Former President Donald Trump is expected to endorse Rep. Jody Hice in a campaign to unseat Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in next year’s Republican primary, according to three people familiar with Trump’s decision.
Trump publicly seethed about Raffensperger after the November election, when the secretary of state refused to support Trump’s false claims that Georgia’s 16 electoral votes were stolen from him. Top Raffensperger aides had publicly rebuked the president’s conspiracy theories, warning in early December that it would lead to potential violence.
The then-president aggressively pressured Raffensperger, including in an early January call when Trump told Raffensperger that he should “find” a specific number of votes so that he could reverse Joe Biden’s victory in the state. The call has exposed Trump to potential legal consequences, with Georgia prosecutors investigating whether he improperly tried to influence the election results.
Hice, who first won election to his east-central Georgia seat in 2014, is a staunch Trump ally who supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. He derided the Democratic-led push to impeach Trump over his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot as“bogus.”