Prosecutors in Georgia have started a criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn Georgia’s election results, including a phone call he made to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Mr. Trump pressured him to “find” enough votes to help him reverse his loss.
On Wednesday, Fani T. Willis, the recently elected Democratic prosecutor in Fulton County, sent a letter to numerous officials in state government, including Mr. Raffensperger, requesting that they preserve documents related to “an investigation into attempts to influence” the state’s 2020 presidential election.
While the letter does not mention Mr. Trump by name, it is related to his efforts to change the outcome of Georgia’s election, according to a state official with knowledge of the matter. A copy of the letter was obtained by The New York Times.
Of particular note in Ms. Willis’s letter was the wider scope of the investigation. Potential violations of state law include “the solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election’s administration,” the letter states.
The state official said that, in addition to the call to Mr. Raffensperger, Ms. Willis’s inquiry would encompass Mr. Trump’s outreach to other Georgia officials in an attempt to reverse his loss. These include a call to a top elections investigator in which Mr. Trump asked the official to “find the fraud”; a call in which Mr. Trump urged Gov. Brian Kemp to call a special session of the legislature to review the election results; and a conversation with the attorney general of Georgia, Chris Carr, in which Mr. Trump warned him not to interfere in a Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn the results in Georgia and other states.