Trump made fun of Georgia election officials for receiving death threats after they refused to audit the 2020 election results, report says

• Trump last year pressured Georgia officials to help him overturn the state's election result.
• Many of those officials and their families received death threats.
• Sources told The Daily Beast that Trump made fun of the issue, even saying the officials deserved the threats.

President Donald Trump made fun of Georgia election officials who received death threats during his attempt to overturn the 2020 election result, even saying they deserved the vitriol, The Daily Beast reported on Monday.

On January 2, Trump called Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and pressed him to "find 11,780 votes" to overcome Joe Biden's victory. Raffensperger pushed back and did not take up Trump's request.

Trump and his allies had been railing against election workers. Some officials received violent threats.

On December 1, Gabriel Sterling, Georgia's voting-system-implementation manager, begged for an end to the "death threats, physical threats, intimidation."

In the wake of the January 2 phone call, Raffensperger said his wife had received death threats.

Sources told The Daily Beast that Trump was briefed several times about the threats but was unmoved and even made light of it.

"There was this one time I heard [Trump] suggest they might be exaggerating the kind of threats they were getting," a former senior administration official told the outlet. "But more often, he'd make fun of them and say they were bad people who were getting what they deserved."

Another person close to Trump told The Daily Beast that Trump had said that if the officials wanted the threats to end, they simply had to grant him his wish.

Trump also heaped praise on those making the threats, calling them "my people," the source told The Daily Beast.

Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Among the death threats sent to officials was a promise to "make the Boston bombings look like child's play," The Daily Beast reported.

Reuters reported that in April, Raffensperger's wife, Tricia, received text messages that said "You and your family will be killed very slowly" and "We plan for the death of you and your family every day."

Trump and his campaign went to court to challenge the election results in several states; all those lawsuits failed. He and his allies maintain, baselessly, that the election was stolen from him.