Report: Trump May Be Hit With Multiple Criminal Charges Over His Effort to Overturn the Election in Georgia
Bess Levin Vanity Fair
So that’s probably keeping him up at night, or it would if he weren’t completely delusional.
In a new 109-page report, D.C. think tank the Brookings Institution analyzed publicly available evidence concerning Trump’s and his allies’ efforts to pressure Georgia officials to “change the lawful outcome of the election,” concluding that the 45th president could be charged with multiple crimes. Obviously, one of the least helpful things Trump has going for him is his infamous phone call to Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger on January 3, during which Trump told the guy to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the state. “There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump said numerous times throughout the call, though of course he did. “There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”
The report also notes that Trump both publicly pressured and personally contacted a number of Republican officials in the state, including Attorney General Chris Carr and Governor Brian Kemp, to get their help in declaring him the victor. (The men did not go along with the plot, which might explain why Trump pretended to endorse Stacey Abrams for Georgia governor over the weekend.) The report, penned by Norman Eisen, Joshua Matz, Donald Ayer, Gwen Keyes Fleming, Colby Galliher, Jason Harrow, and Raymond P. Tolentino, notes that the then president called Carr and Kemp in December to beg them to go along with “his increasingly desperate plans to decertify his loss.” The authors warn that criminal liability could extend to Trump allies as well, including Rudy Giuliani.
Among the charges Trump himself could be hit with, the authors believe, are “criminal solicitation to commit election fraud; intentional interference with performance of election duties; conspiracy to commit election fraud; criminal solicitation; and state RICO violations,” in addition to violations of more than a dozen other Georgia state statutes. “We conclude that Trump’s post-election conduct in Georgia leaves him at substantial risk of possible state charges predicated on multiple crimes,” the report states.
Referencing the fact that Trump would likely claim that everything he did was just part of his job as president, the report declares: “Stated simply, soliciting and then threatening senior state officials to alter the outcome of a presidential election does not fall within any reasoned conception of the scope of presidential power.”
A spokesman for Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week that the investigation is “active and ongoing” but declined to reveal any details. Prosecutors have reportedly appeared before a grand jury seeking subpoenas for witnesses and documents; hired the state’s top experts on racketeering and conspiracy laws; interviewed at least four of Raffensperger’s closest advisers; and started coordinating with the congresspeople probing the events surrounding January 6.
Trump’s advisers have reacted to the Georgia probe exactly how one would expect if one paid attention for the last five years. “This is simply the Democrats’ latest attempt to score political points by continuing their witch hunt against President Trump, and everybody sees through it,” Jason Miller said in a statement following the launch of the investigation in the spring.
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Nothing to see here, just the governor of South Dakota seemingly abusing her position of power to get her daughter a real estate license
Given that she refuses to do anything about COVID-19, Kristi Noem has lots of time on her hands for such pursuits. Per the Associated Press:
Just days after a South Dakota agency moved to deny her daughter’s application to become a certified real estate appraiser, Governor Kristi Noem summoned to her office the state employee who ran the agency, the woman’s direct supervisor, and the state labor secretary. Noem’s daughter attended too. Kassidy Peters, then 26, ultimately obtained the certification in November 2020, four months after the meeting at her mother’s office. A week after that, the labor secretary called the agency head, Sherry Bren, to demand her retirement, according to an age discrimination complaint Bren filed against the department. Bren, 70, ultimately left her job this past March after the state paid her $200,000 to withdraw the complaint.
According to the AP, Peters applied to become a certified residential appraiser, which would result in a substantial increase in earnings, in September 2019; in late July 2020, the program that Bren directed moved to deny the license, which reportedly occurs when “an applicant’s work samples don’t meet minimum compliance with national standards.” On July 26, Bren received a text telling her to be at the governor’s office the following morning to discuss “appraiser certification procedures.”
Besides Noem and Peters, Bren said the meeting included Labor Secretary Marcia Hultman; Bren’s supervisor; the governor’s general counsel; and, participating by phone, the governor’s chief of staff and a lawyer from the state’s Department of Labor and Regulation.
Bren alleged in her complaint that one day before Peters received her certification, Hultman called her to discuss “concerns about the Appraiser Certification Program,” and demanded her retirement several days later, citing an alleged “inability to change gears.”
Though it’s not entirely clear what occurred during the July 2020 meeting, ethics experts (and anyone who has any sense) say it’s obvious this was a conflict of interest, as Noem should have recused herself from talks concerning an agency at which her daughter was applying for certification and clearly not allowed her daughter to sit in on a meeting with said agency. Noem declined an interview request from the AP, while her office declined to answer a list of detailed questions regarding the meeting. In a statement that has basically become boilerplate language for conservatives accused of wrongdoing, a spokesperson for Noem told the AP, “The Associated Press is disparaging the governor’s daughter in order to attack the governor politically—no wonder Americans’ trust in the media is at an all-time low.” On Twitter, Noem wrote: “Listen I get it. I signed up for this job. But now the media is trying to destroy my children. This story is just another example of the double standard that exists with the media... going after conservatives and their kids while ignoring Liberals #AskTheBigGuy.” Which is rich considering this October 2020 tweet:
We can't have corrupt leaders, but the Hunter Biden story signals exactly that kind of corruption and does tremendous damage to Joe Biden's credibility.
— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) October 16, 2020
Americans deserve the full truth, and @Twitter and @Facebook should stop blocking it!https://t.co/5PK1vZMvum
You’ll never believe it, but it turns out Lauren Boebert doesn‘t know how COVID, vaccines, or Tylenol work
I woke up with a headache this morning. I took some Tylenol. Now if everyone else could take some Tylenol too so mine would start working, that would be great. pic.twitter.com/LaaNHhaokn
— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) September 27, 2021
Republicans’ new 1/6 defense: It never happened
Sure, it unfolded on live TV, but whom are you going to believe, the GOP or your lying eyes?
Trump during his rally on Saturday called January 6 "a hoax" pic.twitter.com/pDNptdyncw
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 27, 2021