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Notes -
While I don’t know that the “oath of office” stuff holds up, I did listen to the Raffensperger call back in the day. Commentary here. For anyone else who wants to read the transcript, it’s here.
Trump was making his preferred outcome very clear. If there was fraud, the President of the United States would be happy. If there wasn’t, he would be unhappy, and some people might face criminal charges.
You can see how this is truth-agnostic. Trump may well have believed it. But he would say the same things whether or not he did. More importantly, he was suggesting what Raffensperger should report, whether or not he did.
Again, I’m not sure that this rises to the intent standard used by OCGA 16-4-7. It is plausibly deniable. I just don’t know how one can read that transcript and come away thinking the guy wanted the truth. He wanted to win.
And I don't know how one can read it and come away with the idea that he didn't think there'd been massive fraud -- at least 90% of the call is him railing on about various instances of fraudulent balloting he claims his team had uncovered, and pushing the Georgia officials for data that they were holding back so that he could prove more that he was sure existed but couldn't prove. I'm not sure what evidence you are using to claim that he would have made these claims regardless -- it seems unfalsifiable. New Hampshire and Maine had similar percent margins (and fewer absolute votes) for Biden as compared to Wisconsin -- why didn't Trump try to flip those states too, if he was making allegations unrelated to whatever evidence of fraud that he thought he had?
Anyways my point is that I don't see how anyone can think that this is open-and-shut in anything but Trump's favour -- we are now talking about serious criminal indictments, and this tape surely raises at least a reasonable doubt in terms of mens rea? He lays out all kinds of specific stuff that he (claims to) believe to be true evidence of fraud.
If anything, the Raffensberger call seems like decent evidence for the defense on the Smith (I think? I may be confused now that there are so many) indictment -- it's hard to listen to the guy and believe that he is lying about his beliefs as to whether there was fraud in Georgia (and elsewhere, bleeding into the call). He sounds quite emotional at times.
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