In his heart, Georgia GOP Chairman David Shafer knew pretty well that President Donald Trump was a toast.
It was mid-December 2020, more than a month after it was clear Trump had become what he hated most — a loser. In an election shocker, Joe Biden won Georgia, seemingly a Red state, by nearly 12,000 votes.
Atlanta automotive executive Mark Hennessy, a fellow GOP Electoral College voter, asked Shafer if he would still vote on December 14, 2020.
Shafer responded via email, saying, “The Trump campaign is asking us to uphold his rights by meeting on Monday and casting our votes.” I’ll go. crazy times But in the unlikely event that he wins the competition, we’ll be screwed if we don’t meet and vote.”
These were maddening times indeed, a dark, fact-free time of “kraken” lawsuits and “stop the steal” conspiracies, including one in which Venezuelans rigged American voting machines. State legislatures threatened to meet and throw out the election results. The state of Texas sued to overturn elections in other states, including Georgia. Poll workers were threatened and followed home.
You know, modern democracy.
Shafer is currently under investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for his role in this post-election madness. Their two-year search centers around a January 2021 call from Trump to Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, urging him to help a fellow Republican and find enough votes to win the state.
Part of the prosecution’s theory is that GOP voters have fraudulently confirmed themselves, further fueling Trump’s conspiracy to keep him in office.
Shafer’s email cited above was included in an 11-page letter his legal team sent to prosecutors asking them to leave him alone.
The letter said Shafer was not an instigator, accomplice, or criminal — he was merely following “the repeated and detailed advice of[Trump’s]legal advisers” and that this should bar him from “any possibility of criminal intent or liability.”
At the time, Shafer was a plaintiff in a Trump lawsuit challenging the Georgia election. The lawsuit was pending when voters met.
Shafer has claimed he is being persecuted simply for engaging in “normal political activity,” although I must say “normal” has changed in recent years.
The letter, written by attorneys Holly Pierson and Craig Gillen, said Republican voters relied on precedent set in Hawaii in 1960. In this case, Democratic voters voted even when it appeared that Republican presidential nominee Richard Nixon had ousted John F. Kennedy in that state. In the end, a recount showed that Kennedy was the winner with 115 out of 185,000 votes cast.
Despite the similarities, there is one difference: Trump lost Georgia by 11,779 votes, and by the time the Republican electors landed in their seats, Biden’s victory was already clear in three recounts.
The Shafer team is conducting a legal and public initiative to get him out of this mess. I get it. Lawyers don’t come cheap and it would be quite a costly and dire situation if Shafer were charged and ended up in the courtroom with Trump and others and charged with racketeering.
Shafer’s attorneys targeted the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other media outlets, saying we had “perpetuated the ‘secret door hoax’ and denigrated such voters as ‘fake or inauthentic.'” The letter refers to them as “contingent voters.”
The term “closed door” arose after AJC reporter Greg Bluestein and independent journalist George Chidi were turned out of the Capitol room shortly before the GOP voters’ rally. Bluestein was told an “educational meeting” was taking place. Now get lost!
A day earlier, several GOP voters told Bluestein that nothing was planned for December 14. Also, a Trump agent emailed voters a day earlier, telling them the effort would require “complete secrecy and discretion.”
In their letter, the Shafer team noted that WSB-TV reporter Richard Elliott was allowed into the room with the voters. That means it wasn’t a secret intrigue.
One could argue that. But could also argue that Bluestein and Chidi stumbled upon the meeting and then tweeted what happened immediately after they were turned away. When that happened, voters knew, as Chidi told me, “that’s the end of it.” They didn’t want to seem any more mysterious than they already were.
Anthony Michael Kreis, a professor of constitutional law at Georgia State University, said prosecutors appear to be urging voters, including Shafer, to move up the ladder and catch bigger Republican fish, including the big tuna itself.
“Even if all these bogus voters thought they were doing the right thing,” he said, “maybe those who encouraged them knew they were committing fraud.”
Shafer claims he knew nothing of the sort.
Meanwhile, the former Duluth Senator waits for whatever awaits him.
For decades, Shafer was a regular, old-time Republican, a networked suburban conservative. But in 2019 he took over as chairman of the state GOP party and concluded that the wingnut wing of the party was the way forward.
The problem is that once you grab the octopus by the tail, something bad will happen.