I've seen Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger praised as a principled Republican for releasing the audio of his phone call with Trump, which seemed to me somewhat out of character, what with with his obvious enthusiasm for Democratic voter suppression.

Now things are a little more clear.

In an interview with 11Alive reporter Brendan Keefe, the reporter asked Raffensperger directly: “If the president hadn’t tweeted, and tweeted something that was false, would we have ever heard that call recording?”

“No, it was a private conversation as far as I was concerned. He broke privacy when he put out a tweet, but then his tweet was false,” the new role model said.

Oh. So being threatened by Trump to throw the election -- TO COMMIT A FEDERAL CRIME -- would have been "just between us boys" if Trump hadn't tweeted his usual lies? Was this about feeling dissed?

“If President Trump hadn’t have tweeted out anything and would’ve stayed silent, we would’ve stayed silent as well. And that would’ve just been a conversation between him and I, man to man, and that would’ve been just fine with us. But he’s the one that had to put it out on Twitter.”

“And if you’re going to put out stuff that we don’t believe is true, then we will respond in kind.”

Understand, Raffensperger is saying, "Well, I would have kept it on the down low, but Trump made me!"

It kind of reminds me of that famous conversation with Kevin McCathy and Paul Ryan where McCarthy said he thought Putin paid Trump. Ryan replied, “No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.”

Yep. Just one big happy crime family.