(Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis wants Georgia's trial of Donald J. Trump and 18 associates over alleged election tampering to begin March 4. She will be competing with Special Counsel Jack Smith's federal case, plus two others.)
FRIDAY 8/18/23
Date Fight – Donald J. Trump’s attorneys want his trial for allegedly overturning the 2020 presidential election – the federal one -- to begin in April 2026, The Wall Street Journal reports, while Special Counsel Jack Smith, citing the public’s interest in a speedy trial, has requested a start date of January 2, 2024. The former president’s law team cited as much as 11.5-million pages of materials and testimony from hundreds of witnesses, as well as the historic nature of the case, in requesting Thursday a start date some 21 months after the next inauguration date. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan will rule on the trial date.
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About That News Conference – Regarding the other election tampering case – the one brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (above) -- former President Trump has cancelled his news conference next Monday in which he had planned to release a report claiming new “evidence” of fraud in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election, citing advice of his attorneys, The Associated Press reports, while reminding us that Republican officials in Georgia long ago said Trump lost fairly to Joe Biden and they backed that up with three ballot recounts.
Grand Jurors threatened: The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office said it is investigating online threats against grand jury members who voted to indict 19 people, including Trump, accused of tampering with Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results, The New York Times reports. The jurors’ names are listed in the 98-page indictment, as required in Georgia, making it an outlier in rules regarding federal and state grand juries.
--TL
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THURSDAY 8/17/23
Line Forms to Try Trump – Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (above) Wednesday proposed March 4, 2024, as the trial date for former President Trump’s Georgia election case, The Washington Post reports. Willis also proposed individual arraignment hearings for each of the case’s 19 defendants to begin the week of September 5, motion hearings to begin December 11, and February 20 for a pretrial conference.
She will have to get in line with three other Trump cases.
“In light of defendant Donald John Trump’s other criminal and civil matters pending in courts of our sister sovereigns, the state of Georgia proposes certain deadlines that do not conflict with these other courts’ already scheduled hearings and filing dates,” Willis’ filing said.
Aggressive timeline: Legal scholars and pundits doubt all these court dates can be completed before the November 5, 2024, presidential election. Trump attorneys already are busy filing for various delays.
Read: “Giant Four-Indictment Comparo!” on our Substack newsletter, at https://thehustings.substack.com/p/giant-four-indictment-comparo
Worse than Watergate: Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks told NPR’s Morning Edition co-host Steve Inskeep Thursday that what President Nixon did 40 years ago is “child’s play” compared to ex-President Trump’s threat to the nation’s democracy: https://www.npr.org/2023/08/17/1194349569/are-there-parallels-between-the-nixon-era-scandal-and-trumps-indictments
Fed judge threatened: A Texas woman has been arrested on charges she left a voice mail left for the federal judge hearing the Justice Department’s case alleging Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, WaPo reports.
A criminal complaint filed Friday, August 11, alleges Abigail Jo Shry, 43, of Alvin, Texas, left a racial slur on a phone in Judge Tanya Chutkan’s chambers and threatened her, saying “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are going to kill you, so tread lightly, b----.” The VM was left on the phone two days after Trump’s arraignment in Washington, D.C., for election interference.
The complaint further alleges Shry also threatened to kill Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) as well as Washington Democrats -- apparently in general -- and members of the LGBTQ community.
--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa
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Trump Indictment IV, This One in Georgia
TUESDAY 8/15/23
Mr. Ex-President, Here’s Your 11,780 – Or rather, 41-counts in one indictment by Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis (above) against Donald J. Trump and 18 other defendants, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and attorneys John Eastman and Sidney Powell. Following a nearly 10-hour grand jury hearing Monday according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Fulton County prosecutors charged 19 men and women under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, or RICO, initially designed to target mob crime.
In her press conference just before midnight Tuesday, Willis gave defendants a noon Monday, August 21 deadline to enter their pleas. Responding to a reporter’s question, Willis’ rather surprising response was; “Do I intend to try 19 defendants together? Yes.”
Trump later was quoted as calling Willis a “rabid partisan,” according to NPR.
Willis on Monday night thanked law enforcement for protecting her team and the grand jury during the investigation.
The indictment alleges that the manner and method of the criminal conspiracy by the defendants included, but was not limited to:
•False statements to and solicitation of state legislatures in Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania in November and December 2020 “to persuade legislators in those states to unlawfully appoint their own presidential electors.
•False statements to and solicitation of high-ranking state officials.
•Creation and distribution of false Electoral College documents. The indictment notes that “Similar schemes were executed by members of the enterprise in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin” (as Georgia’s 16 Electoral College votes alone would not be sufficient to overturn the election in Trump’s favor).
•Harassment and intimidation of Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman, including false accusations she committed election crimes in connection with the November 3, 2020 ballot count.
•Solicitation of high-ranking U.S. Justice Department officials – “In one instance, Donald Trump stated to the Acting United States Attorney Gen. [Jeffrey Clark] ‘Just say that the election was corrupt, and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen,’” the indictment alleges.
•Solicitation of the vice president of the United States.
•Unlawful breach of election equipment in Georgia and elsewhere.
In addition to Trump, Giuliani, Meadows, Eastman, Powell and Clark the indictment charges …
•Kenneth Cheseboro
•Jenna Ellis
•Ray Stallings Smith III
•Robert Cheeley
•Michael Roman, a Republican strategist
•David James Shafer, former Georgia Republican Party chairman
•Shawn Micah Tresher Still
•Stephen Cliffgard Lee, an Illinois pastor
•Harrison William Prescott Floyd, “who briefly ran for a suburban Atlanta U.S. House seat before serving as director of Black Voices for Trump” (per AJC)
•Trevian Kutti (former publicist for Ye and R-Kelly, according to Rolling Stone)
•Cathleen Alston Latham, former Coffee County Republican chairwoman
•Scott Graham Hall, an Atlanta bail bondsman
•Misty Hampton, a.k.a. Emily Misty Hayes, former Coffee County elections supervisor
--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa