Back in November, shortly after he lost the 2020 election for the first of many times, we learned that Donald Trump had reportedly been asking aides if he could pardon himself and that he was particularly fascinated with the concept of issuing “pardons preemptively for things people could be charged with in the future.” While wildly unprecedented, the idea that Trump would be interested in basically giving himself a blanket get-out-of-jail-free card was far from surprising, given the numerous investigations into his financial dealings, including possible tax fraud, and his presumed desire to stay out of prison. And while it’s not clear at this time if Trump actually can issue a “self-pardon,” the question took on increased urgency this weekend, when tapes of him demanding Georgia’s Secretary of State “find” him enough votes to overturn the election or suffer the consequences were revealed.

During an hour-long conversation first reported by The Washington Post, Trump berated, begged, and threatened Brad Raffensperger, citing insane, fully debunked conspiracy theories in an astonishingly pathetic—even for him!—attempt to get the Georgia official to come up with 11,780 votes to put him ahead of Joe Biden‘s 11,779-vote margin. “The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry,” Trump said, explaining to Raffensperger and others on the call that “there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated.” Except for the fact that, as the Secretary of State pointed out as though he was speaking to a small child, “Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.” Undeterred, Trump explained that what he was asking for—that is, for Raffensperger to commit fraud—wasn’t a big deal. “All I want to do is this,” he said. “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.” He later added: “So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.” When simply begging and pleading failed, Trump unsurprisingly turned to threats and what sure sounded like extortion, telling Raffensperger and the Secretary of State’s general counsel, Ryan Germany, that not coming up with the votes would be “a criminal offense,“ warning the two men, one of whom is an actual lawyer, “You can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you.”

Of course, of all the people on the call who should be worried about having committed “a criminal offense,” the Georgia official and his attorney are not among them. Rather, it’s Donald Trump who should probably be getting legal representation on the phone here, and if he can help it, he might want to get in touch with a real lawyer and not, say, Rudy Giuliani. Per the Post:

The details of the call drew demands from top Democrats for criminal investigations. Campaigning in Georgia, Vice President-Elect Kamala D. Harris called Trump’s conversation a “baldfaced, bold abuse of power by the president of the United States.” Biden’s top campaign lawyer, Bob Bauer, said the recording “captures the whole, disgraceful story about Donald Trump’s assault on American democracy.”

Trump’s conversation with Raffensperger echoed his effort to persuade the Ukrainian president to investigate Biden on a call that led to his impeachment, and once again put him in legally questionable territory, legal scholars said. By exhorting the secretary of state to “find” votes and to deploy investigators who “want to find answers,” the president appeared to be encouraging him to doctor the election outcome in Georgia, which could violate both state and federal law. Additionally, Trump’s apparent threat of criminal consequences if Raffensperger failed to act could be seen as an attempt at extortion and a suggestion that he might deploy the Justice Department to launch an investigation, they said.

“The president is either knowingly attempting to coerce state officials into corrupting the integrity of the election or is so deluded that he believes what he’s saying,” constitutional law professor Richard Pildes told the Post. According to legal experts who spoke to Politico, Trump’s insistence that Raffensperger “find” an exact number of votes to put him ahead of Biden and the veiled threat of criminal liability could very well violate state and federal statutes. “I’ve charged extortion in mob cases with similar language,” said Daniel Goldman, the former prosecutor who worked on the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment inquiry in 2019.

Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University law professor, said: “The Georgia code says that anybody who solicits, requests or commands or otherwise attempts to encourage somebody to commit election fraud is guilty of solicitation of election fraud. ‘Soliciting or requesting’ is the key language. The president asked, in no uncertain terms, the secretary of state to invent votes, to create votes that were not there. Not only did he ask for that in terms of just overturning the specific margin that Joe Biden won by, but then said we needed one additional vote to secure victory in Georgia. There’s just no way that if you read the code and the way the code is structured, and then you look at what the president of the United States requested, that he has not violated this law—the spirit of it for sure,” Kreis continued.

Kreis added that the phone call could not be divorced from recent episodes in which Trump amplified a false conspiracy theory about Raffensperger’s family and his vows to end the political careers of people like the Secretary of State and Kemp for upholding Biden’s victory in the election. He also said Trump’s request for a specific number of votes—just enough to prevail by one—undercut the notion that he was simply asking for the truth.

“If I’m the president of the United States and my pardon power is not—does not extend to state acts, I don’t think that in the last few days of my term that I would want to be engaging in activities that even remotely subject me to the possibility of state criminal prosecution,” Kreis told Politico. “That’s what makes this even more bewildering to me, is because if he had sensible advisers they would just keep him off the phone.”

Anyway, in what must be totally unrelated news, it appears Trump may be fleeing the country on January 19:

[Scotland’s] Prestwick airport has been told to expect the arrival of a US military Boeing 757 aircraft, that is occasionally used by Trump, on January 19—the day before his Democratic rival takes charge at the White House. Speculation surrounding Trump’s plans has been fuelled by the activity of US Army aircraft, which were based at Prestwick airport for a week and said to be carrying out 3D reconnaissance of the president’s Turnberry resort.

Airport sources said surveillance planes appeared to lay the groundwork for Trump’s arrival in November. An MC-12W Liberty—a U.S. Air Force version of the King Air 350ER, which is modified for the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) role—landed at Prestwick on November 12. It made a number of flights over Trump Turnberry. Another U.S. Army aircraft that visited the airport on November 12 also carried out surveillance flights over Trump Turnberry. A source said: “The survey aircraft was based at Prestwick for about a week. It is usually a sign Trump is going to be somewhere for an extended period.”

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