After news broke on Monday night of Donald Trump’s indictment in Fulton county, Georgia, attention quickly turned to the possible spectacle of a trial unfolding on television as a former president attempts to rebut charges of racketeering and conspiracy over his efforts to overturn the results of an election.
But before the district attorney Fani Willis can have the opportunity to make her case against Trump with the cameras rolling, she must first clear a key procedural hurdle to keep the case in Fulton county.
Trump’s legal team is expected to rely on a little known legal statute to argue the case should be moved to federal court, and that jurisdictional question could delay a trial for months. The stakes of that procedural fight will be high, as a conviction in Fulton county would leave Trump facing years of prison time with no clear pathway to a pardon.
Read the full story here.
Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, dismissed the suggestion that she is running in the 2024 GOP presidential race in order to become the vice president.
In an interview with Politico, Haley said:
I think everybody that says, ‘She’s doing this to be vice president,’ needs to understand I don’t run for second.
That’s something that I hear all the time, and I’ll tell you that, look, we have a country to save, and I don’t trust anybody else to do it.
Donald Trump’s legal advisers have urged the former president not to hold a press conference next week in response to his latest indictment, according to an ABC report.
Trump announced in a Truth Social post on Tuesday that he would present a “report” to refute the allegations in the indictment handed up by the Fulton country district attorney’s office from his home in Bedminster, New Jersey.
But the press conference, originally scheduled for 11am Monday, is now very much in doubt, multiple sources told ABC.
Sources tell ABC News that 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.
The names, photographs and home addresses purportedly belonging to members of the Fulton county grand jury that indicted Donald Trump and 18 of his co-defendants this week are circulating on social media.
The grand jurors’ purported addresses were posted on a fringe website that often features violent rhetoric, NBC reported on Wednesday.
The indictment issued on Monday includes the names of all the grand jurors who served on the 26-member panel in Fulton county, but not their addresses or other personal information.
Websites where the purported photographs, social media profiles and home addresses of the grand jurors included pro-Trump forums and sites that have previously been linked to violent extremist attacks, according to a CNN report.
In some cases, users have posted social media profiles of different people who have the same name as some of the grand jurors, while some addresses appear to be wrong, the report said.
The rightwing extremist Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has not made up her mind about running for Senate in Georgia – in part because she hopes to be Donald Trump’s vice-president.
“I haven’t made up my mind whether I will do that or not,” Greene told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, about a rumoured challenge to the current governor, Brian Kemp, in a Georgia Senate primary in 2026.
I have a lot of things to think about. Am I going to be a part of President Trump’s cabinet if he wins? Is it possible that I’ll be VP?
Despite a string of controversies over voicing conspiracy theories, aggressive behaviour towards Democrats and progressives and recent squabbling with her fellow House extremist Lauren Boebert, and despite being “kicked out” of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, Greene remains influential in Republican ranks, close to the speaker, Kevin McCarthy.
She told the AJC she would consider it an “honour” to be picked as Trump’s running mate to take on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris next year. She would consider such an offer “very, very heavily”, she said.
Trump has encouraged Greene to harbour higher ambitions, saying in March he would “fight like hell” for her if she ran for Senate.
Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, has personally appealed to the former president to pay his ballooning legal bills, according to a CNN report.
The former New York mayor traveled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in late April, along with his lawyer Robert Costello, where they had two meetings with Trump to discuss Giuliani’s seven-figure legal fees, the report said, citing a source.
Giuliani and Costello made several pitches about how paying Giuliani’s bills was ultimately in Trump’s best interest, but the former president did not seem interested, the source said.
The source said Trump verbally agreed to help with some of Giuliani’s bills but did not commit to any specific amount or timeline. He also agreed to attend two fundraisers for Giuliani, a separate source said.
Giuliani is facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills and sanctions amid numerous lawsuits related to his work for Trump after the 2020 election.
Calls to violence have proliferated across far-right sites since the charges against Donald Trump in the 2020 Georgia election subversion case were made public on Monday night.
The former president’s allusion to the racial slur was immediately picked up by his supporters on far-right platforms including Gab and Patriots.win. Several Gab posts reproduced images of nooses and gallows and called for Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis and grand jurors who delivered the charges to be hanged. And posts on Patriots.win combined the wordplay with direct calls to violence.
Earlier this month, Willis wrote to Fulton county commissioners and judges to warn them to stay vigilant in the face of rising tensions ahead of the release of the indictment. She told them that she and her staff had been receiving racist threats and voicemails since she began her investigation into Trump’s attempt to subvert the election two years ago.
I guess I am sending this as a reminder that you should stay alert over the month of August and stay safe.
As Willis’s investigation approached its climax, Trump intensified his personal attacks on her through social media. He has accused her of prosecutorial misconduct and even of being racist herself.
Willis, who on Wednesday said she wants to take the case to trial in March 2024, has rebuffed Trump’s claims as “derogatory and false”.
Trump has also unleashed a barrage of vitriol against Jack Smith, the special counsel who earlier this month brought four federal charges against Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump has referred to the prosecutor, who is white, as “Deranged Jack Smith”.
Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney in Georgia who is prosecuting Donald Trump and 18 other allies over efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is facing a flurry of racist online abuse after the former president attacked his opponents using the word “riggers”, a thinly veiled play on the N-word.
Hours after Willis had released the indictments on Monday night, Trump went on his social media platform Truth Social calling for all charges to be dropped and predicting he would be exonerated. He did not mention Willis by name, but accused prosecutors of pursuing the wrong criminal targets.
“They never went after those that Rigged the Election,” Trump wrote.
They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!
Willis is African American. So too are the two New York-based prosecutors who have investigated Trump, the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg who indicted him in April over alleged hush-money payments, and Letitia James, the state attorney general who is investigating Trump’s financial records.
Trump’s allusion to the racial slur was immediately picked up by his supporters on far-right platforms including Gab and Patriots.win. The sites hosted hundreds of posts featuring “riggers” in their headlines in a disparaging context.
The word has also been attached to numerous social media posts to Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. The two Black poll workers from Atlanta were falsely accused by some of the 19 defendants in the Fulton county case of committing election fraud during the 2020 vote count, and the indictment accuses Trump allies of harassing them.
US district judge Tanya Chutkan, who overseeing Donald Trump’s 2020 election subversion case, warned the former president last week to refrain from making statements that could intimidate witnesses or prejudice potential jurors.
Just a day before Abigail Jo Shry allegedly left a voicemail message threatening to kill Chutkan, Trump had posted on his social media platform, Truth Social: writing “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!”
Trump has specifically posted about Chutkan since she was randomly assigned to oversee his 2020 election case. On Monday, the former president said she “obviously wants me behind bars” and described her as “very biased and unfair”.
Chutkan has reportedly been assigned extra security by the US marshals service in recent weeks, and CNN reported observing more security detailed to the judge around the Washington DC federal courthouse.
A Texas woman was arrested on charges that she threatened to kill US district judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the prosecution of former president Donald Trump on allegations that he tried to overturn the 2020 election.
Abigail Jo Shry, 43, of Alvin, Texas, called the federal courthouse in Washington DC on 5 August and left the threatening voicemail message, using a racist slur, according to court documents.
In the call, Shry told the judge: “You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” according to the documents. Prosecutors allege Shry also said: “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you.”
Investigators traced the phone number and Shry later admitted to making the threatening call, according to a criminal complaint.
Shry is charged with Transmission in Interstate or Foreign Commerce of any Communication Containing a Threat to Injure the Person of Another. She is being held in detention pending trial, according to court documents, and a bond hearing has been set for 13 September.
Good morning, US politics blog readers. A Texas woman has been charged with threatening to kill the federal judge presiding over former president Donald Trump’s criminal case in Washington DC over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
Abigail Jo Shry, 43, left a voicemail at US district judge Tanya Chutkan’s chambers on 5 August in which she used a racial slur and threatened her, saying “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, bitch”, according to a court document. She also allegedly threatened to kill “all democrats in Washington DC and all people in the LGBTQ community”, according to the court filing.
On the day before the threatening phone call, Trump had posted on his social media platform, Truth Social: “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!” The former president has intensified attacks against those individuals involved in the many indictment against him, including Chutkan and Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney who is prosecuting him over efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.
Hours after Willis had released the indictments on Monday night, Trump accused prosecutors of pursuing the wrong criminal targets using the word “riggers”, a thinly veiled play on the N-word. Trump’s allusion to the racial slur was immediately picked up by his supporters on far-right platforms, and Willis – who is African American – has faced a flurry of racist online abuse.
Calls to violence have proliferated across far-right sites since the charges were made public on Monday night. The purported names and addresses of members of the Georgia grand jury that indicted Trump and 18 of his allies were posted on a fringe website that often features violent rhetoric, NBC News reported.
Here’s what else we’re watching today:
10am Eastern time: President Joe Biden will get his daily intelligence briefing.
11.25am: Biden will leave for Andrews, where he will fly to the Wilkes-Barre Scranton Airport.
12.35pm: Biden will travel to Avoca, Pennsylvania, where he will pay respects to the state’s former first lady Ellen Casey in advance of a viewing.
2.10pm: Biden will fly to Hagerstown, Maryland, for Camp David.
The House and Senate are out.
Source: Elections - theguardian.com
