It’s not clear whether Attorney General Merrick Garland has the courage to prosecute Donald Trump over an apparent attempt to stage an election coup by substituting fake voters for the real swing states won by President Biden. But Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis suffers no such affliction, and her efforts to hold the former president’s cronies accountable chug on.
Willis recently issued subpoenas to several attorneys linked to the Trump campaign, including Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and Cleta Mitchell, as well as Senator Lindsey Graham, who called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and allegedly asked if it one way to throw away would be to hand out enough absentee ballots to get Trump over the line in the state. It’s not as egregious as Trump asks Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” and put a target on the back of an innocent poll worker he calls “a professional voter fraudster and crook,” but it’s not great.
As first reported by Yahoo News, DA Willis has now issued targeted letters to the fake voters who huddled in the state capital and secretly sworn in on December 14, 2020 by entering their names on a fake ballot paper, which was then presented became the National Archives. Unhappy at being dragged before a grand jury to personally represent the Fifth, the bogus voters, many of whom have political ambitions in the state, filed an angry motion that was received by Politico attempts to overturn the subpoenas and disqualify Willis.
“The abrupt, untenable, and public elevation of the status of all 11 electoral nominees unjustly converted them from witnesses who voluntarily cooperated and were willing to testify on the grand jury as to the goals being pursued,” they snort, accusing Willis of participating in a “advertising” stunt” and violating state ethics laws by confirming to the Atlanta Journal Constitution that the alleged voters are now targets of the grand jury’s investigation.
They conveniently recall the Yahoo article that broke the news without any apparent help from prosecutors. Similarly, they claim to have been candid about the entire process, though the Trump campaign man on the ground in Georgia demanded “complete discretion,” writing via email, “Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result — a victory in Georgia for President Trump – but will be obstructed unless we have complete secrecy and discretion.” Indeed, the Georgia GOP released the program, but only after two reporters learned of the meeting and refused them entry became.
The bogus voters defend their actions not only as legal, but also as required by the US Constitution and Georgia law. In their testimony, they had to swear themselves because one of the many Trump LOLsuits attempting to overturn the election was pending, and they had to forge a fake ballot certificate and submit it to the National Archives just in case they were successful the votes actually cast. (Note that they do not argue that there was reasonable grounds to believe that the official vote count was wrong.)
They also appear to have received the memo that Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman are the dedicated Fall Guys du Jour, and are pedaling as fast as they can to put distance between themselves and the conspiracy, January 6 through fake election lists to replace the real ones in , 2021. Complainants “were not involved in and had no knowledge of any such plan, as it was not even conceived until several weeks after GOP voters completed their conditional electoral lists on December 14, 2020, and in any though at no point was it communicated or discussed with the nominated voters,” they insist.
You also advocate a maximalist version of the theory of independent state legislature – because it wasn’t radical enough already? – in which Willis is not authorized to investigate because “states have no authority to determine which electoral lists are ‘fake’ or valid”. By this logic, the losing party should swear in each time and present a competing list of voters, since the courts are powerless to stop them and either the legislature will bless them or the vice president can choose between competing lists. Whoa!
Meanwhile, Georgia Rep. Jody Hice, who championed the big lie and just lost a race against Raffensperger to become Republican secretary of state in November, has successfully had his challenge to Willis’ grand jury subpoena transferred to federal court . In his narration, the speech or debate clause protects his right to refuse to vote in Georgia. And Senator Graham has agreed to drop his challenge to the subpoena in a South Carolina federal court after Willis indicated it was premature because he never accepted the service anyway.
As usual, Rudy Giuliani’s reaction was the most spectacular in the sense that he didn’t react at all. Georgia Public Broadcasting’s Stephen Fowler reports that the former SDNY USAO chief failed to appear for a July 13 showmanship hearing before Judge Farber of the New York State Supreme Court, where he could have challenged the Georgia grand jury’s certificate of the material witness. So now he’s scheduled to testify in Atlanta on August 9th.
Well played everyone.
Fake voters in Georgia are considered targets of criminal investigations by the prosecutor’s office [Politico]
Exclusive: Fulton County Attorney Sends ‘Target’ Letters to Trump Allies in Georgia Investigation [Yahoo News]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore, where she writes about law and politics.
