Raging Don backs call to jail Ga. pols
Donald Trump gave a presidential bullhorn Tuesday to a tweet from a conspiracy-mongering lawyer that claimed Georgia’s two top Republican officials should be jailed for not doing more to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory.
Lin Wood, an attorney in Georgia who has openly promoted the deranged QAnon conspiracy theory, wrote in the small-hour tweet that Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “will soon be going to jail” because they didn’t participate in Trump’s desperate bid to get Biden’s win in the Peach State invalidated.
“He gave @BrianKempGA & @ GaSecofState every chance to get it right. They refused. They will soon be going to jail,” Wood wrote along with a manipulated photo of Kemp and Raffensperger wearing face masks imprinted with the Chinese flag.
A few hours later, Trump retweeted the incendiary post, pushing it into the timelines of his more than 88 million followers.
A White House spokesman did not return a request for comment on why Trump amplified the authoritarian-like missive. Spokesmen for Kemp and Raffensperger did not return requests for comment, either.
Raffensperger and Kemp are lifelong Republicans and vocal supporters of Trump. The president endorsed both of them for their current jobs when they ran for office in 2018.
However, the Georgia Republicans have drawn Trump’s ire as they’ve repeatedly rebuffed his demands for Biden’s narrow victory in the state to be tossed out over baseless and debunked allegations of voter fraud.
In turn, Trump and his allies have improbably accused the Georgia conservatives of helping Democrats “rig” the election for Biden. On Nov. 29, Trump even said he felt “ashamed” to have endorsed Kemp in 2018.
Raffensperger said last month that his family has faced a torrent of death threats because of Trump’s increasingly erratic public attacks. The secretary also said he has been forced to hire an around-the-clock security team to post up at his home.
Trump’s unsettling retweet of Wood came one day after the Electoral College certified Biden’s election as the 46th president of the United States.
A growing number of congressional Republicans are admitting it’s over for Trump, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) becoming the most senior GOP official on Capitol Hill to congratulate Biden on his victory Tuesday.