Former President Donald Trump is expressing his appreciation to The Washington Post for issuing a correction to a two-month-old story that claimed he urged Georgia elections investigator Frances Watson to “find the fraud.”
In a lengthy statement on Monday afternoon, he said, “The Washington Post just issued a correction as to the contents of the incorrectly reported phone call I had with respect to voter fraud in the Great State of Georgia.”
“While I appreciate the Washington Post’s correction, which immediately makes the Georgia Witch Hunt a non-story, the original story was a Hoax, right from the very beginning,” he added.
“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.”
He went on to claim that “establishment media errors, omissions, mistakes, and outright lies always slant one way — against me and against Republicans.”
“A strong democracy requires a fair and honest press. This latest media travesty underscores that legacy media outlets should be regarded as political entities — not journalistic enterprises. In any event, I thank the Washington Post for the correction,” he said.
Read the statement below:
INBOX: Former President Donald Trump has thoughts on the Washington Post correction pic.twitter.com/FDQM6NV4nl
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) March 15, 2021
Trump’s comments come after the Post issued a correction to a story that initially claimed he urged Watson to “find the fraud,” and said that she would be a “national hero” if she did.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal published audio of the call that showed Trump asked Watson to investigate claims of fraud in Fulton County.
He told her, “When the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised.”
Additionally, he expressed his belief that there was fraud that swung the results of the election as he said, “something bad happened.”
In a lengthy correction on Monday, the Post said:
“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. The recording revealed that The Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call, based on information provided by a source. 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, Ga., asserting she would find ‘dishonesty’ there. He also told her that she had ‘the most important job in the country right now.’ A story about the recording can be found here. The headline and text of this story have been corrected to remove quotes misattributed to Trump.”
Despite Trump’s claims of fraud, Georgia’s elections officials said there was no evidence to corroborate his allegations.
Congress voted to certify President Joe Biden’s electoral win in early January.