Former President Donald Trump lashed out at the media after The Washington Post ran a correction to a January story originally claiming Trump told Georgia's top elections investigator she would be "a national hero" if she could "find the fraud" in the state's 2020 voting.
"You will notice that establishment media errors, omissions, mistakes, and outright lies always slant one way - against me and against Republicans," Trump said in a statement, according to the Daily Caller. "This latest media travesty underscores that legacy media outlets should be regarded as political entities - not journalistic enterprises."
The Washington Post explained in its correction that "Two months after publication of this story, the Georgia secretary of state released an audio recording of President Donald Trump’s December phone call with the state’s top elections investigator [Frances Watson]. The recording revealed that The Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call, based on information provided by a source."
The correction continued: "Trump did not tell the investigator to 'find the fraud' or say she would be 'a national hero' if she did so. Instead, Trump urged the investigator to scrutinize ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, asserting she would find 'dishonesty' there. He also told her that she had 'the most important job in the country right now.'"
In his statement, Trump again raised the specter of election fraud, calling for a probe into the voting.
"I would further appreciate a strong investigation into Fulton County, Georgia, and the Stacey Abrams political machine which, I believe, would totally change the course of the presidential election in Georgia," Trump said.
Even though Trump and his allies filed dozens of lawsuits in the weeks and months after Election Day and advanced numerous claims of fraud, most of those cases failed to be taken up by the courts.
The original Washington Post report was a major story in politics and was covered widely in many media outlets, The Hill reported.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is carrying out a criminal investigation into Trump's attempts to overturn the results of the November presidential election, the Washington Examiner reported.
In addition, the Georgia secretary of state's office is also conducting a probe.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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