Also hear from the incoming president of the United States, and then later tonight from the defeated one as both joe biden and Donald Trump Campaign ahead of tomorrows Runoff Elections to determine control of the senate. Thousands are already gathering for the republican rally in the county seat of Whitfield County which currently has the fifth highest Coronavirus Infection rate in the state according to the Atlanta Journal constitution. The virus has killed more than 500 americans today. Bringing the death toll to more than 352,000. And three weeks after the first vaccinations began the cdc says 4. 5 Million People have received the shot. Meanwhile, the president s focus as you can imagine, elsewhere. This afternoon he awarded the president ial medal of freedom, the nations highest civilian honor, by the way to, republican californias devin nunes. Joining me to talk about this, nbc news senior digital White House CorrespondentShannon Pettypiece across from the white house. Nbc news correspondent mike memoli in atlanta where hes covering president elect joe bidens visit and Campaign Stop there later today. Msnbc correspondent Garrett Haake on capitol hill. Shannon, lets start you, if i may. Just minutes ago secretary of state Brad Raffensperger talked with atlanta affiliate wxia tv. What did he have to say about that controversial phone call with President Trump . Yeah, well a few points he looked to make in that interview, of course, were going to hear from him in moments. One, pushing back on criticism for releasing the audio of this call saying that there was no privacy agreement with the president and that the president essentially broke any expectation of privacy when he mischaracterized that call. And if you recall before the audio and the transcript of this call were released, the president put out a tweet saying that the secretary of state was either unable or unwilling to address some of the president s concerns about these conspiracy theories like ballots being kept under tables and dead people voting in mass numbers. And said that the secretary of state had no clue and then after that, this audio was released. We also heard in that interview according to these tweets that have been released so far that the secretary of state plans no criminal investigation into this call, but he said that doesnt necessarily mean that other agencies like the District Attorney of Fulton County couldnt look into a criminal investigation, of course, theres been this allegation that the president was trying to pressure the secretary of state into changing the results of the election as you can hear in some of those audio excerpts. You know, i will add to this a bit of our own reporting from nbc news that the president , the white house, tried to call the georgia secretary of state 18 times and that he finally decided to take the call on this saturday afternoon. The call lasted about an hour, and now, of course, it has generated and spiraled into this back and forth between the president and the secretary of state. So remains to be seen whether we see another response for the president after we hear these remarks in a few minutes. Its also ignited quite a reaction across both parties there on capitol hill. Caveat to our viewers, were waiting for the georgia secretary of state, they put up a poster there from what i can tell, it say s claims and facts. It seems they may be going point by point with some of the president s claims that have been presented and the facts to refute them yet again. Garrett, lets talk about how this is playing out on capitol hill. An investigation that is some is getting some traction today. Were going to be speaking to representative ted liu in a little bit. How is it playing out there . Is there wide support for an investigation on capitol hill . Reporter the short answer is no. Its actually quite divisive. I was at a press conference with joakim jeffries, i asked him about the prospect after another phone call with another leader, in that case the president of ukraine, we ended up going down the road toward impeachment, could this phone call lead to more action by the house . Jeffries was pretty clear, he wants the Democratic Caucus to be moving forward. Focused on the fact that joe biden will be president of the United States in 16 days and to not be essentially looking backwards and fighting every battle with the outgoing Trump Administration. I can tell you, you know, the response to the phone call on the republican side has been about what you would expect. I heard from a number of republican lawmakers who said, look, this is just the way the president talks. Were sort of used to hearing this kind of thing, no big deal. Although, there have been some republicans who called him out for it most notably liz cheney in the house leadership whos become quite the prominent trump critic of late. Also pat toomey, republican senator of pennsylvania, notably retiring at the end of his term in two years who called this kind of the sad last chapter of the president s attempts to overturn this election. So, you know, it is reverberating a bit here in the capitol, but its not clear how much legs this will have in terms of other investigations. Or other action taken by either of these bodies. Garrett, stand by. Mike, could it be that the Biden Justice department, he has yet to name an attorney general, yet one more factor to take into this consideration as he makes that choice. Is it possible that the incoming attorney general and the Justice Department end up investigating this . Is this where they want to go . Well, ayman, as you say, we dont know who joe biden is going to choose yet as his attorney general. Thats an announcement we could get as soon as this week. We do know because biden has been very clear about it what he wants out of his Justice Department. Hes made clear in a departure from what he believes has been the case under donald trump, he wants an independent Justice Department free of political influence from the white house. You heard when i asked the president elect a few weeks ago whether as part of his search for attorney general hes raised an issue of an investigation of his own son. That is something that biden says has not been the case. Its hard to see how he hasnt had a conversation with potential attorneys general about how they would pursue potential investigations of President Trump or his administration officials. Especially given what we have heard reporting from carol lee and myself about the fact that joe biden does not want his administration being consumed by investigations of his predecessor, but as garrett knows well, were already hearing talk from democrats on capitol hill about potentially in these final weeks of his term as president launching an impeachment proceeding, censure, what investigations on capitol hill might look like going forward. You can see we are preparing for reporter as we now hear the secretary of state. All right. Mike, let me just interrupt you really quickly. Were going to cross over to georgia. Gabriel sterling is speaking now at the lectern. Lets listen in to what he has to. 962,000 mailin absentee ballots received. 281,376 that are still outstanding. Im hoping to get the military received and outstanding before the end of this press conference which will hopefully come in on my cell phone. Early vote in personobviously, we smashed a record for turnout on that one. 2 million. Were looking at 3 million votes that have already been cast across georgia. The previous record for a Runoff Election was in 2004. Thats right. Saxby chambliss race, 2. 1 million votes that were cast. That is the previous record and the election in 2018, Runoff Election, we saw just over 1. 5 million. So, obviously, a lot of inter t interest, im sure georgians are tired of tv ads, text messages, voicemails, and mail. So its all going to end very soon. Hopefully. In preparation for the election tomorrow on electionday voting we have 6,963 poll pads. They finished the final loading of their data today before lunch. We had about 21 counties, the last ones to go, most completed over the weekend. There will be a total of 6, sorry, 2,648 polling locations open on election day. We have a couple of them closed due to some shortages and some other covidrelated items but the total we have right now is 2,648. We dont anticipate changes but that always may happen. We have shared those locations with Georgia Power and the emcs in case theres power issues or any other issues that might come up from that. And weve seen a few shortages of poll workers, specifically saw morgan county, theyre going to lose two locations because of that. Now, what weve seen also is a difference in the turnout models depending on Congressional District and county in the state so far. And large part driven by the continuing misinformation and disinformation concerning the value of peoples votes in this state. The secretary wants me to make clear that everybodys vote is going to count. Everybody ses vote did count. I want to make that abundantly clear. If you care about, you know, the values and directions of the nation you want to see, it is your obligation to turn out and vote tomorrow, democrat or republican. However, right now, given the nature of the president s statements and several other people who have been aligned with him previously have literally had a rally saying protest and dont vote, were specifically asking you and telling you, please turn out and vote tomorrow. One of the things specifically ive had to argue with people whom ive known for 20 years, they say, well, we feel like our election was stolen. We feel like our votes dont count. I said, okay, im not acknowledging the election was stolen because it wasnt. Im not acknowledging there was massive voter fraud because there wasnt. If you believe in your heart of hearts that there was, the best thing for you to do is to turn out and vote and make it harder for them to steal. If thats what you genuinely in your heart of hearts believe, turn out and vote. There are people who fought and died and marched and prayed and voted to get the right to vote. Throwing it away because you have some feeling that it may not matter is selfdestructive. Ultimately. And a selffulfilling prophecy in the end. So, everybody who cares about the future of this nation should turn out and vote. Its vitally important. Its absolutely important. And the reason im having to stand here today is because there are people in positions of authority and respect who have said their votes didnt count and its not true. And im going to do it again and im going to go through all this antidisinformation monday. Its whackamole again, its groundhog day again. Im going to talk about things ive talked about repeatedly for two months. Im going to do it again one last time im hoping because at the oebdn end of the day we wan make sure people understand their votes count. Every person, every voice, matters. I know theres people who have fought for that for years about this. Lets start again and, yes, some of this is going to come out of the continuing statements from the president , and some of his supporters. Stay firm. All right. This has been what has been conflated over several different things. We have multiple scanned ballots. We have ruby freeman. We have the leak, they said a water main break which wasnt a water main break. So in order to be fully transparent, one of the things we did, we had a local media organization, justin over here, we went through hours and hours, walked through frame by frame and showed what happened. So lets start. If you go to securevotega. Com, we posted all the videos from state farm for that day that cover the relevant periods. 5 23 a. M. , they walk in and discover what is essentially a pond on the floor where you can see water coming out of the sky. So they say, okay, we cant do our work here this morning. They call in, the state farm people, not Fulton County people which is one of the other things they said. No Fulton County work order to fix the water leak. Guess what, it wasnt in a Fulton County facility, it was in state farm. They were the ones who fixed the leak. A urinal overflowed, they were turned off, guess what, nobody is in state farm because of covid. They turned off those things, went over the uredge of the relf valve and caused a leak. 7 00 in the morning or so, you have essentially the, i dont know what they call it, drying zamboni driving around on the Carpet Cleaning it all up. 8 23, you see a woman bringing in the table in question that has been the point of mr. Giulianis 90second clip. Shes pulling it with one hand and sets it down. Theres nothing underneath it. Okay . Then you can fast forward to later in the day, about 9 45 or so. Everybody there, there are two groups of people there, theres cutters and there are scanners. What happened was the cutters began putting their stuff away because everybody was under the impression they were going to get home. We have discovered this. So they start putting covers over the cutting machines and everything. So then we see also while the monitors and the press are still in the room, they bring out the carriers which are normal absentee ballot carriers. And i will admit when i listened to the audio of the phone call and the president brought that up again and i heard it on radio ad again today, i wanted to scream, well, i did scream at the computer and i screamed in my car at the radio talking about this because this has been thoroughly debunked. They bring out the normally absentee ballot carriers. There are monitors in the room, press in the room. They take the ballots that have been open, put them in carrier trays, put them in there, put them in the boxes, put the lid on. The lid matches the box. You see at one point during the video a woman crawling on the floor putting the numbered seals on them to keep the chain of custody. Approximately 10 25, 10 30, the secretary and our office receivreceiv receives word that Fulton County is shutting down for the night at state farm arena. So as some of you all who were there on election day night, the secretary got a little irritated with this and made his feelings quite known. They said some of us will work into the night, glad to see that fu Fulton County sees the need to knock off for the the evening. Chris harvey, elections director, calls the elections director of Fulton County who was at the other location which was their english Street Warehouse because he was doing electionday activities. Chris calls rick. Rick says, were not shutting down. Chris says, looks like you are. So then you can go back to the videotape and see ralph jones take a phone call at approximately almost 11 00. And you can see his shoulders kind of shrug. He takes the phone call. Hes being told at that point by his boss, rick baron, you need to stay and continue to scan. So, he hangs up the phone, he goes over to boxes. Uts more seals on them because obviously, if you watch the videotape, many of the people that are there have been there since 7 00 in the morning. Its already 11 00 at night. They were all under the impression they were going to get to go home. So you see him spend about 30 seconds going, heck, what am i going to say to these people. He walks back over to the corner of the desk and says i got the word, we got to keep on scanning. So they go back to the boxes, you see them put under the table at the approximately 10 00 hour. There is videotape of this. And this is whats really frustrating. The president s legal team had the entire tape, they watched the entire tape, and from our point of view, intentionally misled the states senate, voters and the people of the United States about this. It was intentional. It was obvious. Anybody watching this knows that. Anyone watching it knows that. Thats why we released the entire tape for people to watch. So, this claim that that was done, so they pull those out and begin to scan. Then the other claim comes from ruby freeman and multiple scanning. One of the things you need to understand is a normal ballot processing if theres a problem with the ballot, what it does is it stops but before that, four or five will get through. They say delete that last batch and rescan it so they scan properly. That is a normal process that is done. Secondarily with that, everybody might be familiar with the fact the president wanted us to do a hand recount, hand retally which we ended up doing under our audit. That audit showed that there was no problems with the machine scanning. If somebody took a stack of ballots and scanned them multiple times, you would have a lot of votes with no corresponding ballots. So lets go over the numbers one more time. Statewide, it was for the sheer number of ballots, they were off by. 1035 . Margin, off by. 0099 . Which shows that the machines scanned properly, counties did a great job of following these batches and doing the hand count properly. Appropriately. With scrutiny and with observers. So, lets put that to bed right now. In one of the other things we did as part of our transparency is we have put all of those tally sheets online for every county so you can go through and look at them all. And its, again, at the securevotega. Com. Lets see, lets go over the numbers of the president s team is claiming. We have a little chart over here. Theyre claiming over 2,056 felons have voted. Our research, we have better data because were directly tied to the State Government on this, department of corrections and the other department which i cant remember what its called right now. Basically tracks when people are on probation. There we go. We know exactly how many people voted for this. We have 74 potential people who are felons voted. What that means is thats the biggest number it could be. We will investigate and find out some of these people completed their sentences, some of these people have the same name and birth date so there will be some crossover there. 74, its going to be lower than that. So lets be clear about that. There was a claim that 66,248 people below the age of 18 voted. The actual number is zero. Let me be clear. 66,000 versus zero. And the reason we know that is because the dates are on the Voter Registration. There are four cases, four where people requested their absentee ballot before they turned 18, but they turned 18 by election day. That means that is a legally cast ballot. So, again, 66,000 which is the biggest single number they have in these kind of votes versus zero. They say that theres 2,423 people who voted without being registered. Lets just be clear about this, you cant do it. There can not be a ballot issued to you, no way to tie it back to you, no way to have a name to correspond back to unless theyre registered voters so that number is zezero. 1,043 illegally voted using a p. O. Box, again, were going through an investigation on this. So far every one weve seen has been when theres a mailbox, et cetera, somebody like that, in a multifamily building like an apartment. So youll have what looks like p. O. Boxes listed in the system but theyre actually the residential address of record for people who live in multifamily housing like apartments. So thats everything weve seen, we havent seen anybody actually registering to vote at a usps p. O. Box. Next one is 4,926 voted past the legal registration deadline. Again, its zero. We have zero record of anybody doing that because the Voter Registration cutoff is the Voter Registration cutoff, so theres no corresponding way to do that. They couldnt be issued a ballot because theyre not legally within the system of that to have ballots issued. 10,315 who died before the election. Again, our information from the department of vital records, we go through county by county shows potentially two. So far, two. It could change, could go its not 10,000. 395 cast ballots in 2 states. Were investigating that, but, again, we got double voters, which were investigating, but, again, were talking handfuls. Not tens of thousands. Lets remember, i think were all very clear on the number now, that it was 11,779. Weve seen nothing in our investigations of any of these data claims that shows theres nearly enough ballots to change the outcome. And the secretary and i at this podium have said since november 3rd there is illegal voting in every single election in the history of mankind because there are human beings involved in the process. Its going to happen. Its a question of limiting it and putting as many safeguards as you can in place to make sure it doesnt happen. All right. Oh, yeah, we had part of the hand tally be discussed in relation to the potential double scanning. Lets just go to the other ridiculous claims, Voting Machines are somehow using fractional voting or flipping votes. Again, by doing the hand tally it shows none of that is true. Not a wit. Lets go back to the overall claims about dominion voting systems in general. If you look in wisconsin, theyre claiming wisconsin was stolen to dominion Voting Machines. The 14 counties in which dominion Voting Machines were used in wisconsin, the president got 59 of the vote. And the counties in pennsylvania where dominion Voting Machines were used he got 52. 5 of the vote. He made a claim over 900,000 votes were deleted by do minion machines and 14 counties where it happened they had 1. 3 Million People vote. That was 70 some odd percent plus. 69 turnout. In order for 900,000 to have been deleted they would have had to have 130 turnout. That did not happen because it cannot happen. Again, this is all easily provable false, yet the president persists. And by doing so, undermines georgians faith in the election system. Especially republican georgians in this case which is important because we have a big election coming up tomorrow and everybody deserves to have their vote counted if they want it to be. Republican and democrat alike. Now, lets move on to signature matching. There were claims about signature matching not being done. There were and they were based on feelings. We believe. No specific evidence was brought up until in one of the trump filings there was a specific allegation the signature verification was not being done on the absentee ballot request form properly in cobb county during the june primary. So thats the first time we had a specific actionable claim of signature matching not being done. So with that in mind the govern governor grash governor graciously offered, asked the secretary, he discussed potential using gbi resources. We got gbi to come up alongside secretary of state investigators. Last week, we announced the outcome of that. Of the 15,118 absentee ballot envelopes that they investigated, they found two potential problems. Two. 99. 99 was properly done. Of those two, the actual voter who was intended to be marked as voting was the actual voter. They could have been done through a qr period which would have been a better way to do that. The other thing i want to talk about is the vast difference in rejection rates. Well, what weve seen is there was not a vast difference in we jex rat rejection rates. Difference in w in order to confuse people, they dont understand systems, theyre those for signature mismatch or missing a signature. Were comparing apples to oranges. In 16 ive done this so long, i dont want to screw up these numbers. 26 . In 18,. 16 . 2020, so far,. 15 . We have updated numbers on this now. The difference is 2019, hb316 was passed which allowed there to be curing of ballots. There are teams of republican and democrats, young people running around the state as we speak, finding people who have signature issues to cure their ballots. Thats going on right now. And the democrats did a much better job of that during the general election. The republicans were not prepared. The democrats had their own forums set up, hat teams set up. They were ready to go. It was sort of a late entry on the republican side to do some of those. And asht and abouttry on the republican side to do so 5, were rejected for some purpose and about 2,600 of those were cured. That means the final rejection around 2,400 ballots around the told of 5 million or percentage of the 1. 3 million we saw that were voted absentee. Lets go into some of the more new things. There is no shredding of ballots going on. Thats not real. Its not happening. Shredding of envelopes that were the non used ones or also shredding of the secrecy envelopes that came through. Its obvious that theyre the secrecy envelopes which have no evidentiary value because theres no signature on it, no way to match it back. Theyre just basically trash. The law requires you keep the signature and oath envelopes and the ballots, themselves, for 22 months. Those are all being kept. Lets see. This is what i dont fully understand. No one is changing parts or pieces out of dominion Voting Machines. That is thats not a real i dont even know what that means. Its not a real thing. Thats not happening. The president mentioned on the call yesterday, or from two days ago. Thats, again, not real. I dont even know how exactly to explain that. Lets see. Secretary raffensperger does not have a brother named ron raffensperger. That is not real. The president tweeted that out as well. Its lets see. Got such a long list. Oh, yes, the other really fantastical thing we saw the other day was a potential hacking of dominion equipment during a Senate Hearing last week. That did not happen, either. Lets go over a couple reasons why. First of all, ballot marking devices and scanners, neither one have modems. Its very hard to hack things without modems. Theres nothing to talk to. So lets get that clear. The poll pads, a noink device, does have the ability to connect to wifi which we use it for loading purposes and in case theres an issue on election day, but theyre not hooked up live all the time. And if they saw anything, they could see traffic back and forth. It would be basically like watching a river go by, you couldnt get in. Essentially, if they did this, which we have no proof of. We have claim after claim after claim with zero proof. Zero. Signed affidavits are part of an evidentiary trail but have to be investigated. Lets remember, everybody who came and gave testimony, public comment, at the state Senate Hearing. This office was never asked to come and discuss those items with that state senate subcommittee. That didnt happen, either, which i find interesting because, obviously, theyre making wild claims that, again, undermine peoples faith in the system. Lets see. Oh, yeah, this is another one that came out of the weekend from the former from the founder of overstock. Com. That they had found thousands and thousands of fake ballots in Fulton County warehouse. For any of yall in the press whove been to the Fulton County warehouse, these are the emergency ballots that have been sitting in the warehouse since before the november election very much in plain view for everybody to see. What happened, the reason why they add high numbe had a high number, you have to have 10 of the available ones for each polling location and have to be printed for that polling location so they can track it properly. Fulton countys case, you all may remember there was a covid outbreak in their warehouse. Not long before the logic and accuracy testing period was happening for the general election. In a very mild abundance of caution, had not plan a, not plan b but plan c, if we cant get people in to do the logical and accuracy testing on our equipment, were going to print out 100 of ballots, hand marker ballots to be what well have to do. If we cant get the machines done. Given the unknowable unknowns surrounding covid, they were thankfully able to get the employees in, dominion staff came in to help them make sure they got the tests done so they were able to deploy all of their carriers and scanners so they didnt have to use those ballots. Thats why those ballots existed. Theyre not fake ballots. Theyre real ballots. Unused ballots. What i find really interesting about this, they were in shrinkwrapped items in boxes that are sealed. What can you do with those . Theyre sitting right there . Everybody saw them. Lets see. Trying to think what other heres part of the problem, you all. I sit down and try to write down everything that we see that comes over the internet as a potential thing of disinformation. It get exploded. We all look at these things. We know theres lots of bots that are doing it. We have foreign powers that are pushing some of these things at the same time. So, heres the takeaway from all this. This office has been open and transparent. We are continuing investigations. There are questions about pristine ballots. Thats one last thing. The pristine ballot thing. There are three reasons you can have the, quote unquote, pristine ballot, the absentee emergency provisional ballot. Theres first one. Military and overseas voters oftentimes get what they call an electronic ballot. What happens is once we get the ballot built, starting the 49th to the 45th day, we will send emails out to those people who want to have electronic ballot delivery, which is many of our military servicemen and women. They take it, print it, and bubble in their choices. Its on an 8 1 2 x 11 piece of paper so its not sized properly to go through a scanner. When that comes back to the county, theyll duplicate that on a flat unfolded piece of paper on the absentee ballot emergency ballot. Thats a normal process for many of the military and overseas voters that are electronically delivered. The other situation you might see that in is an emergency ballot situation. If a ballotmarking device goes down or wasnt used which is the case we saw in the morning in spaulding county on election day, they would use the emergency ballots as backup. And those will just be scanned directly into the machine and not folded. And the final place you would see that is on a damaged or adjudicated ballot that was not adjudicated through the Electronics System or in fultons case what withdrew syty were putting so many through the cutters that it would occasionally catch the ballot and slice and cut it. Fulton countys case, they did the vast majority, 100 of their duplicate on a bmd. Cobb countys location, i think they did all those on handmarked paper ballots so theres a difference in use, processes from each of the counties. Why you would see quote unquote, pristine ballots. Wednesday, we heard reports there are going to be several senators and congressmen who will be objecting to the electors being seated. We anticipate that each time they do that, theyre going to go theyll separate out, have their debate for two hours. The state of georgias electsers will get seated. They will look at this evidence as best they can in jump a way and it will be voted on by the house and senate. We anticipate that. That will prove our certification was proper at the end of the day. And that we followed the process properly. And i give you back to senator tom cottons statement from earlier today that says, this is the process that we follow. The appropriate step under the constitution of the law , the state of georgia, the laws of the United States. So, with that, i want to say, if youre a georgia voter, if you want your values reflected by your elected officials, i strongly beg and encourage you, go vote tomorrow. Do not let anybody discourage you. Do not selfsuppress your own vote. Do not make a selffulfilling prophecy out of doing this. Dont let anybody steal your vote that way. And thats whats happening. If you selfsuppress, youre taking away your important voice from this election. So with that, ill go ahead and take any questions you all got. Sorry . Oh, sorry. Justin. Hey, yeah, is the secretary of state or the state election board considering asking either the fulton d. A. Or the Georgia Attorney general to investigate the call with the president over the weekend . I do not know that. Any discussions of that . Not that im aware of. From all that youve said there, do you believe as some have said that what happened in that phone call was an attack having a really hard time hearing you. I apologize. Do you believe some have said this is an attack on democracy there you go. Can you hear that. Lets start again. Do you believe as some have said in the phone call an attack on democracy . Ill leave other people to make a decision on that. I found it to be something that was not normal, out of place, and nobody i know who would be president would do Something Like that to a secretary of state. Thank you. Yes, mark. Afternoon. Looking forward to tomorrow. Have you heard about any threats or Security Problems or anything that could interfere with people voting, and also what do you expect turnout to be like tomorrow . Well, i anticipate there will be a high turnout and theres a large bucket of voters in many Congressional Districts that could potentially show up. We anticipate there could be any number of potential threats out there that could be attempting to encourage or discourage turnout. We encourage everybody to please turn out, be safe, be smart. And dont let anybody get in the way of you casting your vote. And have you heard about any threats, will there be extra security . Weve discussed with gpi, fbi, and sheriffs departments potentially there being threats and weve seen some of that nature potentially out there. Theyre under investigation. Yes, maam. Hi, gabe. Blai blayne alexander with nbc news. Two members of the state board of elections have called on the secretary of States Office to investigate that phone call. How is the secretarys office responding . Is there any plan to investigate or will you block that investigation in any way . Im not aware of any discussions specifically on that yet, but im sure it will be taken under advisement. Ill ask you quickly about the secretarys desire to have that phone call recorded. Why did he want that phone call recorded . Was he concerned about anything improper being said or may need to release it later . I think given the environment were in right now, political situation that were in, the history of the president , knowing that he sometimes doesnt necessarily character ice thicharacterize things as they might have actually occurred, it was out of ab abundance of caution. Im sure the president s side may have recorded it, too. They may have been the ones who leaked part of that, too. Fox news national. How do you interpret the president asking the secretary of state to, quote, find votes on that phone call . Is it fair to say the president was asking the secretary of state to fraudulently find or flip votes . I dont know if he was trying to fraudulently find the votes. We certified this election, say there are no more votes to find. Well continue investigations, he has an election challenge. One of the things they were discussing on that phone call was they have sued the state of georgia and secretary of state. There are rules of evidence to follow once you do that. Trying to go outside of that is an issue and weve said, i believe our lawyers septemb s s lawyers a letter, if you want to submit your challenge, well share that your data is incorrect and you lost the state of georgia. The bureau of investigation says theres an unprecedented number of threats statewide. Are you aware of any im sorry, i didnt, unprecedented number of threats. What. The bureau of investigations says theres an unprecedented number of threats that came in statewide regarding the election. Were not aware were aware of some but were trying to not discuss in too much detail while we try to investigate and find out what the actual nature of those threats may be. Hey, gabe. Cnn. This is now the second sort of conversation the secretary of state that has been reported out on this topic. First it was Lindsey Graham earlier in november. Now the president. Has the secretary of States Office been contacted by any other members of the Trump Administration or gop officials . Well, i mean, our office is contacted by democrats, republicans, alike, pretty consistently to discuss election issues. Yes, that has occurred. Specifically, its a little bit of a broad question, i think, but we get contacted by members of the administration. We get contacted by democrats. We get contacted by republicans. Have you been contacted by on the topic of these some of these conspiracy theories that youve outlined today . I mean, no more than my normal having to explain the ridiculousness of many pieces of disinformation. So, thank you, all, very much. All right. That was Georgia Election official Gabriel Sterling. By any measure, by the standards of modern american politics, that was quite a stunning rebuke there by Gabriel Sterling. Really pointblankedly of President Trump and the assertions hes been making about voter fraud in the state of georgia as well as his supporters, his legal team, other politicians that have been with the president. Quite incredible as well defending why that office reportedly leaked the recorded phone call between the president and georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger. Also taking questions whether or not his office or office of the secretary of state would call on an investigation to be launched into that phone call. To House Democrats for their part are calling specifically for the fbi director Christopher Wray to open up a criminal probe into President Trumps saturday call to georgias secretary of state. Heres more of what the president said on that call. So, look, all i want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 vo s votvote votes. Theres nothing wrong with saying that, you know, that youve recalculated. All right. Given what we just heard out of that news conference, we are now joined by one of the House Democrats who sent that letter, california congressman ted liu. Hes a member of the judiciary committee. Congressman, great to have you with us. Lets just react, if we can, for a moment to the breaking news that we heard there. Coming out of georgia. Really that pointbypoint rebuke of the president and the claims he has been making. But also more specifically to what you called for today, an investigation from the fbi into this. Any reaction to what you heard there from Georgia Election official, Gabriel Sterling . Thank you for your question. That was a stunning takedown of all the bizarre conspiracy theories that donald trump and his enablers have put forward and really shows you how out of touch donald trump has been. Its not just out of touch. Donald trump has now been committing crimes. Hes the most powerful man in the world and threatening the georgia secretary of state to essentially commit Election Fraud. Were you at all surprised the office he had not yet confirmed or said he was not aware there, Gabriel Sterling, of whether or not the office of the secretary of state would open an investigation, call on the Fulton County d. A. , or ba a Georgia Attorney general on that front. Do you have any news on what you specifically called for from the fbi today . I dont have any views on Georgia Election officials front. Mr. Sterling might not be the person thats positioned to refer such a case to the Law Enforcement authorities. What i do know is that the Georgia State code is very clear. It is a crime to solicit Election Fraud and thats what donald trump did over and over again on his onehour phone call with the georgia secretary of state. Yeah, so tell us a little bit more about why you and congresswoman Kathleen Rice of new york decided to refer this to fbi director Christopher Wray. Have you had any response so far from the fbi you can share with us . Sure. Congresswoman rice and i are both former prosecutors. When we heard that phone call it was very clear to us crimes had been committed on that call, specifically under 52 us csection 2511, you cannot knowingly and willingly essentially attempt Election Fraud. Thats what donald trump did when he told the Georgia Elections to find 11,708 votes. Thats a very specific number. He told the georgia secretary of state to recalculate the votes and both of those statements would constitute an attempt at election fraut. We only sent a letter this morning. So the fbi does take some time to investigate. So we dont expect a response immediately. Let me ask you really quickly before i get to what this means for the president , even potentially pardoning himself, my colleague, Garrett Haake, was reporting on capitol hill, representative Hakeem Jeffries among others, not necessarily concerned with looking back or opening an investigation into this phone call. What would you say to representative Hakeem Jeffries if you had a difference of opinion about whether or not this call should be investigated . He wants to look forward in the incoming biden administration, not focus on this call. I think its fine to look forward, at the same time, Law Enforcement should do what they do, which is investigate potential crimes and then it will be up to the prosecutors to decide whether or not they want to charge those crimes. Its very clear that the evidence is now in broad daylight. Theres at least a onehour recording and the fbi needs to authenticate that recording. Verify the people are who they say they are on their recording and then conduct an investigation. And then hand it to the prosecutors for a decision. What do you make about the potential setup, if, in fact, this investigation is launched that the president could potentially try to pardon himself . So first of all, the president cannot pardon anyone for state crimes and the president also cannot pardon himself. No legal expert that has any credibility says that the president can pardon himself. That completely goes against what the Supreme Court has said in the past which no one is above the law including the president of the United States. All right. Let me play for you, if i can, also about what the president might do next. This is the kind of advice hes getting inside the white house. Watch this. January 20th cannot be changed. Thats constitutional. But this whole certification thing, the days can be change. Well, it can be changed, actually. Anyway, Peter Navarro. We can go past that day. Oh. We can go past that date. If okay. If we need to. All right. Unfirefigh unfortunately, a quick fact check, Peter Navarro is wrong. 20th amendment of the constitution sets the date of the inauguration, not the president. Congressman, how much does it concern you that these people are the people that the president is getting his advice from . Well, Peter Navarro is right in a sense that we could blow past that date with nothing happening, which case, Speaker Pelosi would become president of the United States. Which im totally fine with. But i am concerned that Peter Navarro is giving all sorts of wrong advice to donald trump and its really his enablers that made it worse than what donald trump is doing and hopefully we have more and more republicans stand up such as a number of republican senators and house members who have said that they will not object to Electoral College results on wednesday. All right. Congressman ted lieu of california, thank you for joining us this afternoon. I appreciate your time and patience. Thank you. Thank you. We have more breaking news to tell you about. This one coming from overseas. British Prime MinisterBoris Johnson just announcing within the hour england is going into a National Lockdown until midfebruary. Amid a rise in cases and the spread of that new variant of the coronavirus. The uk reported a singleday record in new cases today and earlier the United Kingdom became the first nation to administer the covid19 vaccine developed by astrazeneca and oxford university. Joining me now from london, nbc news chief Foreign CorrespondentRichard Engel. He secured access to one of those locations in england where some of the first doses of the Astrazeneca Oxford vaccine were given. Richard, good to have you with us. Also as we mentioned, breaking news out of the uk. What more can you tell us about this lockdown thats being described as even more severe than the initial lockdown back in march . Reporter so, ayman, this is certainly not the kind of day that people in this country were expecting on the first working day of 2021. They were hoping that this would be the start of a new era, the start of a new Vaccination Program which began this morning, but then a short while ago, Prime MinisterBoris Johnson came out and said that cases are skyrocketing, that they have been increasing dramatically over the last week, in particular. He said that the National Health care service here could be overwhelmed if nothing was done. So he announced the start Effective Immediately of a new National Lockdown for england. That means schools are closed. Universities are closed. All of them except for extreme cases. He said that school meals would be distributed to those who cant who rely on having their children get their nutrition requirements at schools. But that people should no longer leave their homes unless theres an extreme circumstance like seeking medical attention or to escape domestic abuse. So it is very similar to the lockdown that we had in march. There are some differences. Family bubbles which were not here roughly a year ago are being allowed this time. But effectively, we are going back into in england, at least, a new National Lockdown. But the key difference is there is not necessarily an end date this time, but an end concept. He talked about how by midfebruary they should be emerging from this, if things go well and if this virus doesnt change again. And a lot of this has to do with this new variant, this new mutation, which the Prime Minister said is 50 to 70 more contagious than the previous coronavirus. Quite remarkable. Really quickly, richard, do you have any news on the Astrazeneca Oxford vaccine . How much are officials hoping that, too, could quickly change the tide in the uk . Reporter that is everything. That is the entire calculus. He said that hopefully they can get out of this new National Lockdown which he said will last theft until midfebruary, if things go well and the virus doesnt change dramatically. Once again, because of the Vaccination Program. He hopes that by midfebruary this country will have vaccinated all of its top priority candidates. That is all people over 70, all people in care homes, and all front line medical workers. So everything is dependent on getting this Vaccination Program moving and the main effort is now the Oxford Astrazeneca vaccine, at least in this country. All right. Richard engel live in london on that Stunning Development out of the uk this hour. Thanks, richard. Missouri senator josh hawley is taking direct aim at pennsylvania vowing to challenge the certification of president elect joe bidens electoral victory in that state. Pennsylvania Lieutenant GovernorJohn Fetterman joins me live next. Youre watching msnbc. Ching msn. 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Trusted soothing vapors, from vicks myim 70 and i live in mill valley, california. My biggest passion is gardening. I love to be outdoors. I have jaybirds that come when i call. I know how important it is to feed your body good nutrition. I heard about prevagen and i heard about the Research Behind it. Taking prevagen, i have noticed that i can think clearly. My memory is better. I can say that prevagen is one of the most outstanding supplements ive ever taken. Prevagen. Healthier brain. Better life. Were following multiple breaking news stories both on the coronavirus front and domestic political front. We were just talking to Richard Engel in uk about the Prime Minister declaring a lockdown in that country. Here in new york just within the last couple of minutes or so new York Governor Andrew Cuomo speaking on a Conference Call with reporters confirming that a man in the state of new york has tested positive for covid19 with that same uk variant are concerned about. So new York Governor Andrew Cuomo confirming now there is a case here in the u. S. , certainly in new york i should be more specific in u. S. , in new york in s saratoga county. A number of states have tested positive for that strain. In georgia, joe biden about to speak in next 30 minutes or so. Well keep an eye on that for you as well. This wednesday congress will count the Electoral College votes certifying joe bidens president ial win. 12 gop senators say they plan to object to that. Leading the charge is josh hawley who said hell focus on challenging the certification of pennsylvanias electoral votes. These objections are expected to fail. Joining me now is Pennsylvania DemocraticLieutenant Governor john fedderman. Thank you for your patience and for joining us. What is your reaction to senator hawley taking issue with your state and how it conducted its elections . Oh, no. Oh, no. No. Hes walking in to a buzz saw. January 6th will be real hard out there for us down in washington, d. C. Everyone knows how this movie will end. And im taking a different tack than my other democratic colleague. I hope every republican votes for it because it will go down in a hot flaming pile of garbage. Are you concerned what damage it does to the confidence people have in this country of democratic process . I understand it wont change the outcome but does it damage peoples perception of voting . No. Because Everybody Knows from the president on down, you heard him on that phone call, he knees he lost and thats why hes looking for votes. Much knows what really happened. And they just have to pretend that they are outraged or ripped off when they know no matter what they say you have the smokeyest of smokest gun him on tape saying you need to come with 12,000 votes and people are still willing to make up stories or talk about the latest, you know, Conspiracy Theory on parler. That wont change. At the core everyone, everyone knows that donald trump lost. Let me refrain what senator pat toomey of your state said about all this. A fundamental defining feature of democratic republic is the right of the people to elect their own leaders. The effort by senators hawley, crews and others to overturn the 2020 president ial electiin swin states like pennsylvania directly undermines this right. Toomey is not up for reelection for anything. Key tell the truth. The fact he doesnt have any more skin in the game is the only reason why hes telling the truth. Much knows and that speaks to my earlier point. Were seeing these authoritarian tendencies come out from the president on this issue during the entire 2020 campaign. The president was making allegations about widespread voter fraud in your state which you know authorities investigated and found no evidence to support that. We just heard from the election official in the state of georgia who said the president s claims by his team undermine democracy. Do you feels delegitimized the process in a made people lose faith in inat the at the grit of the election. No, im not concerned at all. Just the way the secretary of state in georgia laid out everything, ive been doing that on my twitter just fact by fact breakdown of what happened in pennsylvania. And the only election scandal in pennsylvania is how did President Trump end up with 100 of the dead mother vote in our state . Now i would hope senator hawley chooses to investigate that because those are the only cases of the actual voter fraud that we established here in our commonwealth. They know it. Everyone knows it. Dead beat dan owes our state 3 million by michael can you allocation although our friends in georgia might have a bigger claim since he was looking for 12,000 votes compared to our three. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. My pleasure. That wraps up this hour for me. Ill see you back here tomorrow at 3 00 p. M. Eastern. Eastern every time we walk into the door. Its just to be sure. Just to be sure tide antibacterial fabric spray. To syour body needs routine. System, centrum helps your immune defenses every day, with vitamin c, d and zinc. Season, after season. Ace your immune support, with centrum. Happy new year everyone. Its 4 00 in east. Donald trump has escaped accountability and defied the laws of political gravity not because hes powerful or skilled or compelling but because hes stupid thats how the story has gone now. Too stupid to collude a constant refrain. Too hapless to obstruct the mueller probe. Too hallepless to do anything criminal. Thats the story that trump senior white house staffers told when they called any one of us to carve themselves out of the harsh lens of history and heres what it