Was the Trump-Raffensperger Call Recording Legal Under Georgia Law?

On January 2, 2021, President Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and asked him to "find" enough votes to overturn Trump's Georgia loss. The call was recorded and made public the next day. Under Georgia's one-party consent law, the recording was legal if a participant made it.

Information last verified on August 4, 2026. We update this page as the related Fulton County court record develops.

Scope: This article covers whether Georgia law made it legal to record the January 2, 2021 call, and the current status of the related Fulton County criminal case. It does not address the separate federal investigation into 2020 election matters or any state's law other than Georgia's. This is general legal information, not legal advice.

What Happened on the Call

On January 2, 2021, President Trump, who was contesting his loss in Georgia, spoke by phone for about an hour with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Trump told Raffensperger he wanted to "find 11,780 votes," a number the prosecutor who later closed the criminal case described in a court filing as enough to "change the outcome of the vote and move Georgia's 16 Electoral Votes to Trump's column." Trump also made a series of election-fraud claims that Georgia and federal election officials had not substantiated.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and several attorneys, including Cleta Mitchell and Kurt Hilbert, joined the call on Trump's side. Raffensperger was joined by the secretary of state's office general counsel, Ryan Germany, and Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs. The Washington Post published a transcript and audio of the call on January 3, 2021, reporting that it had obtained the recording.

Trump referenced the call in a social media post the following morning, and Raffensperger responded publicly, writing: "Respectfully, President Trump: What you're saying is not true. The truth will come out." Both exchanges were reported alongside the call's release; a full list of the disputed claims and why officials rejected them is covered in our rundown of 2020 election voter-fraud claims.

Was the Call Recording Legal Under Georgia Law

Recording the call was legal under Georgia law if it was made by a participant, or by a third party with a participant's consent. Georgia is a one-party consent state for both phone calls and in-person conversations under O.C.G.A. §§ 16-11-62 and 16-11-66(a).

Georgia's One-Party Consent Rule

Under O.C.G.A. § 16-11-66(a), a person who is a party to a phone call, or who has the consent of at least one party, may record it without telling or getting permission from anyone else on the line. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press summarizes the Georgia rule the same way: a person who is either a participant in a telephone or other electronic communication, or who has consent from one of the participants, is allowed to record or intercept that communication.

That makes the recording of the Trump-Raffensperger call legal if it was made by Trump, by Raffensperger, by anyone else who was on the call, or by a third party acting with permission from one of them.

Trump reportedly took the call from the White House in Washington, D.C., while Raffensperger's office was in Georgia. Both are one-party consent jurisdictions (D.C. Code § 23-542 and O.C.G.A. § 16-11-66(a)), so the fact that the call crossed state lines does not change the analysis.

When the Recording Would Have Been Illegal

The recording would have violated Georgia law only if someone who was not a party to the call, and who did not have consent from at least one participant, secretly intercepted it under O.C.G.A. § 16-11-62. If that had happened, O.C.G.A. § 16-11-67 would generally have kept the recording out of evidence in a Georgia court. The Supreme Court of Georgia quoted the provision in full in Nuckles v. State:

"No evidence obtained in a manner which violates any of the provisions of this part shall be admissible in any court of this state except to prove violations of this part." Nuckles v. State, 310 Ga. 624 (2020), quoting O.C.G.A. § 16-11-67

The closing phrase is the narrow exception: an unlawfully obtained recording can still be used to prosecute the interception itself.

No public reporting has identified a non-consenting third party as the source of this recording. Its origin is consistent with either side of the call, rather than an outside wiretap.

Who Published the Recording

The Washington Post reported on January 3, 2021 that it had obtained audio and a transcript of the call without identifying who supplied it. Raffensperger and his office did not dispute that the call took place and publicly stood behind the account reflected in the recording.

The Call's Role in the Fulton County Election-Interference Case

The January 2 call was charged in Fulton County's August 2023 racketeering indictment of Trump and 18 others under two separate counts, and it appeared twice among the racketeering count's alleged overt acts. The solicitation count built on the call was quashed in March 2024; the false-statements count remained pending. District Attorney Fani Willis was later disqualified from the case, and on November 26, 2025 the prosecutor who took over dropped the remaining charges, ending the case without a trial.

On August 14, 2023, a Fulton County grand jury indicted Trump and 18 co-defendants on one count of violating Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, O.C.G.A. § 16-14-4, which alleged 161 overt acts in furtherance of a scheme to overturn Georgia's 2020 election results, along with 40 additional counts (Fulton County Criminal Indictment, Case No. 23SC188947). The January 2 call appears in that indictment more than once. Count 28 charged Trump and Meadows with soliciting Raffensperger to violate his oath of office during the call. Count 29 charged Trump with false statements and writings, O.C.G.A. § 16-10-20, for a series of claims he made to Raffensperger, Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs, and the office's general counsel, Ryan Germany, on the same call. The racketeering count also listed the call twice among its alleged overt acts, as Acts 112 and 113.

Count 28 never reached a jury, and it did not survive pretrial motions either. Judge Scott McAfee quashed Counts 2, 5, 6, 23, 28, and 38 by order dated March 13, 2024, and quashed Counts 14, 15, and 27 by a further order dated September 12, 2024. Both rulings are recorded in a footnote to the memorandum the incoming prosecutor filed when he later moved to close the case. The solicitation charge tied to the call was therefore off the table from March 2024 onward. The call itself stayed in the case: Count 29 and the racketeering count, including its call-related overt acts, were not quashed, and both remained pending until the case was dismissed in November 2025.

Four of the original 19 defendants resolved their cases by guilty plea before trial. Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with election duties, and Scott Hall pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor conspiracy counts; both received probation, gave statements to prosecutors, and agreed to testify in later proceedings. Attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Jenna Ellis also pleaded guilty in October 2023, each to a single felony count, and each was sentenced to probation. Those pleas were not disturbed by the case's later dismissal, which reached only the defendants and counts still pending.

The case against Trump and the remaining defendants never reached trial. On December 19, 2024, the Georgia Court of Appeals disqualified Willis and her office from the prosecution, citing "a significant appearance of impropriety" arising from her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she had hired to lead the case. Willis petitioned the Georgia Supreme Court on January 8, 2025, and that court declined to review the disqualification on September 16, 2025, leaving the Court of Appeals ruling in place.

The case returned to Fulton County Superior Court on October 1, 2025. Because Willis and her office could no longer prosecute it, O.C.G.A. § 15-18-5 required the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council of Georgia to supply a conflict prosecutor, and on October 3, 2025 Judge McAfee ordered the council to appoint one within 14 days or see the case dismissed for want of prosecution. The council's executive director, Peter Skandalakis, took the case himself as district attorney pro tempore, and on November 26, 2025 he filed a motion for entry of nolle prosequi dropping the charges against all remaining defendants. Judge McAfee granted the motion the same day, dismissing the case in its entirety.

In the memorandum filed with that motion, Skandalakis wrote that there was "no realistic prospect that a sitting President will be compelled to appear in Georgia to stand trial on the allegations in this indictment," and that in his professional judgment "the citizens of Georgia are not served by pursuing this case in full for another five to ten years." The dismissal ended the state prosecution without a trial and without a court ruling on whether the underlying racketeering allegations were proven. It does not change the recording-law analysis above, which concerns only whether making the recording itself was lawful.

Analysis: Two Separate Legal Questions

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

Whether the recording was legal and what happened to the criminal case are separate questions, and it is easy to conflate them. Georgia's one-party consent rule is narrow and settled: it asks who made the recording, not what was said on it or what legal consequences followed from it. That question was answerable from the beginning. The recording was almost certainly lawful under O.C.G.A. § 16-11-66(a) regardless of which side of the call produced it, because both Trump and Raffensperger were parties to their own conversation.

The case's end is a later, separate development driven by pretrial rulings, a disqualification dispute, and a prosecutor's discretion, not by any finding about the call itself. A nolle prosequi closes a prosecution without resolving the truth of the underlying allegations, so the November 2025 dismissal should not be read as a ruling on what happened during the call or on whether it amounted to solicitation of election fraud. The sequence matters here as well: the solicitation count arising from the January 2 call was quashed in March 2024, more than a year and a half before the case closed, while the false-statements count arising from the same call, and the racketeering count that listed the call among its overt acts, remained pending until the November 2025 dismissal ended them. Readers following this story should keep the settled recording-law question separate from the closed, but merits-unresolved, Fulton County case.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It covers Georgia's recording-consent law as applied to a specific, widely reported 2021 phone call, and the status of the related Fulton County criminal case as verified on August 4, 2026. Court records can change quickly. Consult a lawyer licensed in Georgia for advice about a specific situation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Was it legal to record the Trump-Raffensperger call?

Yes, most likely. Georgia is a one-party consent state under O.C.G.A. §§ 16-11-62 and 16-11-66(a), so the recording was legal if it was made by Trump, by Raffensperger, by someone else on the call, or by a third party with permission from one of them. No public reporting has identified a non-consenting third-party interception of this call.

Who actually recorded the call?

It was never officially confirmed. The Washington Post reported on January 3, 2021 that it had obtained audio and a transcript of the call, without naming its source.

Is the Fulton County criminal case against Trump still active?

No. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee dismissed the case in its entirety on November 26, 2025, after Peter Skandalakis, the prosecutor who had taken over the case, moved to drop the charges against all remaining defendants.

Why was Fani Willis removed from the case?

The Georgia Court of Appeals disqualified Willis and her office on December 19, 2024, citing a significant appearance of impropriety created by her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. The Georgia Supreme Court declined to review that ruling on September 16, 2025.

Did anyone go to prison over the Georgia election case?

No defendant was sentenced to prison in this case. Four of the nineteen defendants pleaded guilty before trial: Sidney Powell and Scott Hall to misdemeanor conspiracy counts, and Kenneth Chesebro and Jenna Ellis each to one felony count. All four were sentenced to probation. The case against Trump and the other remaining defendants was dismissed in November 2025 before it reached trial.

Was the Raffensperger call itself part of the criminal charges?

Yes, under more than one count. Count 28 of the August 2023 Fulton County indictment charged Trump and then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows with soliciting a violation of oath by a public officer in connection with the January 2, 2021 call, and Count 29 charged Trump with false statements and writings for statements he made on the same call. Judge Scott McAfee quashed Count 28, along with Counts 2, 5, 6, 23, and 38, by order dated March 13, 2024, but Count 29 remained pending until the case was dismissed in November 2025.

Does the case's dismissal mean the recording or the call's contents were found to be false?

No. A nolle prosequi dismissal ends a prosecution without a trial or a ruling on the truth of the underlying allegations. It resolves the criminal case procedurally; it does not adjudicate what was said on the call or why.