Georgia’s a dangerous place for Donald Trump
The Fulton County indictments against Donald Trump and his 18 codefendants read like a Netflix thriller with a surprise ending, namely that it was a parade of Republican leaders, not Democrats, who stopped him from overturning the state’s elections. Trump met one brick wall of resistance after another — and they were all from his own party.
The brick walls
The tick-tock of the indictment starts with Gov. Brian Kemp, whom the indictment says Trump called in an attempt to persuade him to convene a special session of the General Assembly to appoint electors for him instead of Joe Biden.
When Kemp refused, Trump tweeted the next day calling Kemp a “so-called governor” and demanding a special session anyway. “So easy!” The following week, Trump tweeted that Kemp was a fool and a clown. He again demanded a special session, which Kemp insisted he had no power to call.
Two weeks later, Trump and his allies were still going, drafting a letter to Kemp from Department of Justice officials outlining “significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states, including the state of Georgia.” The letter included multiple criminally false statements, the indictment says.
With time ticking toward the end of his presidency, Trump kept lashing out at Kemp, with no success. Finally, he demanded that Kemp resign. “He is an obstructionist who refuses to admit that we won Georgia, BIG!”
Ralston and Raffensperger
Another name that appears frequently in the indictment is House Speaker David Ralston’s. Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani called him separately in early December to push him to call a special session. Ralston refused them both.
Striking out with Kemp and the Speaker, Giuliani called Senate President Pro Tem Butch Miller and, the indictment alleges, made false statements about the 2020 elections.
Of course, the most prominent Republican in Trump’s way was Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, whom Trump infamously called and asked to “find 11,780 votes.” The indictment lists 13 criminally separate false statements in the call, and Raffensperger refuted them one by one.
When Trump tweeted the next day that Raffensperger could not answer his questions, he responded, “Respectfully Mr. President, that is not accurate,” adding mysteriously, “The truth will come out.”
The mystery was quickly solved when Raffensperger leaked the recording of the call, which Fani Willis heard on her first day on the job as Fulton County District Attorney. The rest, as they say, is history — or will be soon.
Dangerous Georgia
A set of Georgia laws make the state especially perilous for Trump and his fellow defendants, from its broad racketeering statute to the fact that neither a president nor a governor could issue a pardon. Only the Board of Pardons and Paroles can do that and only after a person’s sentence is complete.
If the case eventually goes to trial, it could be televised. That would let Americans see the same Republicans Trump failed to pressure take the witness stand against him.
It has to be said that plenty of Georgia Republicans did try to help Trump, from the state lawmakers who let Giuliani present false testimony at official hearings in December of 2020, to the Trump electors who signed documents saying he had won when he didn’t, and the operatives who harassed Ruby Freeman after Trump’s false public attacks on her. They decided to go along with Trump then and find themselves in deep legal peril with him now.
And even the Republicans who refused to help Trump overturn his loss passed an election law overhaul that the state didn’t need to mollify Trump’s angry supporters, who remained convinced that the entire process was rigged against him.
The full indictment illustrates the choice Georgia Republicans had to make, under withering pressure from the former president: to stand up to him or go along with him, even if that’s bad for the party, bad for the country, bad for them personally, or all of the above.
Same choice
Incredibly, Republicans have the same choice today. Trump posted a note to his social media platform last Tuesday promising that he’ll soon present “a large, complex, and irrefutable REPORT” that will finally prove fraud in Georgia and fully exonerate him.
And one more time, Kemp shut him down. “The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen,” he wrote in his own social media post. In three years, no valid evidence of fraud has ever been presented under oath in a Georgia court. He implored Republicans to look ahead to the 2024 election, when he has said he will still support Trump if he’s the GOP nominee.
Kemp declined to comment on the specifics of the indictment, citing his likely role as a potential witness against Trump — another plot twist in the thriller that never seems to end.