Georgia

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      John Eastman Proposed Challenging Georgia Senate Elections in Search of Fraud

      by

      On the day of President Biden’s inauguration, John Eastman suggested looking for voting irregularities in Georgia — and asked for help in getting paid the $270,000 he had billed the Trump campaign.John Eastman, the conservative lawyer whose plan to block congressional certification of the 2020 election failed in spectacular fashion on Jan. 6, 2021, sent an email two weeks later arguing that pro-Trump forces should sue to keep searching for the supposed election fraud he acknowledged they had failed to find.On Jan. 20, 2021, hours after President Biden’s inauguration, Mr. Eastman emailed Rudolph W. Giuliani, former President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, proposing that they challenge the outcome of the runoff elections in Georgia for two Senate seats that had been won on Jan. 5 by Democrats.“A lot of us have now staked our reputations on the claims of election fraud, and this would be a way to gather proof,” Mr. Eastman wrote in the previously undisclosed email, which also went to others, including a top Trump campaign adviser. “If we get proof of fraud on Jan. 5, it will likely also demonstrate the fraud on Nov. 3, thereby vindicating President Trump’s claims and serving as a strong bulwark against Senate impeachment trial.”The email, which was reviewed by The New York Times and authenticated by people who worked on the Trump campaign at the time, is the latest evidence that even some of Mr. Trump’s most fervent supporters knew they had not proven their baseless claims of widespread voting fraud — but wanted to continue their efforts to delegitimize the outcome even after Mr. Biden had taken office.Mr. Eastman’s message also underscored that he had not taken on the work of keeping Mr. Trump in office just out of conviction: He asked for Mr. Giuliani’s help in collecting on a $270,000 invoice he had sent the Trump campaign the previous day for his legal services.The charges included $10,000 a day for eight days of work in January 2021, including the two days before Jan. 6 when Mr. Eastman and Mr. Trump, during meetings in the Oval Office, sought unsuccessfully to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to go along with the plan to block congressional certification of the Electoral College results on Jan. 6. (Mr. Eastman appears never to have been paid.)A lawyer for Mr. Eastman did not respond to a request for comment.Disclosure of the email comes at a time when the Justice Department is intensifying its criminal investigation of the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Patrick F. Philbin, who was a deputy White House counsel under Mr. Trump, has received a grand jury subpoena in the case, a person familiar with the situation said.Mr. Philbin is the latest high-ranking former White House official known to be called to testify before the grand jury. Others include his former boss, Pat A. Cipollone, who as White House counsel argued, along with other White House lawyers, against some of the more extreme steps proposed by Mr. Trump and his advisers as they sought to hold onto power.Earlier subpoenas to a number of people had sought information about outside lawyers, including Mr. Eastman and Mr. Giuliani, who were advising Mr. Trump and promoting his efforts to overturn the results.In June, federal agents armed with a search warrant seized Mr. Eastman’s phone, stopping him as he was leaving a restaurant in New Mexico.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 9Making a case against Trump. More

    • 213 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Is It All About ‘Fealty to Trump’s Delusions’? Three Writers Talk About Where the G.O.P. Is Headed

      by

      Ross Douthat, a Times Opinion columnist, hosted an online conversation with Rachel Bovard, the policy director at the Conservative Partnership Institute, and Tim Miller, the author of “Why We Did It: A Travelogue From the Republican Road to Hell,” about the recent primaries in Arizona, Michigan and beyond, and the strength of Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican Party.Ross Douthat: Rachel, Tim, thanks so much for joining me. I’m going to start where we always tend to start in these discussions — with the former president of the United States and his influence over the Republican Party. Donald Trump has had some bad primary nights this year, most notably in May in Georgia.But overall Tuesday seems like it was a good one for him: In Michigan, his favored candidate narrowly beat Peter Meijer, one of the House Republican votes for impeachment. In the Arizona Republican primary for governor, Kari Lake is narrowly ahead, which would give Trump a big victory in his battle of endorsements against Mike Pence, who endorsed Lake’s main rival.Do you agree, or is Trump’s influence just the wrong lens through which to be assessing some of these races?Rachel Bovard: It was a good night for Trump’s endorsements, which remain critical and decisive, particularly when he’s picking candidates who can change the ideological direction of the party. No other major figure in the G.O.P. has shown they can do the same.Tim Miller: An early agreement! The Republicans put up a slate of “Big Lie” candidates at the top of the ticket in an important swing state last night, which seems pretty important.Bovard: I would dispute the notion that Arizona represented “a slate of ‘Big Lie’ candidates.”Miller: Well, Lake has long brought up fraud claims about the 2020 election. Rare potential evidence of the party bucking Trump could come from the Third Congressional District in Washington, benefited by a “jungle” primary — candidates for an office, regardless of party, run on the same ballot, and the top two candidates square off in the general election. If the Trump-endorsed candidate loses, it seems a good endorsement for that set up.Bovard: But the Blake Masters campaign in particular represented a depth of issues that appealed to Arizona voters and could represent a new generation of Republicans.Douthat: Let’s get into that question a little bit. One of the questions hanging over the phenomenon of Trumper populism is whether it represents any kind of substantial issue-based change in what the G.O.P. stands for, or whether it’s just all about fealty to Trump.The Masters campaign and the Lake campaign seem to represent different answers to that question — Masters leveraging Trump’s support to try to push the party in a more nationalist or populist direction on trade, foreign policy, family policy, other issues, and Lake just promising to stop the next (alleged) steal. Or do we think that it’s all the same phenomenon underneath?Bovard: A very significant part of Trump’s appeal, what he perhaps taught the G.O.P., was that he spoke for voters who stood outside of party orthodoxy on a number of issues. And that’s where Masters tried to distinguish himself. He had a provocative campaign message early in his campaign: American families should be able to survive on a single income. That presents all kinds of challenges to standard Republican economic policy, how we think about family policy and how the two fit together. He also seems to be fearless in the culture wars, something else that Republicans are anxious to see.So this constant distilling into the “Big Lie” overlooks something key: A sea change is slowly happening on the right as it relates to policy expectations.Miller: But you know who distilled the Masters campaign into the “Big Lie”? Blake Masters. One of his ads begins, “I think Trump won in 2020.” This is an insane view, and I assume none of us think Masters really believes it. So fealty to Trump’s delusions is the opening ante here. Had Masters run a campaign about his niche, Peter Thiel-influenced issue obsessions but said Trump lost and he was harming Republican voters by continuing to delude them about our democracy, he would’ve lost like Rusty Bowers did.I do think Masters has some differentiated policy ideas that are probably, not certainly, reflective of where the G.O.P. is headed, but that wasn’t the main thing here.Douthat: So Tim, speaking for the “it’s Trump fealty all the way down” camp, what separates the Arizona results from the very different recent results in Georgia, where Trump fealty was insufficient to defeat either Brian Kemp or even Brad Raffensperger?Miller: Two things: First, with Kemp, governing actually matters. With incumbents, primaries for governor can be somewhat different because of that. Kemp was Ron DeSantis-esque without the attention in his handling of Covid. (This does not extend all the way to full anti-Trump or Trump-skeptical governors like Larry Hogan of Maryland or Charlie Baker of Massachusetts — Kemp almost never said an ill word about Trump.)Second, the type of electorate matters. Republican voters actually bucked Trump in another state, my home state, Colorado. What do Georgia and Colorado have in common? Suburban sprawl around a major city that dominates the state and a young, college-educated population.Douthat: Does that sound right to you, Rachel? And is there anything we aren’t seeing about a candidate like Lake that makes her more than just a stalking horse for Trump’s own obsessions?Bovard: Tim is right in the sense that there is always nuance when it comes to state elections. That’s why I also don’t see the Washington State primary race as a definitive rejection of Trump, as Tim alluded to earlier. Lake is, as a candidate, bombastic on the election issue.Miller: “Bombastic” is quite the euphemism for completely insane. Deliberate lies. The same ones that led to the storming of the Capitol.Bovard: Well, I don’t see that as determining how she governs. She’s got an entire state to manage, if she wins, and there are major issues she’ll have to manage that Trump also spoke to: the border, primarily.By the way, I regularly meet with Democrats who still tell me the 2018 election was stolen, and Stacey Abrams is the rightful governor of Georgia, so I’m not as pearl clutchy about it, no.Miller: “Pearl clutchy” is quite a way to describe a lie that has infected tens of millions of people, resulted in multiple deaths and the imprisonment of some of Trump’s most loyal supporters. I thought the populists were supposed to care about these people, but I guess worrying about their lives being ruined is just a little “pearl clutching.”Bovard: I know we don’t want to relitigate the entirety of Jan. 6, so I’ll just say I do worry about people’s lives being ruined. And the Jan. 6 Select Committee has further entrenched the divide that exists over this.Douthat: I’m going to enforce a pivot here, while using my moderator’s power to stipulate that I think Trump’s stolen-election narrative has been more destructive than the left’s Abrams-won-Georgia narrative or the “Diebold stole Ohio” narrative in 2004.If Lake wins her primary, can she win the general-election race? Can Doug Mastriano win in Pennsylvania? To what extent are we watching a replay of certain Republican campaigns in 2010 — long before Trump, it’s worth noting — where the party threw away winnable seats by nominating perceived extremists?Bovard: A key for G.O.P. candidates going forward is to embrace both elements of the cultural and economic argument. For a long time in the party these were seen as mutually exclusive, and post-Trump, I don’t think they are anymore. Glenn Youngkin won in Virginia in part by embracing working-class economic issues — leaning into repeal of the grocery tax, for example — and then pushing hard against critical race theory. He didn’t surge on economics alone.Douthat: Right, but Youngkin also did not have to run a primary campaign so deeply entangled with Trump. There’s clearly a sweet spot for the G.O.P. to run as economic moderates or populists and anti-woke fighters right now, but can a figure like Lake manage that in a general election? We don’t even know yet if Masters or J.D. Vance, who both explicitly want to claim that space, can grab it after their efforts to earn Trump’s favor.Tim, can these candidates win?Miller: Of course they can win. Midterm elections have historically washed in candidates far more unlikely than nominees like Masters (and Lake, if she is the nominee) or Mastriano from tossup swing states. Lake in particular, with her history in local news, would probably have some appeal to voters who have a personal affinity for her outside the MAGA base. Mastriano might be a slightly tougher sell, given his brand, vibe and Oath Keeper energy.Bovard: It’s long been conventional wisdom that you tack to the right in primaries and then move more to the center in the general, so if Lake wins, she will have to find a message that appeals to as many voters as possible. She would have to present a broad spectrum of policy priorities. The G.O.P. as a voting bloc has changed. Its voters are actively iterating on all of this, so previous assumptions about what appeals to voters don’t hold up as well. I tend to think there’s a lane for Trump-endorsed candidates who lean into the Trump-style economics and key culture fights.Miller: I just want to say here that I do get pissed about the notion that it’s us, the Never Trumpers, who are obsessed with litigating Jan. 6. Pennsylvania is a critical state that now has a nominee for governor who won because of his fealty to this lie, could win the general election and could put his finger on the scale in 2024. The same may be true in another key state, Arizona. This is a red-level threat for our democracy.A lot of Republicans in Washington, D.C., want to sort of brush it away just like they brushed away the threat before Jan. 6, because it’s inconvenient.Douthat: Let me frame that D.C. Republican objection a different way: If this is a red-level threat for our democracy, why aren’t Democrats acting like it? Why did Democratic Party money enter so many of these races on behalf of the more extreme, stop-the-steal Republican? For example, given the closeness of the race, that sort of tactic quite possibly helped defeat Meijer in Michigan.Miller: Give me a break. The ads from the left trying to tilt the races were stupid and frankly unpatriotic. I have spoken out about this before. But it’s not the Democrats who are electing these insane people. Were the Democrats responsible for Mark Finchem? Mehmet Oz? Herschel Walker? Mastriano won by over 20 points. This is what Republican voters want.Also, advertising is a two-way street. If all these self-righteous Republicans were so angry about the ads designed to promote John Gibbs, they could’ve run pro-Meijer ads! Where was Kevin McCarthy defending his member? He was in Florida shining Mr. Trump’s shoes.Douthat: Rachel, I watched that Masters ad that Tim mentioned and listened to his rhetoric around the 2020 election, and it seemed like he was trying to finesse things, make an argument that the 2020 election somehow wasn’t fair in the way it was administered and covered by the press without going the Sidney Powell route to pure conspiracism.But let’s take Masters’s spirit of generalized mistrust and reverse its direction: If you were an Arizona Democrat, why would you trust a Governor Lake or a Secretary of State Mark Finchem to fairly administer the 2024 election?Bovard: Honestly, the thing that concerns me most is that there is zero trust at all on elections at this moment. If I’m a Democrat, I don’t trust the Republicans, and vice versa. Part of that lack of trust is that we aren’t even allowed to question elections anymore — as Masters did, to your point, without going full conspiracy.We regain trust by actually allowing questions and full transparency. This is one of the things that worries me about our political system. Without any kind of institutional trust, or trust of one another, there’s a breakdown.Miller: This is preposterous. Arizona had several reviews of their election. The people lying about the election are the problem.Douthat: Last questions: What do you think are the implications of the big pro-life defeat in the Kansas abortion referendum, for either abortion policy or the November elections?Bovard: It shows two headwinds that the pro-life movement is up against. First is money. Reporting shows that pro-abortion advocates spent millions against the amendment, and Democrats in many key races across the country are outpacing Republicans in fund-raising. Second, it reflects the confusion that exists around this issue post-Roe. The question presented to Kansas voters was a microcosm of the general question in Roe: Should abortion be removed from the state Constitution and be put in the hands of democratically elected officials? Yet it was sometimes presented as a binary choice between a ban or no ban. (This early headline from Politico is an example: “Kansas voters block effort to ban abortion in state constitutional amendment vote.”)But I don’t think it moves the needle on the midterms.Miller: I view it slightly differently. I think most voters are in a big middle that Republicans could even use to their advantage if they didn’t run to the extremes. Voters do not want blanket abortion bans or anything that can be construed as such. Something that moved the status quo significantly to the pro-life right but still maintained exceptions and abortion up to a certain, reasonable point in pregnancy would be politically palatable.So this will only be an effective issue for Democrats in turnout and in places where Republicans let them make it an issue by going too far to the extreme.Douthat: Finally, a different short-answer question for you both. Rachel, say Masters and Vance are both in the Senate in 2023 as spokesmen for this new culturally conservative economic populism you favor. What’s the first bill they co-sponsor?Bovard: I’d say a large tax on university endowments.Douthat: Tim, adding the evidence of last night to the narrative, can Ron DeSantis (or anyone else, but let’s be honest, there isn’t anyone else) beat Trump in a Republican primary in 2024?Miller: Sad to end with a wishy-washy pundit answer but … maybe! Trump seems to have a plurality right now within the party on 2024, and many Republicans have an affinity for him. So if it were Mike Pence, Chris Christie or Liz Cheney, they would have no chance.Could DeSantis thread a needle and present himself as a more electable Trump? Some of the focus groups The Bulwark does makes it seem like that’s possible. But will he withstand the bright lights and be able to pull it off? Will Trump be indicted? A lot of known unknowns. I’d put DeSantis as an underdog, but it’s not impossible that he could pull it off.Douthat: There is absolutely no shame in the wishy-washy pundit game. Thanks so much to you both for joining me.Ross Douthat is a Times Opinion columnist. Rachel Bovard is the policy director at the Conservative Partnership Institute and a tech columnist at The Federalist. Tim Miller, a writer at The Bulwark, is the author of “Why We Did It: A Travelogue From the Republican Road to Hell.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Democrats’ Plan to Win in 2022 Looks a Lot Like 2020 and 2018

      by

      Today’s newsletter is a guest dispatch from Georgia, where my colleague Maya King covers politics across the South.ATLANTA — Long before Georgia became the center of the American political universe, Stacey Abrams and leagues of Democratic organizers across the Peach State were testing out a new strategy to help their party win more top-ticket elections.National Democrats largely dismissed their calculations, which called for exhausting voter turnout in the reliably blue Metro Atlanta region while investing more time and money in turning out rural, young and infrequent voters of color outside the capital city instead of the moderate and independent white voters in its suburbs.There were strong civil rights interests at stake, given the history of discrimination against Black voters in Georgia and across the South.But there were hardball politics at play, too, in Abrams’s push to register millions of new voters. She and her allies hoped they would become the backbone of a coalition that could turn Georgia blue for the first time since Bill Clinton won the state in 1992.In 2018, Abrams, Georgia’s current Democratic nominee for governor, came extraordinarily close to winning her first campaign for the office. In 2020, her organizing helped Joe Biden narrowly win the state before boosting the fortunes of two Democrats who won both of the state’s Senate seats two months later.The strategy is now widely accepted on the left — although it is expensive. But Abrams, her fellow Democratic candidates and several voter-focused organizations in Georgia are counting on it again this year to prove that their wins in 2020 were not a fluke made possible by former President Donald Trump’s unpopularity, but rather the continuation of a trend.It’s why Way to Win, a collective of progressive Democratic donors and political strategists, is pouring $8.5 million into Georgia’s voter mobilization efforts ahead of November, according to plans first shared with The New York Times.The group has already shelled out nearly $4 million to more than a dozen organizations in Georgia, including the Working Families Party and the New Georgia Project, which Ms. Abrams founded in 2014 and whose board Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat who is running for election to a full term, chaired from 2017 to 2020. The group’s goal is to provide the financial backing for Democrats to continue turning out the same broad swath of voters that they did in previous cycles, and blunt the effect of national trends working against them.They also feel like they have something to prove to skeptics in Washington yet again.“If you talk to these voters — every voter that has been ignored by traditional pundits and traditional institutional leaders — if you build a big tent, they will come,” said Tory Gavito, co-founder, president and chief executive of Way to Win. “I can’t tell you how many rooms I still go to where traditional operatives will say, ‘Is Georgia really a battleground?’ And it’s like, are you kidding? How many cycles do we have to go through where Georgia leaders really show the power of a multiracial coalition?”Alexis Hill, left, a canvasser for the New Georgia Project, spoke to resident Dashanta Gaines on her doorstep in Fairburn on May 12.Alyssa Pointer/ReutersLocal organizing, national headwindsTo win the big statewide races, Georgia Democrats are counting on high turnout from the same coalition that brought them success in 2018 and 2020: a mix of loyal, rain-or-shine voters in addition to a critical mass of moderate, independent and infrequent voters.But the outside forces getting them to the polls, or not, look very different than they did in the two previous election cycles. Where anti-Trump sentiment, a nationwide movement against systemic racism and coronavirus-related provisions that expanded access to the ballot fueled record turnout in 2020, voters this year are keeping rising prices and concerns about an economic recession front of mind, dampening their enthusiasm. They are also contending with a new, more restrictive voting law passed by the Republicans who control the state legislature and governor’s mansion.Key Themes From the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarCard 1 of 6The state of the midterms. More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Parents of Georgia woman who fell from patrol car and died demand answers

      by

      Parents of Georgia woman who fell from patrol car and died demand answersBrianna Grier, 28, suffered significant injuries during fall from moving police vehicle and died six days later in Atlanta hospital The parents of a Georgia woman who died after she fell from a moving patrol car following her arrest fought back tears on Friday as they demanded answers in their daughter’s death.Brianna Grier, 28, suffered significant injuries on 15 July and died six days later at an Atlanta hospital. The Georgia bureau of investigation said this week that the deputies who put Grier in the back of a patrol car to take her to the Hancock county sheriff’s office failed to close the rear passenger-side door before driving away.“We’re trying to get answers of what really happened … We ain’t trying to start no problem,” a tearful Marvin Grier, Brianna’s father, said during a news conference, his voice catching several times. He was joined by Brianna’s mother and sister, Mary and Lottie Grier.Russian man spent years as puppeteer behind US political groups, officials sayRead moreGrier was arrested after Hancock county sheriff’s deputies were called to a home in Sparta, the GBI has said. The deputies put Grier in the back of a patrol car, but she was not wearing a seatbelt, her hands were cuffed in front of her and the rear passenger-side door was never closed, according to GBI investigators.The GBI has not said why deputies were called to the home or why Grier was arrested. The prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing her family, said Grier was taken into custody after a mental health crisis.“Yet again we have another African American citizen killed in just an unbelievable way while in the custody of the police,” Crump said at the Friday news conference in downtown Decatur, a suburb of Atlanta.He addressed Grier’s parents: “We won’t let them sweep your baby daughter’s death under the rug.”Crump said his team would investigate what failures caused Grier to fall out of the car while it was moving and suffer a brain injury that put her in a coma until she died on 21 July.The president of the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP, Gerald Griggs, called on state and county officials for answers.“To the Hancock county sheriff, it’s time to be transparent,” Griggs said. “It’s time to be accountable. To the GBI, it’s time for y’all to meet with this family. To the governor, it’s time for you to recognize, again, that Georgia has a police accountability problem.”The GBI has said agents have done interviews, reviewed multiple body camera videos and done mechanical tests on the patrol car as part of the ongoing investigation into Grier’s death.TopicsUS newsGeorgiaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 200 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Senator Raphael Warnock uses a new ad to pressure Herschel Walker to commit to a debate.

      by

      ATLANTA — A new advertisement from Raphael Warnock, Georgia’s incumbent Democratic senator, pushes the state’s Republican Senate nominee, Herschel Walker, to debate Mr. Warnock.“Stop dodging. Commit to debates,” reads an onscreen message in the 30-second television spot, which began airing in Georgia’s top four media markets on Tuesday, juxtaposed against Mr. Walker’s recent comments about his openness to debating Mr. Warnock.The ad is part of a weekslong saga between the two candidates: While Mr. Walker has repeatedly pledged to debate Mr. Warnock, his campaign has not accepted invitations to any of the three matchups scheduled for this fall. Mr. Warnock has committed to attending an Oct. 16 debate hosted by the Atlanta Press Club, in addition to two others in Macon and Savannah later that month; those dates have not yet been finalized.During a news conference in Athens, Ga., last Wednesday, Mr. Walker told reporters that he would be “ready to go” for the Oct. 16 debate if the two campaigns “negotiate and we get everything right.”His spokeswoman, Mallory Blount, later issued a statement saying that Mr. Walker’s campaign “doesn’t care about the old way of doing things” and that any debate it ultimately agreed to “must have a fair and equitable format and unbiased moderator.”Mr. Warnock’s campaign has used Mr. Walker’s hesitance to underscore its argument that he is not prepared to serve in the Senate.“I don’t know if Herschel Walker is scared for voters to hear what he has to say, or scared for voters to hear that he’s unprepared to speak on the issues that matter most to the people of Georgia,” Quentin Fulks, Mr. Warnock’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “There’s a clear choice in the race for Senate, and we hope Herschel Walker will be true to his word and commit to joining us at three debates.” More

    • 75 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      On the Docket: Atlanta v. Trumpworld

      by

      ATLANTA — The criminal investigation into efforts by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn his election loss in Georgia has begun to entangle, in one way or another, an expanding assemblage of characters:A United States senator. A congressman. A local Cadillac dealer. A high school economics teacher. The chairman of the state Republican Party. The Republican candidate for lieutenant governor. Six lawyers aiding Mr. Trump, including a former New York City mayor. The former president himself. And a woman who has identified herself as a publicist for the rapper Kanye West.Fani T. Willis, the Atlanta area district attorney, has been leading the investigation since early last year. But it is only this month, with a flurry of subpoenas and target letters, as well as court documents that illuminate some of the closed proceedings of a special grand jury, that the inquiry’s sprawling contours have emerged.For legal experts, that sprawl is a sign that Ms. Willis is doing what she has indicated all along: building the framework for a broad case that could target multiple defendants with charges of conspiracy to commit election fraud, or racketeering-related charges for engaging in a coordinated scheme to undermine the election.“All of these people are from very disparate places in life,” Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University, said of the known witnesses and targets. “The fact that they’re all being brought together really suggests she’s building this broader case for conspiracy.”What happened in Georgia was not altogether singular. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol has put on display how Mr. Trump and his allies sought to subvert the election results in several crucial states, including by creating slates of fake pro-Trump electors. Yet even as many Democrats lament that the Justice Department is moving too slowly in its inquiry, the local Georgia prosecutor has been pursuing a quickening case that could pose the most immediate legal peril for the former president and his associates.Whether Mr. Trump will ultimately be targeted for indictment remains unclear. But the David-before-Goliath dynamic may in part reflect that Ms. Willis’s legal decision-making is less encumbered than that of federal officials in Washington by the vast political and societal weight of prosecuting a former president, especially in a bitterly fissured country.But some key differences in Georgia law may also make the path to prosecution easier than in federal courts. And there was the signal event that drew attention to Mr. Trump’s conduct in Georgia: his call to the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, whose office, in Ms. Willis’s Fulton County, recorded the president imploring him to “find” the 11,780 votes needed to reverse his defeat.A House hearing this past week discussed a phone call in which President Donald J. Trump asked Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” an additional 11,780 votes.Shawn Thew/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Trump’s staff did not comment, nor did his local counsel. When Ms. Willis opened the inquiry in February 2021, a Trump spokesman described it as “simply the Democrats’ latest attempt to score political points by continuing their witch hunt against President Trump.” Lawyers for 11 of the 16 Trump electors, Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow and Holly A. Pierson, accused Ms. Willis of “misusing the grand jury process to harass, embarrass and attempt to intimidate the nominee electors, not to investigate their conduct.”Last year, Ms. Willis told The New York Times that racketeering charges could be in play. Whenever people “hear the word ‘racketeering,’ they think of ‘The Godfather,’” she said, before explaining that charges under Georgia’s version of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act could apply in any number of realms where corrupt enterprises are operating. “If you have various overt acts for an illegal purpose, I think you can — you may — get there,” she said.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 8Numerous inquiries. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Stacey Abrams Aims to Put Abortion at Center of Georgia Governor Race

      by

      ATLANTA — Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia, is racing to turn abortion rights supporters’ frustrations and fears into electoral gains for her party after a court ruling reinstated the state’s six-week ban on the procedure.Immediately after the ruling from a federal appeals court, which put into effect a 2019 law prohibiting most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, Ms. Abrams’s campaign released an advertisement on Thursday morning calling the law — and Gov. Brian Kemp’s support for it — “extreme” and hinting that the governor could move to ban exceptions for rape or incest.And in an impassioned news conference late Wednesday afternoon, Ms. Abrams, flanked by more than two dozen state Democratic leaders, underlined the stakes for women in Georgia, with a specific message for those still unsure whether they would cast their vote for her in November.“Georgia is part of a nation that faces economic vicissitudes — things go up, things go down,” she said. “But this law is permanent.”She added that she would ask the state’s scores of moderate Republican and independent voters, who may be disillusioned with Democratic leadership in Washington, to “balance whether your immediate concerns about money outweigh your concerns about your constitutional protected rights.”Read More on Abortion Issues in AmericaMedication Abortion on Campus: Some students want colleges to provide the abortion pill. But even in states that protect abortion rights, schools are proceeding with caution.In Ohio: The case of a 10-year-old rape victim who was forced to travel out of state to terminate her pregnancy has become the focus of a heated debate over what new abortion bans mean for the lives of the youngest patients and their bodies.Medical Exceptions: Of the 13 states with trigger abortion bans, all make exceptions for abortions to save the life of the mother. But what defines a medical emergency?Hurdles to Miscarriage Care: Since the reversal of Roe, some patients have had trouble obtaining miscarriage treatments, which are identical to those for abortions.Ms. Abrams’s comments represented something of a bet: that for Democrats, it is better to focus on subjects on which the party’s positions poll better, like abortion, than on economic issues, on which voters tend to favor Republicans. Polls have consistently shown that inflation and other economic issues are voters’ top concerns ahead of the November midterm elections.Ms. Abrams’s remarks also signaled a shift in her campaign message. While she has previously called for expanded abortion access in Georgia and criticized state Republicans, she is now making direct appeals to on-the-fence voters on the issue and portraying her opponent, Mr. Kemp, as the architect of one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws.Ms. Abrams has sought to make abortion access one of the clearest dividing issues between her and Mr. Kemp. Days after a draft ruling revealing the Supreme Court’s intention to overturn Roe v. Wade leaked, her campaign redirected its fund-raising efforts to organizations that provide abortion care.Several candidates on the state Democratic ticket have also pledged to use all levers of their power to oppose the law if elected, including the Democratic nominee for attorney general, Jen Jordan, who vowed not to prosecute abortion-related cases while in office.Mr. Kemp, who has generally led Ms. Abrams in limited polling of the race, has not widely discussed abortion. In the weeks after the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade, his campaign focused instead on Ms. Abrams’s support for efforts to overhaul policing, aiming to tie her to the movement to defund the police, which she does not support.When asked for comment on Ms. Abrams’s remarks on Wednesday, Mr. Kemp’s campaign pointed to an official statement from his office, in which he said the federal court ruling “affirms our promise to protect life at all stages.”Ms. Abrams’s campaign views the next few weeks as pivotal in its effort to tell more voters about Georgia’s newly reinstated abortion law and its implications.In a memo released Thursday, Lauren Groh-Wargo, Ms. Abrams’s campaign manager, shared internal polling showing that over half of voters in Georgia opposed additional abortion restrictions, along with more than 60 percent of independent voters.“While Abrams will protect women and abortion rights as the next governor, Kemp will continue his crusade against women — including victims of rape and incest and those whose health is at risk,” Ms. Groh-Wargo wrote. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Giuliani Ordered to Testify in Georgia Criminal Investigation

      by

      After Rudolph W. Giuliani failed to show for a hearing in Manhattan, a Georgia judge ordered him to testify as part of an investigation into election interference in the state.A Georgia judge ordered Rudolph W. Giuliani to testify in Atlanta next month in an ongoing criminal investigation into election interference by former President Donald J. Trump and his advisers and allies, according to court filings released on Wednesday.Some out-of-state witnesses in the case have gone to court to challenge subpoenas or other legal filings seeking to compel their testimony. But after Mr. Giuliani failed to show for a hearing last week in Manhattan, where the matter was to have been adjudicated, Judge Robert C. I. McBurney of the Superior Court of Fulton County ordered him to appear before a special grand jury in Atlanta on Aug. 9.Mr. Giuliani, who spearheaded efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power as his personal lawyer, has emerged as a central figure in the Georgia criminal investigation into efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s 2020 electoral loss in the state. Fani T. Willis, the prosecutor in Fulton County leading the investigation, has indicated that she is considering conspiracy or racketeering charges, which could take in a broad spectrum of people engaged in multiple efforts to sway the election results.Her office worked with the office of Alvin Bragg, the district attorney in Manhattan, to secure Mr. Giuliani’s testimony, and she said in a statement that she was “grateful to the prosecutors and investigators” in Mr. Bragg’s office for their assistance.Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.A special grand jury has been meeting regularly in Atlanta to hear testimony and review documents and videos that may shed light on the multipronged effort to put Georgia in Mr. Trump’s win column. Among the acts under consideration are an infamous postelection phone call that Mr. Trump made to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, asking to “find” enough votes to secure his victory.Mr. Giuliani appears to be of interest for a number of reasons, including his participation in a scheme to create slates of pro-Trump presidential electors in numerous states including Georgia. In court filings this week, it was revealed that all 16 pro-Trump electors in Georgia had been informed by the Fulton County District Attorney’s office that they could face charges.Mr. Giuliani also appeared in person before two Georgia state legislative committees in December 2020, where he spent hours peddling false conspiracy theories about secret suitcases of Democratic ballots and corrupted voting machines. He told state legislators, “You cannot possibly certify Georgia in good faith.”Legal experts have said the Georgia investigation may prove to be particularly perilous for Mr. Trump and his allies. Though the grand jury proceedings are secret, a number of details have emerged in recent days that hint at the scope of the investigation. Among the pro-Trump electors who learned they could be indicted are David Shafer, the chair of the state Republican Party, and State Senator Burt Jones, the party’s nominee for lieutenant governor. Another Republican state senator, Brandon Beach, was also informed that he is a potential target.Prosecutors are seeking testimony from Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Trump ally who also called Mr. Raffensperger, and Representative Jody Hice, a hard-right Georgia Republican who has embraced false narratives about election fraud in Georgia and who helped lead efforts in Congress to help keep Mr. Trump in power.William K. Rashbaum More