ATLANTA — As Georgia lawmakers gathered in Athens for a legislative training session five years ago, there was a hubbub inside the Classic Center conference room that served as then-House Speaker David Ralston’s headquarters.

It was Dec. 7, 2020, and President Donald Trump was on the warpath — furious at Gov. Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and other Georgia Republicans who had refused his calls to overturn his narrow defeat. Now, Trump wanted to talk to Ralston.

So Ralston, who died in 2022, retreated into a private room with three of his most trusted deputies: top aide Spiro Amburn, communications chief Kaleb McMichen and executive counsel Keith Williams.

Over the next 12 minutes, Trump unleashed a torrent of insults. He called Kemp “crazy,” a “stone head” and a “knucklehead.” He labeled Raffensperger a “disaster.”

Yet his tone toward Ralston was strikingly different. Trump praised the long-serving Georgia House leader as “popular” as he tried to cajole him to back a politically impossible pitch for a special legislative session to invalidate the election results.

“I will not forget it, and you’ll be more popular,” Trump told Ralston. “You’re popular now, but you’ll be more popular.”

A recording of the call, which was part of the aborted Fulton County criminal case against Trump, was obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday. It was originally published by The New York Times on Wednesday.

Trump’s January 2021 demand that Raffensperger “find” enough votes to overturn his 2020 defeat in Georgia is the stuff of political legend. But Trump’s call to Ralston has received less attention.

Though the AJC reported the existence of the Ralston call in March 2023, the audio reveals new details of Trump’s campaign to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

“I was as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs wondering what would happen,” Amburn told the AJC on Thursday, remembering the phone call.

New details

Trump’s call to Ralston came as his campaign to overturn Biden’s victory in Georgia was reaching a furious peak.

Four days earlier, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani had unveiled election night security footage from State Farm Arena that he called a “smoking gun” for fraud. It wasn’t. Giuliani later admitted the accusations were false, and two Fulton County election workers won a $148 million defamation verdict against him.

Trump had also filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn Biden’s victory. But Trump’s team was simultaneously seeking to overturn the results in the General Assembly.

Kemp, Ralston and then-Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan had already ruled out calling a special session before Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoffs, warning it would bring about “endless litigation.” But a group of senators, including Burt Jones, now Georgia’s lieutenant governor, was circulating a petition to force the Legislature to convene. They needed the signatures of three-fifths of legislators because Kemp had again ruled out the push.

That’s when Trump called Ralston. He urged the speaker to convene a special session in the name of transparency and “to uncover fraud.”

“Who’s going to stop you for that?” the president asked.

“A federal judge, possibly,” Ralston responded, chuckling.

Ralston made his support for the president clear. He told Trump he had not signed on to Kemp and Duncan’s statements ruling out a special session for a second time.

“I march to my own drummer,” Ralston told the president. “And my own drummer says I want Donald Trump to remain the president. If there’s any way we can possibly help in that regard, I’m on board.”

But Ralston also made no promises. He spent much of the call listening while Trump ranted about Kemp and others.

“He’s like a knucklehead, David. He’s like a stonehead,” Trump said. “I can’t believe I endorsed him.”

The call was among the evidence gathered by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as she built a case against Trump and his allies for conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Under subpoena, Ralston testified before the special purpose grand jury that investigated the interference. Charges were brought against Trump and 18 others, but the prosecution collapsed after Willis and her office were disqualified because of the DA’s relationship with an attorney she hired to lead the case.

‘Master of nuances’

Amburn, now a well-connected lobbyist, said the audio offers a revealing window into how a veteran legislative leader navigated Trump’s pressure while balancing conservative priorities with constitutional limits. He said his former boss “defused” the president.

“I thought Trump would have been a lot more aggressive than he was, but it was like two peers talking to each other.”

About 77 seconds of the recording were redacted, though it is unclear why. Amburn said he does not recall the specifics of what was said during those portions of the 5-year-old call, but said they largely involved Trump venting his frustrations with Georgia’s Republican leadership.

“He did his job,” Amburn said of Ralston. “He wasn’t going to go beyond his constitutional duties as the leader of the chamber or do anything that violated the Georgia Constitution.

“He was a master of the nuances,” Amburn said. “And I feel privileged to be a part of it.”

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