In December, while a signature match audit was ongoing in one Georgia county, President Donald Trump phoned a chief investigator in Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office asking the official to “find the fraud” and telling this person they would be a “national hero” for it, an individual familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News.

The Washington Post was first to report on the lengthy phone call, which occurred before Trump’s stunning, hourlong phone conversation with Raffensperger in which the president ranted about baseless allegations of election fraud and pressured Georgia’s top elections official to “find” enough votes to deliver him a win in the Peach State.

That call, which took place on Jan. 2, is noted in the draft article of impeachment against the president that Democrats could introduce as early as Monday.

Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs confirmed the call between Trump and the elections investigator took place without offering details, saying only: “The secretary and the secretary of state’s office can confirm that the call did happen.”

The White House declined to comment to ABC News.

The source familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the call, told ABC News that the president’s call to the elections investigator occurred the day after White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows traveled to Cobb County, Georgia, attempting to observe the signature match audit taking place there. The source asked that investigator remain unnamed because of the current threat environment election officials are facing.

Meadows was in the county on Dec. 22, ABC News previously reported. Fuchs said at the time that she did not allow Meadows to enter the room where investigators from Raffensperger’s office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation were doing the audit, but she did allow him to stand in the doorway.

Fuchs said that the president’s chief of staff asked her “basic questions about the process,” and also wanted to know if they were doing a statewide signature audit. Raffensperger had previously announced his office partnered with the University of Georgia to conduct a statewide signature audit study, which Fuchs said she told Meadows.

According to Fuchs, Meadows told her they had “a good meeting” and that whatever information she was able to provide to him, he would report back to Trump.

Raffensperger announced on Dec. 14 that Cobb County would conduct a signature audit, saying there were specific and credible allegations that signature matching wasn’t done properly by election officials in the June primary.

A total of 15,118 absentee ballot oath envelopes, which is where voters sign, were randomly selected to be audited.

The audit was completed on Dec. 29, and investigators only found two ballots that should not have been accepted as they were. In Georgia, absentee by mail voters have the opportunity to cure a deficient absentee ballot, and the GBI said that these ballots should have gone through that process.

But the investigators also determined that neither of these ballots were fraudulently cast.

“I would also note for the record as well that during the course of the audit, there were no fraudulent absentee ballots identified in the process,” GBI Director Vic Reynolds said in a press conference on Dec. 30.

In one instance, the voter’s spouse signed the oath envelope on the voter’s behalf; in the other, the voter signed the oath envelope in the wrong place.

In both cases, the audit team was able to contact both voters and confirm they had filled out their respective ballots themselves, Reynolds said.

Trump and allies, including the Georgia Republican Party chairman, repeatedly claimed that the signature rejection rate in Georgia for the general election was suspiciously lower than past elections, pointing to this as evidence of election fraud. But Raffensperger and other officials in his office have said this isn’t true, and released figures to refute those claims.

Gabriel Sterling, the voting system implementation manager in Raffensperger’s office, has previously said that those making incorrect assertions about signatures rejection rates are comparing “apples and oranges” because they are comparing the signature rejection rate to the full rejection rates from previous elections. The entire rejection rate includes absentee ballots that are received after the deadline, and Sterling said late arriving ballots account for the “vast majority” of rejected absentee ballots

At least two Seattle police officers have been placed on leave and are being investigated for their alleged involvement in the U.S. Capitol protests.

The Seattle Police Department released a statement Friday night saying that it was made aware Friday of the officers’ involvement in the Jan. 6 siege and is now taking the appropriate measures.

“The Department fully supports all lawful expressions of First Amendment freedom of speech, but the violent mob and events that unfolded at the U.S. Capitol were unlawful and resulted in the death of another police officer,” Chief Adrian Diaz said in the statement, referring to Brian Sicknick, who died of injuries he sustained during the attack.

Diaz said the case is now being reviewed by the Office of Police Accountability.

“The OPA will investigate whether any SPD policies were violated and if any potential illegal activities need to be referred for criminal investigation,” he said. “If any SPD officers were directly involved in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, I will immediately terminate them. While OPA investigates, these officers have been placed on administrative leave.”

This seems to be the first report of out-of-state law enforcement officials being involved in the violent pro-Trump protests.

The FBI is currently working to identify those involved and has already made various arrests.

In a statement late Friday, FBI Assistant Director in Charge Steven M. D’Antuono said in a press call, “Just because you’ve left the D.C. region, you can still expect a knock on the door if we find out that you were part of criminal activity inside the Capitol. Bottom line—the FBI is not sparing any resources in this investigation.”

It appears President Donald Trump will have to find a new preferred platform to share his views with the world.

Twitter announced Friday evening that it had permanently suspended Trump.

“After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them — specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter — we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” Twitter wrote in a statement.

Trump’s final tweet said he would not be attending the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.

Hashtags for “TrumpBanned” and “Thank you Twitter” quickly rose to the top of the social media site in the wake of the permanent suspension

Hours after his suspension, Trump released a statement criticizing the ban, and teasing a possible new platform.

“I predicted this would happen,” he wrote in part. “We have been negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future. We will not be SILENCED!”

“Twitter is not about FREE SPEECH. They are all about promoting a Radical Left platform where some of the most vicious people in the world are allowed to speak freely,” he added.

Trump had attempted to post the same statement on Twitter, using the official @POTUS account, but the platform deleted the thread, saying users who are banned cannot post from other accounts. The @POTUS account, rarely used by Trump himself over the past four years, will be transferred over to the Biden administration following his inauguration.

The blog post from Twitter announcing the ban cited the events of Wednesday’s raid on the U.S. Capitol as a reason for the suspension. Trump’s account had been temporarily suspended in the wake of the rioting, but warned the president another violation of its terms of service would result in a permanent ban.

“In the context of horrific events this week, we made it clear on Wednesday that additional violations of the Twitter Rules would potentially result in this very course of action,” the company wrote.

Five people died in the rioting at the Capitol on Wednesday, including one police officer, just hours after Trump held a rally and urged his supporters to march to the Capitol.

“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them,” he said at the rally. “Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.”

Rioters ended up pushing past police and ransacking legislative offices, spraying graffiti on the walls and stealing property. In a video message posted to Twitter hours later, he called on the rioters to leave the Capitol, but also said, “We love you.”

Since his election loss in November 2020, the president has constantly used the social media platform to baselessly claim the election was rigged or rampant with fraud. Twitter began labeling his tweets in the run-up to the election to say some of the information was disputed. However, they were not taken down.

Facebook suspended Trump’s account indefinitely on Thursday, with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg writing in a post that “the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”

Reddit on Friday removed the subreddit r/donaldtrump from its platform, with a spokesperson saying, “Reddit’s site-wide policies prohibit content that promotes hate, or encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence against groups of people or individuals.”

Twitter has defended keeping Trump’s account active in the past based on politicians and world leaders providing information in the public interest — even if they go against Twitter policy for average users. But Twitter said Thursday they felt that was no longer the case with Trump.

“Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly,” Twitter wrote. “It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open.”

The statement continued, “However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement.”

A number of Trump associates were banned from Twitter earlier in the day Friday. Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, whom the president pardoned late last year for lying to the FBI during the Russia investigation, was banned, as well as lawyer Sidney Powell, who briefly served on Trump’s legal team following the election.

Trump has used Twitter as his main outlet for disseminating information for a decade. His posts during his presidency, sent from the same personal account he’s used since March 2009, often generated headlines themselves

Calls for Twitter to ban Trump, while increasing in the months since Election Day, are nothing new. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris repeatedly said while she was running for president that he should be banned.

She wrote a letter to CEO Jack Dorsey in October 2019, citing a handful of tweets she said broke the platform’s policy. Twitter pointed to its public interest policy and said they did not plan to ban his account.

He had approximately 79.5 million followers on Twitter at the time of his removal — the eighth-most followed account on the platform. Former President Barack Obama has the most followers at over 127 million, followed by Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Cristiano Ronaldo, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga.

First lady Melania Trump made her first comments on Wednesday’s deadly Capitol siege, calling for national unity yet refusing to take any responsibility for her husband’s role in the deadly riot.

Rather, she cast herself as a victim.

“I am disappointed and disheartened with what happened last week,” she wrote in the statement, posted on the White House website Monday morning. “I find it shameful that surrounding these tragic events there has been salacious gossip, unwarranted personal attacks, and false misleading accusations on me — from people who are looking to be relevant and have an agenda.

“This time is solely about healing our country and its citizens. It should not be used for personal gain,” Trump said.

She did not explain what “gossip” she was referring to.

The first lady expressed her condolences for a Capitol Hill officer who died in the attack, which her husband, President Donald Trump, has not done. Before naming the officer — and another Capitol Hill officer who died over the weekend — she named four Trump supporters who died on Wednesday, including a woman who was shot inside the Capitol building.

“My heart goes out to: Air Force Veteran, Ashli Babbit, Benjamin Philips, Kevin Greeson, Rosanne Boyland, and Capitol Police Officers, Brian Sicknick and Howard Liebengood,” Melania Trump said. “I pray for their families comfort and strength during this difficult time.”

In addition to the deaths of the four Trump supporters, Officer Sicknick was injured while engaging with protesters at the Capitol and died one day later from his injuries, according to Capitol Police. Officer Liebengood, who responded to the rioting, died on Saturday. Capitol Police have not released a cause of death.

Melania Trump did not take any responsibility for her words — or those of the president — in the months leading up to the siege. She had backed her husband’s effort to overturn the election, tweeting support in November.

Melania Trump said she’s “proud of our freedom to express our viewpoints without persecution” but “would like to call on the citizens of this country to take a moment, pause, and look at things from all perspectives.

“I absolutely condemn the violence that has occurred on our Nation’s Capitol,” she said.

“I implore people to stop the violence, never make assumptions based on the color of a person’s skin or use differing political ideologies as a basis for aggression and viciousness. We must listen to one another, focus on what unites us, and rise above what divides us,” she said.

The first lady’s only mention of the election was to say it’s “inspiring to see that so many have found a passion and enthusiasm in participating in an election, but we must not allow that passion to turn to violence. Our path forward is to come together, find our commonalities, and be the kind and strong people that I know we are.”

She ended by asking “for healing, grace, understanding, and peace for our great Nation.”

Democrats are taking steps this week in the House to remove the president, beginning with a call for Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25 Amendment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a letter to Democrats on Sunday.

The resolution would call on Pence “to immediately use his powers under section 4 of the 25th Amendment to convene and mobilize the principal officers of the executive departments in the Cabinet to declare what is obvious to a horrified Nation: That the President is unable to successfully discharge the duties and powers of his office.”