Georgia State Secretary Brad Ravensberger said - in his first press interview after his phone was leaked with US President Donald Trump - that he had fought rumors and allegations related to the elections and exposed their fraud, but Trump still believed them, he said.

The leaked call between Trump and Ravensburger sparked a storm of criticism of the outgoing president, who continues to deny that his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, has won the last presidential election and claims it was rigged.

The Washington Post website obtained a recording of Trump's call last Saturday, in which he asked Ravensburger - a Republican official - more than 11,000 votes to bridge the gap between him and Biden, and turned the result in this state that was among the states. Several seesaws, and saw 5 million voters vote.

Responding to the call, Ravensberger said in an interview with ABC that he thought it inappropriate to talk with Trump, given the existence of lawsuits in the courts between the two parties, which required - according to him - the participation of lawyers and advisors in the These calls.

"During this call, he (Trump) was the most recent, while we listened more. But I want to confirm that the data the president has is wrong. He said that there are hundreds of dead people who voted, but we only found two cases, and this is an example of the bad data that we have. Get it. "

The Georgia state secretary said he had worked from the start to "debunk the allegations, but President Trump still believes them."

He added, "We exposed the rumor related to the State Farm Stadium here in Atlanta, as well as the one related to Ware County, which was saying that there is a difference in votes of 26%, and we discovered that this difference does not exceed 0.26%. ".

On the other hand, the President of the Republican Party in Georgia David Schaeffer announced that President Trump had filed two lawsuits, one federal and the other local, against State Secretary Brad Ravensburger for "leaking a secret phone call."

Demand for a criminal investigation

Interactions continue in the United States after the Washington Post published that call on Sunday, as Democrats strongly condemned Trump's pressure to overturn the election results in Georgia, and decided to present a bill in Congress to reprimand him.

Kamala Harris, Vice President-elect Biden, described Trump's efforts to cancel the election results in Georgia as a "daring abuse of power."

Harris said in a speech she delivered during an election campaign in Savannah, Georgia, in support of Democratic Party candidates in the run-off to select state representatives in the Senate, that the current president's actions reveal the "voice of despair" within him.

For his part, Bob Bauer, senior advisor to the President-elect, said that the leaked call is conclusive evidence that Trump has pressured an official in his party to push him to cancel the legal vote count approved in his state, and fabricate other votes instead.

He added that the call embodies the entire shameful narrative about Trump's attack on American democracy, as he put it.

In the context, the head of the House Intelligence Committee, Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, considered the call among the worst cases of abuse of power by Trump, and it may be of a criminal nature, as he put it.

For his part, Senior Democrat in the Senate, Dick Durban, called for a criminal investigation into Trump's leaked call, while his colleague Debbie Wasserman Schultz condemned the act of a "hopeless, corrupt president."

Meanwhile, Democratic lawmaker from Georgia, Hank Johnson, said that he will present in the House of Representatives a draft resolution Monday to reprimand Trump, for his efforts to reverse the election result in Georgia.

Split Republicans

The leaked call came at a time when Republicans are divided over the position on certifying the results of the presidential election in Congress next Wednesday.

Senator Lindsey Graham - who is the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a close confidant of Trump - saw the move of some of his colleagues to obstruct the ratification procedures, "a political maneuver that will not reach a conclusion."

The former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan also expressed his opposition to those moves, and said in a statement that questioning the electoral college votes and the victory of Joe Biden, strikes the foundations of the republic.

Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger also called on his party members not to go along with the president in his campaign to overturn the election result.

The outgoing president had announced that he would attend a demonstration against the election results in Washington, DC, in conjunction with the convening of both houses of Congress for the final approval of the results.

I will be there.

Historic day!

https://t.co/k6LStsWpfy

- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2021

On the other hand, 10 former US defense ministers published a joint statement in The Washington Post, in which they said that the time for questioning the election results had passed, after the courts decided the cases and the states ratified the results.

The ministers who signed the statement - namely: Mark Esper, Ashton Carter, William Cohen, Robert Gates, Chuck Hagel, James Mattis, Lyon Bantia, Donald Rumsfeld, William Barry and Dick Cheney - added that efforts aimed at involving the armed forces in resolving electoral disputes, That would take the country into dangerous, illegal and unconstitutional territory.

Meanwhile, Georgia is witnessing - tomorrow - Tuesday - a run-off to select state representatives in the Senate, and the ballot will determine whether Republicans keep their majority in the House or the Democrats wrest it from them.

Opinion polls show an intense competition between the two Democratic candidates: John Usoff and Raphael Warnock, and their Republican rivals: Kelly Loveler and David Purdue.

It is scheduled that outgoing President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden will go to Georgia today, in support of the candidates from each party.

In the event that the Democrats win the two seats, they will extract the majority from the Republicans in the Senate, as the two parties will equal the number of seats with a weighted vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, and if this is achieved, Biden will rule more comfortably.