Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (left/AP Photo/Brynn Anderson); Donald Trump (right/(AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
A Fulton County, Georgia, court website reportedly posted — and then removed — a list of criminal charges to be brought against former President Donald Trump for his role in allegedly attempting to overturn his electoral defeat in the state in 2020.
The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office issued a statement denying any indictment had been filed against Trump after the list dated Aug. 14 went live without explanation and then came down abruptly. Reuters reported that a spokesperson for the district attorney denied their reporting, calling it “inaccurate” and offered no further comment.
The list posted and then taken down on Monday showed a number of felony charges including one for racketeering, another for soliciting a public officer to violate their oath, conspiracy to commit to impersonating a public officer, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree, conspiracy to commit false statements and writings, making false statements and writings and more.
It is unclear why details of a possible indictment, “inaccurate” or not, were published at all while a grand jury continues to collect evidence or hear from witnesses in the underlying investigation of the former president’s attempts to interfere in the state’s elections. Prosecutors have requested witnesses to appear as recently as last week with an expectation that they could officially appear this Tuesday, The New York Times reported.
An indictment is expected to be announced this week.
Notably, the list cited the district attorney’s investigation into the former president as “open.”
Much of what is contained in the document aligns with what is expected to come from prosecutors once an indictment in Georgia is official. It would be Trump’s fourth criminal indictment and would come, if it in fact happens this week, on the heels of special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of the former president in Washington, D.C.
In that venue, Trump faces four felony counts including three conspiracy charges: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any state in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to them by the U.S. Constitution or laws of the United States.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to those charges and all others he faces at present and is slated to go for a pretrial hearing before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Aug. 28.
In Georgia, district attorney Fani Willis has been investigating Trump for roughly two-and-a-half years to determine whether he or his cohorts interfered in the state’s election. Part of the investigation has zeroed in on a phone call Trump made in 2021 to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger where he told the secretary, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”
The call, which took place on Jan. 2, was recorded and went public the next day.
It also revealed Trump telling Raffensperger that he and the secretary’s lawyer, Ryan Germany, could face criminal troubles if they didn’t do his bidding.
“You know what they did and you’re not reporting it. You know, that’s a criminal — that’s a criminal offense. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you, and to Ryan, your lawyer,” Trump said. “That’s a big risk.”
Raffensperger, his deputy Gabriel Sterling and other state officials like Russell Bowers, former speaker for the Arizona House of Representatives, testified before the House Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol at its fourth public hearing last June. When Raffensperger met with the committee for his private deposition last November, he told them Trump’s calls to “find votes” beset him on all sides with violent threats.
“When someone has 80 million Twitter followers and we have on a good day 40,000 it’s very difficult with a match going up against a blowtorch,” he said.
Raffensperger disclosed too that he believed Trump’s conduct as well as Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani’s presentations to legislators in the state about so-called fraud there contributed to the greater chaos and violence that ended up rocking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
On Monday, Trump lashed out on social media, posting on his Truth Social site: “NO, I DIDN’T TAMPER WITH THE ELECTON!” [Emphasis, grammar original]
He continued to promote his now years-long debunked claim that fraud was rampant in the 2020 election and the election was “rigged” against him. The district attorney’s case, he complained, was “election interference” into his indictment-riddled 2024 presidential campaign.
Trump similarly appeared to lash out at U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan this past weekend. Chutkan presides over his Jan. 6-related indictment in Washington. The twice-impeached, thrice-indicted former president was formally warned at his arraignment before a different judge that terms to uphold his release pretrial hinged on his good behavior. Chutkan also warned him that he was not to make statements or undertake any conduct that could potentially taint the prospective jury pool or intimidate or harass prospective witnesses.
Trump may have done just that on Monday when he posted what appeared to be a warning on Truth Social addressing a witness in the Georgia case, lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan. Duncan confirmed on Twitter that he would testify on Tuesday.
“I am reading reports that failed Lt. Governor of Georgia Jeff [sic] Duncan, will be testifying before the Fulton County Grand Jury. He shouldn’t. I barely know him but he was, right from the beginning of this Witch Hunt, a nasty disaster for those looking into the Election Fraud that took place in Georgia,” Trump wrote. [Emphasis and grammar original]
There was no election fraud in Georgia, nor was there any fraud anywhere in the United States, a fact that many officials at the Trump administration-era Justice Department repeatedly informed him of at the time, including then-Attorney General Bill Barr.
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