Show an ad over header. AMP

Georgia's Secretary of State: It's time for Trump to accept that Biden won Georgia

22 November 2020
Dan Ackermann

Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, tells Axios it's time for President Donald Trump and the state GOP to accept that Joe Biden won Georgia and focus on the two Senate runoffs that will determine control of the Senate.

What they're saying: “The Republican Party's sole job is to win campaigns — and that's to raise money and turn out voters," Raffensperger told Axios in an interview on Sunday. "And when they don't get it done, they look for scapegoats.”

  • “They didn't get it done,” he said. “And they better get it done" with the runoffs. "I say that as Republican.”

Georgia's Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, both Republicans, failed to cross 50% in their respective general election contests, forcing runoffs under state law that will be held Jan. 5, 2021.

  • Raffensperger says he'll vote for Loeffler and Perdue, even though they've both been part of Trump's pressure campaign to get him to resign for failing to find enough supposedly illegal votes to reverse Biden's win.
  • Raffensperger said he's had to increase security around his own movements after receiving death threats from people unhappy that Trump didn't win Georgia.

Driving the news: Georgia will run ballots through voting machines one more time at the Trump campaign's insistence, with the goal of completing the final count by Friday — after conducting a hand recount and on Friday certifying Biden's win by some 12,000 votes.

The big picture: Nearly three weeks after the election and with Biden winning 306 votes in the Electoral College, some 79% of Trump voters think that the election was “stolen” according to an online, national survey conducted by Seven Letter Insight of 1500 respondents.

  • 70% of all voters accept the result, but only 38% of Trump voters do, according to the survey.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

Section2

Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.