The Phone Call That Got Trump Impeached
Was Illegally Recorded.
The Deposition Just Confirmed It.
On January 2, 2021, President Donald Trump telephoned Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R-GA) and, in the course of an hour-long conversation, said the line that would define his political life for the next four years: “I just want to find 11,780 votes.” A day later, the recording appeared on the front page of the Washington Post. Ten days after that, on January 13, 2021, the House of Representatives passed H.Res. 24— the second impeachment of Donald J. Trump — and Article I explicitly cited the call.
Two and a half years later, that same recording became the central piece of evidence in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D)’s August 14, 2023 RICO indictment of Trump and eighteen co-defendants. It is, by any measure, the most consequential single phone recording in modern American political history.
On May 12, 2026, The Federalist’s Brianna Lyman reported that deposition testimony has now confirmed what reporters had quietly known for years: the recording was made by Raffensperger’s deputy, Jordan Fuchs, while she sat in Orlando, Florida— a state where recording a phone call without the consent of every party is a felony under Fla. Stat. § 934.03.
- Jan. 2, 2021The callHour-long call between Trump and Raffensperger; Fuchs, on mute, recorded it from Orlando — per The Daily Beast and corroborated in testimony.
- Jan. 3, 2021Leaked to WaPoRecording reaches Washington Post reporter Amy Gardner; transcript and audio published the same day.
- Jan. 13, 2021H.Res. 24 Article IImpeachment article explicitly cites the Jan. 2 Raffensperger call as part of Trump's pre-Jan. 6 efforts to subvert the election.
- Aug. 14, 2023Willis indictmentFulton County RICO indictment of Trump + 18 co-defendants leans on the same recording as a central overt act.
- Fla. Stat. § 934.03Two-party consentFlorida requires the consent of all parties to a call; unlawful interception is up to 5 years and $5,000 — felony.
- Dec. 19, 2024Willis disqualifiedGeorgia Court of Appeals removes Willis and her office 2-1 over her conflict with hired prosecutor Nathan Wade.
- Nov. 26, 2025Case dismissedFulton Superior Judge Scott McAfee dismisses the entire Georgia RICO case after Pete Skandalakis takes over from Willis.
- May 12, 2026Deposition confirmationThe Federalist publishes testimony confirming Fuchs recorded the call from Florida — the predicate for impeachment and indictment alike.
The factual chronology is straightforward and has been on the public record for years. The White House switchboard placed the call on the afternoon of January 2, 2021. On Trump’s side: Mark Meadows, Cleta Mitchell, John Eastman, Kurt Hilbert, and others. On Raffensperger’s side: the Secretary himself, his general counsel Ryan Germany, and his deputy and chief of staff, Jordan Fuchs. Fuchs was not in Atlanta. She was, according to her own subsequent acknowledgments, in Orlando, Florida, visiting her grandparents. She listened on mute. And, as The Daily Beast first reported, “without telling Raffensperger or Meadows, she taped the call.”
“I recorded the phone call.”
Jordan Fuchs · Deputy Georgia Secretary of State · per testimony cited in The Federalist, May 12, 2026
The next morning, Amy Gardner of the Washington Post had the audio. Raffensperger’s office subsequently stated that Trump had “misrepresented” the call on Twitter and that release was justified. Whatever the editorial justification, the operational fact is that the recording was made from Florida soil, by a participant who had not told the other side she was recording, and then transmitted to a national newspaper.
The rule: Florida is one of roughly a dozen U.S. states that require the consent of every party to a call before that call may lawfully be recorded. The controlling statute is the Florida Security of Communications Act, Fla. Stat. § 934.03.
Penalty:Unlawful interception of a wire communication is, in the general case, a third-degree felony in Florida — up to five years in state prison and up to $5,000 in fines. First-time offenses without an “illegal purpose or commercial gain” can be charged as misdemeanors.
Civil exposure:Victims of unlawful recording may recover actual damages up to $1,000 per day, punitive damages, attorney’s fees, and injunctive relief under Fla. Stat. § 934.10.
The location-of-recorder rule:Multistate recording cases generally apply the law of the state where the recording device is located. Fuchs was in Florida. That places the act, on the recorder’s side of the call, inside Florida’s all-party regime — not inside Georgia’s one-party regime under O.C.G.A. § 16-11-66.
There is a possible defense. Florida’s statute contains a law-enforcement exemption, and the Georgia Secretary of State’s office has investigative authority over Georgia election law. The Daily Beast itself raised that argument on Fuchs’s behalf in 2021. Whether the exemption survives the actual facts — Fuchs, sitting in a private home in Orlando, recording a political phone call between a sitting U.S. President and her Georgia boss — is an unresolved legal question. No prosecutor has tested it. The presumption of innocence applies in full: nothing in this record establishes that Fuchs has been convicted of, or even charged with, an offense under Fla. Stat. § 934.03.
Adopted:January 13, 2021, by a vote of 232–197 (with 10 House Republicans voting yes) — making Trump the only U.S. President impeached twice.
The relevant passage:Article I, “Incitement of Insurrection,” states that Trump’s January 6 conduct “followed his prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 Presidential election” — including a phone call “on January 2, 2021, during which President Trump urged the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to ‘find’ enough votes to overturn the Georgia Presidential election results and threatened Secretary Raffensperger if he failed to do so.”
What that means structurally:Article I did not merely allude to the call. It named the date, named the office, named the official, and quoted the operative verb — all of which were drawn from the audio recording made by Jordan Fuchs in Orlando, Florida. The audio was the evidence. Without that audio, the call exists as a contested account between two parties. With that audio, it exists as a constitutional impeachment article.
On August 14, 2023, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) returned a 41-count indictment under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act against Trump and eighteen co-defendants. The January 2 call was, again, a central pillar of the charging document — pleaded as an overt act in furtherance of the alleged RICO conspiracy. The same recording, made by the same person, sitting in the same state where recording it without consent is a felony, became the predicate for a second, parallel prosecutorial assault.
The Fulton County case has since collapsed under its own weight. On December 19, 2024, the Georgia Court of Appeals voted 2–1 to disqualify Willis and her entire office after she conducted a romantic relationship with the hired special prosecutor she had retained at $250-an-hour, Nathan Wade. The Georgia Supreme Court declined to hear her appeal. On November 26, 2025, Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee dismissed the case in its entirety after the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia — led by Pete Skandalakis — took control of the file from Willis and declined to continue.
“Phone call used to impeach Trump over GA election was illegally recorded, testimony confirms.”
The Federalist · May 12, 2026 · Brianna Lyman
None of this exonerates Trump on the substance of what he said on the call. The audio is what it is. The Brennan Center and others have catalogued, in detail, the false claims Trump pressed on Raffensperger about absentee ballots, dead voters, and Dominion machines. That is one set of facts. It is a separate set of facts — equally documented, and far less reported — that the recording on which two of the most consequential proceedings of the modern era were built was made by a Republican operative sitting in a state where the act of making it appears to violate the criminal code.
The lawfare story is not that the call did not happen. The lawfare story is that the foundational artifact of two prosecutions and one impeachment came into existence through what was, at minimum, a contested act under Florida criminal law, and that no court has ever adjudicated whether the recording itself was lawfully obtained before it was used to impeach a President and indict him under RICO. That is a process question. Process is what the Constitution is made of.
The recording that anchored Article I of the second impeachment and the Fulton County RICO indictment was made by Jordan Fuchs from Orlando, Florida — a state where Fla. Stat. § 934.03 makes recording a phone call without the consent of every party a felony. The deposition testimony surfaced May 12, 2026 confirms it. The call happened. The recording is the problem.