Donald Trump urged to call off press conference: The former president, shortly after his Georgia indictment, had announced a press conference for next Monday in which he would lay out evidence establishing his innocence. It doesn’t appear that is still happening.
Donald Trump and That Press Conference
Shortly after the sprawling indictment that was announced Monday against former President Donald Trump and 18 others, the former president declared that he would hold a press conference next Monday, in which he would lay out exactly why the indictment was wrong and he is innocent. He called it “A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia.”
Now, per ABC News, it appears Trump’s lawyers and advisers have talked him out of doing so, and it is now “very much in doubt” that such an event will ultimately take place.
ABC’s sources say “Trump’s legal advisers have told him that holding such a press conference with dubious claims of voter fraud will only complicate his legal problems and some of his attorneys have advised him to cancel it.”
Trump has long made claims that he was denied a victory in Georgia due to claims of voter fraud, none of which have held up to factual or legal scrutiny in the last three years. Many of those claims, in fact, are referenced in the indictment and are the basis of charges against Trump and others.
One lawyer who formerly represented Trump said in an interview this week that the press conference is not a good idea.
“This is all Trump PR,” Ty Cobb told CNN’s Erin Burnett, as reported by HuffPost. “This is, you know, generating chaos. I mean, frankly, there’s a good chance that whatever document he produces ends up as evidence against him.”
Cobb represented Trump during the Robert Mueller special counsel probe. He added, on CNN, that things said in the press conference could form “the basis for an obstruction count against the author because it’s likely to be fiction, and solely for the purpose of contaminating the jury pool.”
Trump had announced the day after he was indicted that he would put out the report, stating in a Truth Social post that the report was “almost complete” and would be unveiled in a Monday press conference at his Bedminster club in New Jersey.
“Based on the results of this CONCLUSIVE Report, all charges should be dropped against me & others – There will be a complete EXONERATION! They never went after those that Rigged the Election. They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!,” the ex-president said in the report.
On CNN, former Donald Trump White House aide-turned-Trump critic Alyssa Farah Griffin noted that the use of the word “riggers” was likely not accidental, and mean to recall the racial slur that rhymes with that word. Keith Boykin, a former Clinton White House aide, had raised that point earlier.
“With Trump, you don’t have to look for a dog whistle- it’s a bullhorn when it comes to race,” Griffin said on CNN.
The New York Times reported that the report is 100 pages long and that Trump communications aide Liz Harrington is one of its authors. Per the Times, Harrington is “often described as among the true believers in his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him through widespread fraud.”
Harrington is not named in any of the indictments, although the Times reported that she was in the room at Bedminster on the day in the summer of 2021 that he allegedly showed classified documents to book authors, an act that helped form the basics of the classified documents indictment earlier this month.
If the press conference is canceled, it’s not clear if the report will be shelved as well.
The Republican governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, refuted Trump’s claims.
“The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen,” Mr. Kemp said this week in a statement. “For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward — under oath — and prove anything in a court of law. Our elections in Georgia are secure, accessible, and fair and will continue to be as long as I am governor. The future of our country is at stake in 2024 and that must be our focus.’’
Author Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Stephen has authored thousands of articles over the years that focus on politics, technology, and the economy for over a decade. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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