Trump and 18 Others Indicted By Fulton County Grand Jury: Read It For Yourself
Donald Trump and 18 other named defendants have been indicted in the Fulton County Grand Jury investigation in Georgia’s 2020 election and aftermath.
Fulton County Grand JuryFormer president Donald Trump and 18 others were criminally charged in Georgia on Monday in connection with efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, according to an indictment made public late Monday night.
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Trump was charged with 13 counts, including violating the state’s racketeering act, soliciting a public officer to violate their oath, conspiring to impersonate a public officer, conspiring to commit forgery in the first degree and conspiring to file false documents.The historic indictment, the fourth to implicate the former president, follows a 2½-year investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D). The probe was launched after audio leaked from a January 2021 phone call during which Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to question the validity of thousands of ballots, especially in the heavily Democratic Atlanta area, and said he wanted to “find” the votes to erase his 2020 loss in the state.
Willis’s investigation quickly expanded to other alleged efforts by Trump or his supporters, including trying to thwart the electoral college process, harassing election workers, spreading false information about the voting process in Georgia and compromising election equipment in a rural county.
Trump has long decried the Georgia investigation as a “political witch hunt,” defending his calls to Raffensperger and others as “perfect.” Ahead of Monday’s indictment, Trump’s Georgia-based legal team had filed legal challenges seeking to disqualify Willis and block the investigation. In a statement, the attorneys — Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg and Jennifer Little – condemned the charges, calling the day’s events “shocking and absurd” and accusing Willis of building her case on “witnesses who harbor their own personal and political interests.”
“We look forward to a detailed review of this indictment which is undoubtedly just as flawed and unconstitutional as this entire process has been,” the statement said.
A total of 41 charges are brought against 19 defendants in the 98-page indictment. Not all face the same counts, but all have been charged with violating the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Willis said she has given those charged until Aug. 25 to surrender.
“Trump and the other Defendants charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump,” the indictment states.
Among those charged are Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who served as Trump’s personal attorney after the election; Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows; and several Trump advisers, including attorneys John Eastman, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro.
Also indicted were two Georgia-based lawyers advocating on Trump’s behalf, Ray S. Smith III and Robert Cheeley; a senior campaign adviser, Mike Roman, who helped plan the elector meeting; and three prominent Georgia Republicans who served as electors: former GOP chairman David Shafer, former GOP finance chairman Shawn Still and Cathy Latham of Coffee County.
Several lesser-known players who participated in efforts to reverse Trump’s defeat in Georgia were also indicted, including three people accused of harassing Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman. They are Stephen Cliffgard Lee, Harrison Floyd and Trevian Kutti. The latter is a former publicist for R. Kelly and an associate of Ye, formerly known as Kanye West.
A final group of individuals charged in the indictment allegedly participated in an effort to steal election equipment data in rural Coffee County, Ga. In addition to Latham, the former county GOP chair, they are former Coffee County elections supervisor Misty Hampton and Georgia businessman Scott Hall.
DA Fani Willis:
Meadows has probably flipped at the federal level – I suspect he flips here, or the feds hand over his transcripts which accomplishes the same thing. Clark might flip as well.
The rest have a deep problem – Trump will not do anything to protect them.Report
I suspect the former president will find out that omerta is a lot to ask of people used to the finer things in life, especially when his disloyalty to his followers is such a well known matter of public record. I’d have to think everyone has directed their counsel to send out feelers as to what sort of deal might be available. You definitely don’t want to be the last one trying to work something out.Report
I was 14 when Ford pardoned Nixon, and the explanation I recall reading was that indicting a former President would be too traumatic for the nation.
In hindsight, that seems to have been an inflection point where a malignant cell was allowed to remain unexcised. and today we are trying to cut out a cancerous tumor.Report
Very different world. Nixon was already broken. He was willing to retire. He was subject to social punishments because the country as a whole accepted he’d been bad.
Trump isn’t willing to retire and go hide under a rock and he crossed a lot more lines.
We’ve actually got a good case he’s the worst President ever. The guy before Lincoln set the stage for the civil war but attempting to overturn democracy might cross that bar.Report
At the time, I accepted the “Falling from grace is punishment enough” idea but I’ve come to see how poisonous that is.
Imagine you or me, accused of embezzlement and conspiracy charges, standing before a judge saying that being fired and publicly embarrassed was punishment enough.
It becomes a de facto class structure where there are different rules of law depending on one’s station.Report
Weaponization of the law becomes corruption of the law. In a world where people lie, the laws can be unclear, and people differ on policy, this is a problem.
Bush2 wanted to go up to the edge of torture but not over that, but the definition of torture is more “I know it when I see it” than we like to think.
Team Blue’s phony rape accusations against one of the Supremes. Is Thomas really corrupt or is it more that Blue could get a new Supreme if they pretend to believe that?
Bush2 droning people in Afghanistan. For all the talk about how these were war crimes and he should be arrested, when Obama took over that policy didn’t go away.
Pretending that the other side is “breaking the law” when in reality there are legit policy differences is a problem. If you’re allowed to arrest your pollical opponents for that then the system will break.Report
I agree that arresting people when the charges are implausible and unconvincing erodes trust in the law.
But this applies equally to a former president, whether it is of the United States or the local Rotary club.
I don’t see how this would prevent the indictment of either Nixon or Trump. The charges for both were very plausible and convincing.Report
Trump and his crew deserve full legal punishment, up to and including prison. We can’t let people do what they did without breaking the system.
Nixon’s crimes IDK well enough to comment.
However your original argument also works against Bush2 etc. For them we may be in “breaking the system if we do it” territory.Report
I agree with this, but we aren’t talking about “legit policy differences” vis-a-vis the efforts to overturn the 2020 election. There’s no legit interpretation of “You’ve got to find me another 27,000 votes.”Report
We have almost a third of the country thinking Trump was correct, that the election was stolen, and presumably they also think the DOJ bringing charges is weaponization of the legal system.
From their perspective, arresting politicians is the new normal.
That is the strongest reason to not pursue charges, but he was so far over the line I still think we have to.Report
If we stop pursuing prosecution of criminality because some portion of voters doesn’t want to deal with reality, then Fascism wins.
I’m not taking that deal.Report
“If we stop pursuing prosecution of criminality because some portion of voters doesn’t want to deal with reality, then Fascism wins.”
Oh, but we ALREADY are doing exactly that.Report
You got evidence the DoJ doesn’t on Hillary or Joe or anyone else? Bring it.Report
Try again. That’s not what I was talking about.
Think about the guy stealing cigs at a convenience store in caliReport
nice attempt at deflection. Not prosecuting the guy stealing cigs in Cali – which I presume is a made up thing – is about whether the local DA has the resources to do that for every person committing low level crime (they usually don’t), and whether that crime is something that actually needs to be prosecuted. I get that you’d love a police state where your morality is inflicted on others at the point of a tazer, but that’s apples and ice cubes to a President trying to stay in power via corrupt illegal means.Report
It’s a reference to the guy stealing cigs at the 7-11 whose robbery was thwarted by the store owners who tackled him to the ground and beat him with mop handle.Report
It wasn’t an attempt at deflection. It the same thing.
There’s documented evidence…just read the papers/news…of jurisdictions where elected officials have won elections on platforms of not pursuing prosecution of specific criminal behavior. So, based on EXACTLY what you wrote, fascism has won. And thanks for the slander about what I’d like society to be like. Sheesh.Report
To be blunt, if it is impossible to prosecute someone for trying to steal the Presidency because they are too popular, the US has already failed as a state and needs to be dissolved.Report
Democracy can muddle along even without perfect justice.
Keep Trump out of office and he’ll be dead in a decade just because of his age.
If we put Rudy and some of the others in prison that would still send a pretty solid message.
Fox has already gotten a wake up call from losing close to a Billion, they won’t do it again.
We’re past the point where he’s a serious threat to democracy.Report
79% of Republican voters believe the election was stolen from him. They intend to renominate him to right that wrong. His vengeful personality is still on full view.
And Fox has learned precisely nothing. Their commentators STILL spew all manner of defamatory language. Heck on of their night talking heads last week said crime would go away if we got ride of women.Report
Saying that 21% of the GOP can’t vote for him because he’s opposed to democracy, never mind everyone else, is also saying he’s unelectable.Report
Biden’s margin of election was 4% of the popular vote – aligned in certain electoral college sates where, if you drill down, Biden won by several tens of thousands of strategically placed votes. That 4% figure matches the decline in votes for third party candidates between 2016 and 2020. Trump remains electable if nominated.Report
My prediction is Trump is crushed to such a degree that it’s clear he’s not electable.
I’m pretty far to the right and I can’t vote for him. He’s into unelectable territory long before he’s lost my vote.Report
I never read “you’ve got to find me another 27,000 votes” as corrupt, just desperate. It’s telling a bookie that you need a few more days. It’s an attempt to find wiggle room. I don’t know why Trump’s supporters and foes always paint him as a focused guy. He’s not. Both impeachments were his opponents looking at bluster and trying to find a motivation. He’s just like (never mind “just like”, he IS) the creep who hits on all the women and strikes out 98% of the time, but gets more action just because he never fails to ask.Report
Here’s the GA statute on criminal solicitation:
https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2022/title-16/chapter-4/section-16-4-7/#:~:text=Criminal%20Solicitation,-Universal%20Citation%3A%20GA&text=A%20person%20commits%20the%20offense,to%20engage%20in%20such%20conduct.
It actually seems like a very straightforward violation of the law. It’s unusual in the sense that it’s a sitting president doing it but unlike some of the federal stuff this is pretty clear cut. Violation of oath of office is also a felony which puts it within scope but I can’t give two links lest I upset WordPress.Report
Very few cases of any type are ever settled by a single sentence or conversation by the accused.
Its always a combination of many factors– Conversations, witness testimony, physical evidence, subsequent actions by all parties, etc.- which all add up to convince a jury that yes, a crime was committed and yes, it was by the accused.Report
Heh, oh I dunno. I admit I never did a case quite like this. But during my days as a baby lawyer it usually came down to evidence, and much of the time the state had a pretty good amount of it that the defendant did something at least vaguely (even if not always exactly) like the charges.
In a situation like this where you’ve got a recording of the defendant apparently making a facial violation of a criminal statute… well but for the political salience I don’t think there would be a lot of controversy over it. I know I wouldn’t be itching to defend it at trial.Report
I’m trying to head off the jailhouse lawyering of parsing out the meaning of that one sentence, as if there isn’t also a ton of supporting evidence painting a picture of a conspiracy to overturn a free and fair election.Report
More to the point…people do understand that a large chunk of this indictment is about the conspiracy to forge electoral votes and impersonate electors, right? A conspiracy that Trump fully participated in, and is flatly illegal, it’s forging Georgia official documents and passing people off as Georgia elected officials, which electors are.
And before people go ‘Wait, I though we sometimes had multiple electoral slates before in the past, we had to pass laws to clear up which we would count, so isn’t this some silly mistake’…no. We’ve had _state governments_ that confusingly issued multiple official electoral slates, so we made it clear what we’d accept. That’s not the same as people just proclaiming themselves as electors and forging documents indicating that and holding themselves out as that to other people. (In fact, people in the Georgia government were repeatedly asked to put some sort of official imprint on this, which wouldn’t have made it legal but at least clouded the issue, and they flatly refused. Which is pointed out in the indictment.)
And it’s literally part of Trump’s plan, a conspiracy that came directly from the White House as part of the ‘Come up with reasons to disrupt the EC vote’. He wasn’t intending them to be ‘counted’, he was just intending to use them as an excuse not to count the actual EC vote and instead throw the election to the House, but…it doesn’t actually matter why he conspired to commit the crime.
There’s not some debate there, not some argument that this _might_ be legal, nothing to do with parsing sentences. He had direct knowledge these crimes were happening, he had agreed to them, and he took actions to further them. That’s literally the definition of conspiracy.
Another chuck of the indictment, incidentally, is about how he participating in a conspiracy to commit COMPUTER TRESPASS on a voting machine. Yeah, really. Again, not something that is some mere confusing sentence.
People really need to stop just hallucinating what the basis of these indictments are, and read them. People all said in the past ‘That sentence he just uttered was a crime’ and we’re all imagining that somehow that’s what he got indicted for…literally just that sentence. That’s not how anything works.Report
That. That exactly.Report
I was on your side with this, but after seeing Pinky’s take, I was curious and looked up the transcript of the call. I didn’t read the whole thing (ain’t nobody got time for that), but I went through all 19 hits on “11”, and the most natural read of it is “there was a ton of fraud, tens of thousands of bad votes, you don’t need to track all of them down but just 11,780”. That to me is less obviously felonious than “you need to change this many votes for me” — not that there isn’t plenty overall to make a case, but the one quote is not the slam dunk I had thought it was.Report
I think it is the number quote plus the ‘that’s a big risk to you’ quote that is most damning, but I see other stuff too. Now one never knows what a jury is going to do. It’s always possible they will look at that call in a total void of context, abandon all common sense and personal experience, and interpret it in the totally innocent self serving manner Trump’s attorneys will argue it should be. But if that was the norm there’d be a lot more gang members and mobsters on the street than there are, many of whom also couch their threats in some arguably legitimate concerns.
Keep in mind Raffensperger, who has already said he felt threatened, will also almost certainly testify how he interpreted this conversation. And how would common sense tell you to interpret it if you were him? Would you think it was just some humdrum concern about fraud or that you were being threatened, or asked (which is also illegal under the statute) to do things you weren’t supposed to do? If someone like your boss or other powerful person asked you to secure some outcome and suggested it would be a ‘big risk’ if you didn’t how would you interpret that conversation? What would you think was going on?Report
I’m not saying you can’t make an argument, but on its face, Trump is saying that criminal stuff is going on with the vote, and if Raffensperger isn’t stopping it then he’s basically part of it.
The case depends on what the jury sees as the intent behind the words, but the words themselves are not incriminating *if you assume that Trump truly believes what he’s saying about the ballot fraud*. It’s possible both for Raffensperger to feel threatened and for Trump not to have meant it as a threat.Report
Just to add, I guess I’m responding more to what Burt said above — the presentation of the one quote made it sound worse than it is in context.Report
Like I said, it’s possible the jury will abandon all common sense and personal experience, and interpret it in the totally innocent self serving manner Trump’s attorneys will argue it should be. There have been times juries have done things like that. But this is a good case, and it’s designed to get all of the co conspirators to turn on Trump.
I’m serious about the question though. If you were a juror, what would you think? You have to decide, guilty or not guilty. Was it an innocent call about fraud that no one could ever substantiate or find evidence of or was it a solicitation to do something that’s illegal? I feel like people are all willing to concede it was the latter but then pretending there is this box of legal fiction the jurors are going to be put in where absent knowing the exact contents of Trump’s brain they have to acquit. The system doesn’t work that way.Report
“Was it an innocent call about fraud that no one could ever substantiate or find evidence of or was it a solicitation to do something that’s illegal? I feel like people are all willing to concede it was the latter…”
Nope.
Even normal politicians have trouble believing they truly lost. Trump to this day is sure that the votes were there because he can’t picture anyone voting against him. He’s seen crowds. They cheered him. That’s his evidence and nothing can refute it.
ETA: How does a state’s Secretary of State feel when a president calls him? Not threatened, that’s for sure, not if the president is a lame duck. Probably not even if he’s just starting his term.Report
I love it! So you’re in the jury box. The DA presents this call. Then she has Raffensperger to take the stand. Raffensperger says ‘yes I interpreted this as a threat, that if I did not come up with votes or some other reason to change the outcome, Trump or his people would do something to me.’ You conclude: Trump was not trying to get Raffensperger to do anything he wasn’t under his oath of office supposed to do? Come on!Report
I looked at the transcript and Ken’s right, no one should have to read that, so I just looked at Raffensperger’s statements on the call. He was not intimidated. He wasn’t swayed. He was listening to some citizen of another state make unsupported accusations and he treated him that way. Not in a combative way, but nearly all of his statements are “no, that’s just not true”.Report
But that’s the thing! He doesn’t have to be swayed under the statute anymore than the girl on the corner has to actually agree to join you in the back seat to help you find that thing you lost in your pocket. The ask is the crime and people get popped for it all the time.Report
If the call were the only issue then we wouldn’t be bothering to bring charges.Report
OK – really I was just pushing back on the popular idea (which had been my idea too up until now) that what he said was indubitably, prima facie illegal. The bit that got out for main public consumption was that he was asking Raffensperger to find votes for him, but the context (believable or not) is his assertion of fraudulent ballots, and the thing to be found is the fraudulent votes.
I understand that a reasonable person would be highly suspicious of the context.Report
The case does not even slightly depend on that in the least.Report
One of the things about arguing on the internet or (in the olden days, bars), is the need to be brief and condense vast issues into pithy soundbites or zingers.
But as with so many things, this conspiracy was, well, a conspiracy involving 162 overt acts, and hundreds of lies told by the defendants. Almost all of these overt acts and lies were witnessed and documented at the time and aren’t really being contested.
No one has even bothered to make the attempt to string all the overt acts and lies into a narrative in which Trump is innocent because it would require a hallucinatory ability to see the sky as orange.
But this is what I mean when I warn about self-described “Reasonable Republicans”.
They proudly declare themselves to be not-Trumpists, but will take every opportunity to avert their eyes and dismiss any evidence of the threat he poses to the American experiment with democracy.Report
“And you are going to find that they are — which is totally illegal, it is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. And that’s a big risk.”
If you put me on a jury and expect me to believe that was a personal threat, you’re in for a surprise.Report
Ok, but the solicitation statute says ‘solicits, requests, commands, importunes, or otherwise attempts to cause the other person to engage in such conduct.’ Even if you don’t think it was a threat would you say it was not at least a ‘request’ or possibly ‘importune’ or ‘attempt to cause’? Just asking is enough. I get that you could characterize it as kind of clumsy or preposterous but there’s no exception in the statute for that.Report
Define “such conduct”.Report
‘Conduct constituting a felony.’ So any felony under the Georgia criminal code, which the violation of oath of office is.Report
I don’t know if this is a circular argument, but it’s being presented on the threads in a circular way. Or something.Report
I can see why it might feel that way, but it really is illegal to ask someone to commit a crime.Report
But there, you’re assuming that he was asked to commit a crime. What crime?Report
The crime of switching multiple thousands of votes from anyone else to Donald Trump after the state certified its election results and without any evidence that Trump had actually won those votes. Because the request came AFTER Brad Raffensberger had determined the votes were legitimately cast and legally counted and AFTER Raffensberger had certified the results under Georgia’s laws. At the same time as people workign for Trump – with is knowledge and consent, were writing up fake/false/forged elector certificates to submit to Congress during the January 6th counting. Among many other things.
Is that clear enough?Report
The problem is, there’s precedent. In 1960, the presidential election was held in Hawaii, ballots were counted, a group of electors was chosen, they were approved, and the “safe harbor” date passed. There were still legal claims going on, and they resulted in a recount that switched the winner. So a second slate of electors were chosen. On January 6, 1961, the VP requested and received unanimous consent from the Senate to accept the second slate.Report
Violation of oath of office by Raffensperger. This is the statute:
https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2020/title-16/chapter-10/article-1/section-16-10-1/#:~:text=Any%20public%20officer%20who%20willfully,%2D2302%2C%20enacted%20by%20Ga.Report
See above.
A football game can’t end on a defensive penalty. It doesn’t matter how far down the team with the ball is, how bad their position, even how many players they field. The game goes to the end. Even after the clock runs out, if you can get a ref to throw a flag and call a penalty on the defense on the last play, the game is still going. You know what they call the kind of coach who tries that – a sore loser. But unless the coach touches the ref, he’s allowed to plead his case.Report
There was no case to plead. There was no evidence. Trump knew it. His campaign knew it. Raffensberger knew it. Unlike Hawaii there was no sanctioned recount going on. The recounts were done. Litigation was done. Trump lost. And besides calling Raffensberger to “Find votes” he also called the House Speaker to call a special session to accept fake electors with forged certificates. Which was also asking a Georgia state official to violate his oath of office. The game was over. There was no penalty to call.
Because you know what a coach that tries to get a penalty where none exists is called? A cheater.
And why are you spending so much time trying to get him off anyway? You keep saying he shouldn’t be in power.Report
Rule of law.
ETA: Also, think about what you just admitted to when you said I should be ok with imprisoning someone because I don’t want him reelected.Report
That’s why he’s being indicted and tried, not just summarily executed. Which is what actual Fascist states do.Report
Fascist and authoritarian states in general love show trials more than summary executions.Report
I understand the logic of what you’re saying but it’s been rejected by every legislature in the country by enacting ‘attempt’ and ‘solicitation’ statutes. People go to jail all the time for soliciting or attempting things they were not necessarily likely to actually achieve.Report
No. They’re jailed for soliciting *illegal* things they weren’t likely to achieve.Report
Switching votes is illegal. Sending fake elector to DC with forged documents is illegal. And pressuring state officials to conduct these acts is illegal.Report
It wouldn’t be legal for Raffensperger to do what was being asked. It would be a felony.Report
I’m not sure who the defense is here.Report
I don’t want to speak for Pinky, but you could make a policy/civil libertarian kind of argument that you shouldn’t be prosecuting people for encouraging the commission of hypothetical crimes that don’t actually happen. I think there is more going on here than the hypothetical, but that’s a question I suppose a juror could come to different conclusions on. And when I come across the details on, for example, certain terrorism prosecutions over the last 20 years, where they’re sending a bunch of marginal weirdos who may or may not be mentally ill to prison for hypothetical crimes they had no chance of succeeding at, I think it is fair to ask ‘what are we really doing here?’
That said I don’t think the idea that people could be prosecuted for pestering public officials to violate the law is some outlandish thing. I strongly doubt there’s a state out there that doesn’t have laws similar to Georgia’s and we empower the legislature to make that call. Trump asked, and the law says he should find out.Report
If we focus in on that one statement at that one time and ignore everything else that was going on, then there’s something like a defense.
RICO’s job is to prevent the evaluation of each of these acts as though nothing else is going on.
So trying to get Pence to overturn the election is related to the fake electors is related to trying to find votes that don’t exist is related to the riot.
To be fair, some of these things were pretty illegal on the face of it.Report
I am not the one you have to convince!
But that’s what I meant above about approaching this issue as though the jurors have to look at the charges in a very abstract way that tends to remove them from all of the other facts and context and what they know from human experience. That’s not the case.Report
No analogy is perfect. They can help clarify things, but if one doesn’t click, it’s no big deal.
Biden beat Trump, so I guess the Democrats are the team who was playing defense, and Trump and his people were trying every possible Hail Mary and lateral they could think of, then begging the ref to call a penalty. Increasingly desperate, and increasingly far-fetched.Report
As a long time football official, I can tell you once the final whistle has sounded, no flags are getting dropped. 44/45 presidents have respected this rule.Report
The 1972 Olympic Men’s basketball final game went there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Olympic_men%27s_basketball_finalReport
Yes, all of that. We saw this in Bush v Gore too… except they didn’t step into the outright illegal stuff.
But since Trump has gone there, he can’t walk it back. If he’s elected again he’ll need to fire DAs who take up charges against himself. He’d fill the DoJ with loyalists because if he doesn’t he’ll end up in prison.
Similarly he probably would need to pay more attention to what Judges he puts in power and select them for loyalty too.Report
He asked for the votes after all the counting was done and certified. That’s asking the bank for more time the day your loan was due.
The he’s not a focused guy just a creep is fair and accurate. Good thing he’s not close to any positions of power or anything like that.Report
It’s terrible that he’s had and could again have a position of power. I still wouldn’t raise an eyebrow at his statement. When people bring up his creepiness and/or possible power along with these charges, it looks to me like they want him charged for creepiness and possible power.Report
His statement is him directly criming. But what evs.Report
His statement about the Mar-A-Lago files was directly criminal. It doesn’t afford any interpretation. If he’s guilty of multiple crimes, he should be tried for them, sure. But the timing of all of these at once, and the three weak ones requiring some replaying of the 2020 election, makes it seem like the goal is to talk about the 2020 election.Report
Well we tried to impeach him immediately after – which was the Constitutional solution to all this. The GOP didn’t play along, so the House spent two years gathering admissible evidence which they turned over to the DoJ, who were also gathering evidence.Ditto the Fulton County DA. And now they are indicting because they believe they have enough evidence to convict. This stuff doesn’t happen overnight.Report
It doesn’t happen overnight, but it also rarely happens all at the same time.Report
The DA who puts Trump away ends up in the history books and maybe jump starts their own political career.
But that’s only true for the first one to convict him of his various crimes. The 4th DA to do that will be less of a big deal.
There’s also the problem that if he’s reelected then he’ll fire the DAs who are trying to hold him accountable. Reportably he already tried that but in the face of most of the DoJ resigning he backed down.Report
The NY Times tries to be too cool for school: “The novelty of a former leader of the United States being called a felon has somehow worn off. Not that the sweeping 98-page indictment handed up in Georgia accusing him of corruptly trying to reverse the state’s 2020 election results was any less momentous. But a country of short attention spans has now seen this three times before and grown oddly accustomed to the spectacle.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/14/us/politics/trump-indictments-georgia-criminal-charges.htmlReport
Notice the pivot from “Prosecuting Trump will be a risky move, putting the Department of Justice itself on trial!” to “Oh well, nothing to see here.”Report
DOJ is on trial, at least as far as the MAGA contingent goes; this may well be why Hunter Biden is getting sicced with a competent and aggressive special prosecutor and not pled out as would have happened with anyone else who wasn’t, well, him.Report
The Hunter Biden Special prosecutor is the same DoJ prosecutor he had before. Given the GOP’s less then supportive response if its an attempt to up the ante and save DoJ’s rep against the chorus of special treatment misdirection owls, its failing miserably and was always going to.Report
The GOP has this fun habit of finding firm-but-fair politically-neutral-or-even-conservatively-leaning people to look into things, and DEMANDING them as investigators into looking very closely at very thin Democratic-adjacent wrongdoing or ‘witchhunts’ of Republicans committing crimes in broad daylight while tweeting about them…
…and the second those people come to a conclusion that Republicans don’t like (Usually because it their Republican’s legal theories were stupid to start with), they immediately start complaining how those people have really obvious biases.
It really is how amazing how often _we literally let the right pick the refs_, and then after those refs look at things for a second those refs instantly become ‘unfair’ and ‘biased’, because, uh, they can see what facts do and don’t exist.
Justice, just like reality in general, has a well-known liberal bias, I guess.Report
You do know you and I agree here right? Because the now special counsel is well reported to be a Trump appointee.Report
Reading up on the Hunter Biden thing, I read someone that pointed out that his gun charges are possibly now unconstitutional. At least one district court has found that barring gun licenses to drug users is unconstitutional as it does not have any sort of strong historical support, which is apparently the new standard now.
Now, admittedly, he was charged with _lying_ about that under threat of perjury, not with having done that, but it is possible to argue ‘Conditioning that on any drug use was unconstitutional to start with, ergo I had to lie about that to exercise my right to own a gun’.
Now, I disagree with this constitutional interpretation of the second amendment (Although I do have an issue with ‘requiring people to swear under oath that they have have not committed crimes that the government might not know about to get their constitutional rights’ violation of the _fifth_ amendment), but it would have rather hilarious if Hunter got those charges dropped or found innocent of them because of Republicans’ constant weakening of gun laws.Report