public health and economic crisis stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, he added.
In a tweet, Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.) sounded a similar theme.
“I guess we need to consider something we never had to pre-Trump: continuing to commit new impeachable offenses gets easier as your term winds down because there’s no more time to impeach you,” he said.
“The bottom line is, when you add it all up and then you start adding, you know, 300,000 fake ballots,” Trump alleged, mentioning evidence pointing to possible illegal votes.
“We’re looking into every one of those things that you mentioned,” one official told Trump on the call. “Let me tell you what we are seeing. What we’re seeing is not at all what you’re describing.”
Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller said the full recording showed Trump was “spot-on in his criticisms of the terrible job Raffensperger did.”
In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.) asked the bureau to launch a criminal probe, quoting the portion of the call where Trump asked Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.”
“As Members of Congress and former prosecutors, we believe Donald Trump engaged in solicitation of, or conspiracy to commit, a number of election crimes. We ask you to open an immediate criminal investigation into the President,” they wrote.
Raffensperger, meanwhile, said on Jan. 4 that his office probably wouldn’t open an investigation into the call but suggested Fulton County’s district attorney could start one.
“I understand that the Fulton County District Attorney wants to look at it. Maybe that’s the appropriate venue for it to go,“ he said on ABC’s ”Good Morning America.”
The Fulton County district attorney couldn’t immediately be reached by The Epoch Times.
Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), told a rally in Georgia on Jan. 3 that the call “was certainly the voice of desperation, most certainly that, and a boldfaced abuse of power by the president of the United States.”
“They filed six lawsuits—not one, not two—six lawsuits trying to challenge your voice in that election. And they failed every time. And the people’s voice remains standing,” she added.
Trump and others went to court, but “the courts have denied us hearings, saying it’s more of a legislative issue,” Perdue said. “So what the president said in this tape today is no different than what he’s been saying for the last few months.”
