Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s scattershot indictment is deep and far-reaching. Legal analysts say it could be a major problem for former President Donald Trump. Unlike in other states, the governor lacks the ability to issue pardons.
The indictment charges Donald Trump and his co-defendants with being part of a scheme to intimidate Georgia officials into changing the outcome of the 2020 election. It also charges the defendants with pressuring former Vice President Mike Pence to toss “Electoral College votes cast in Fulton County, Georgia, by duly elected and qualified elected and qualified presidential electors from Georgia.”
The indictment claims that Trump’s co-defendants stole voting equipment, and voting data, and distributed it outside of the state.
Trump was indicted Monday along with more than a dozen co-defendants including his former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, lawyer Rudolph Guiliani, lawyer Jenna Ellis, and Sidney Powell among others.
“… [A]s a state action, this is not a prosecution that can be ended prematurely with a presidential pardon. If Trump is elected, he could grant himself a self-pardon, even a preemptive pardon before trial. Various GOP presidential candidates have indicated that they will also consider a pardon. That could put an end to the Smith prosecutions before any trial if the special counsel cannot try the case before the election,” George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley writes. “There is no federal pardon option for Georgia. Indeed, it is even hard to secure a state pardon, which is not issued by the governor but by a pardon board.”
Due to the fact the Georgia case is a racketeering case, it could be harder for Donald Trump to squeeze out of, unlike the federal January 6th case in which the former president can assert his First Amendment rights to claim the charges never should have been brought in the first place.
Georgia’s RICO law is broader than the federal RICO law, which was written to bring down the Italian mob. The state law can be used by prosecutors to bring charges on a litany of state and federal crimes instead of being forced into a narrow box.
“If indicted and convicted, people are facing prison sentences,” Willis said.
Turley: Donald Trump Should be Worried
“There are 161 separate acts. Not surprisingly, everyone then becomes part of the conspiracy. The indictment covers 19 people, including Trevian Kutti (the former publicist for R. Kelly and Kanye West). Willis wants them all thrown into a single trial and let the jury figure it out,” Turley wrote. “But for all the disparate acts that Willis says constitutes a criminal conspiracy, part of this emerging picture should worry Trump.”
The indictment rests on things such as Trump’s phone call with Georgia election officials asking them to find over 11,000 votes to help him win the state.
“The call is still cited as one of those 161 individual steps toward the criminal conspiracy. Even though the indictment effectively repackages the same claims as the federal prosecution, Willis insists that Trump should be effectively tried twice under these allegations,” Turley wrote. “It is easy to dismiss such a Pollock prosecution as political gamesmanship. The timing alone in bringing the case (which should have been brought two years ago) is enough for many to discount this prosecution. However, it does represent a serious threat to Trump. It has ‘legs’ as an indictment that is not likely to be dismissed in its entirety before trial.”
Dershowitz: No Crimes Committed in Georgia
Former Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz agrees that people will be jailed due to this case; however, he claims it’s the same as what Al Gore did in 2000 when he kept demanding recounts in Florida.
“We challenged the election, and we did much of the things that are being done today and people praised us. I wrote a bestselling book called ‘Supreme Injustice. Now they’re making it a crime,” Dershowitz said. “It’s pretty much the same thing I did and Professor Lawrence Tribe did, and those of us who were on the Al Gore team.”
Dershowitz continued, “I was representing the voters of Palm Beach County, and we were saying ‘please check this county, check that county, find this vote find those votes. We think there are more votes.’”
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
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