Election officials in two Georgia counties have collected legal fees from former President Trump’s failed election process – but his lawyer is playing shy about who really paid the bills.
Election officials in DeKalb and Cobb counties tried in February to reclaim legal fees for a lawsuit they described as “baseless and legally defective”, which alleged, without evidence, that tens of thousands of illegal voters had voted in the presidential election. Trump withdrew the lawsuit the day before the hearing, the same week as the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
A court was due to hear arguments about legal fees last Friday, but both counties said in filings that they reimbursed the costs, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Cobb County’s electoral committee received $ 15,554 to pay its legal costs, according to a court file filed Friday. DeKalb bounced back from fees of $ 6,105 and told a judge on Monday that “plaintiffs have paid the full amount of legal fees through their attorney.”
But Trump’s attorney in the case, Randy Evans, denied the notoriously stingy ex-president paid the dues, but declined to say who did it.
“The two motions were withdrawn. There was no settlement agreement,” Evans, who also represents the Trump campaign and the Georgia Republican Party, told the Journal Constitution. “The taxpayers in DeKalb and Cobb have been fully reimbursed. Further details are not available because there are no other details.”
Daniel White, a Cobb County attorney, said the fees were paid through Evans’ firm.
“I would surely give in to them if they wanted to clarify where they got the funds from,” White told the point of sale.
Trump raised more than $ 250 million after his election defeat, ostensibly to fund his litigation. But he only spent a small fraction of those donations on actual legal fees and far more on additional fundraising and advertising. Five of his impeachment attorneys quit just a week before his second Senate trial over a salary dispute, and Trump still refuses to pay Rudy Giuliani for his tireless work pursuing unfounded allegations of election fraud.
Trump’s legal troubles only get worse after Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance convened a grand jury to hear evidence of his years of criminal investigations into the former president himself and the Trump organization, which is now the New Yorker Prosecutor involved has General’s office. Trump is facing a Georgia criminal investigation over his efforts to pressure Georgian Foreign Secretary Brad Raffensperger to find enough votes to overturn his electoral defeat. He has also faced several lawsuits, including from women accusing him of rape or sexual assault, as well as a lawsuit from lawmakers and the NAACP accusing him of instigating the Capitol riot.
Trump has complained that the major bills are “such a pain in the ass,” The Daily Beast reported last month. His legal team filed a motion in May demanding that the Democratic lawmakers who sued him over the Capitol uprising should be “sentenced to pay President Trump’s fees and expenses.”
The uprising came amid a spate of lawsuits from Trump and his allies, all of which failed as Republicans failed to produce evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities. Some of the former president’s allies face sanctions or disciplinary action for filing frivolous lawsuits, while others, like Giuliani and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, face multi-billion dollar lawsuits from electoral technology firms falsely accusing them of casting Trump’s votes on president Having moved Biden.
The fact that there is no evidence to support these “stolen elections” claims has not stopped Trump supporters from continuing to use his election lies to torture election officials.
Raffensperger and his family, as well as other election officials, have faced a barrage of death threats and even had to flee their homes, according to Reuters. Raffensperger’s wife, Tricia, told the outlet that her family was forced to go into hiding for almost a week after intruders broke into their widowed daughter-in-law’s house, which they believe was intended to intimidate them. Tricia Raffensperger said people who identified themselves to the police as members of the Oath Keepers militia were seen outside her home that same night.
Amid the threats, Georgia Republican lawmakers passed law that stripped Raffensperger of many of his electoral powers after contradicting Trump’s lies, potentially making it easier to overturn future elections.
Numerous other officials in Georgia, Arizona and Michigan have been inundated with death threats or “protested in their homes or followed in their cars,” according to the Reuters report, including Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson as well as election administrators and volunteers. The Arizona Republicans also stripped Hobbs of their power.
Fulton County’s electoral director Richard Barron said the threats his office received had been shared with investigators investigating Trump’s pressure on Raffensperger. Barron told Reuters that most of the employees in his office were black, adding that “the racial slurs were disturbing and disgusting”.
Other messages threatened violence and bombings, with an email being sent to at least 11 Georgia counties warning that “we’re making the Boston bombings look like a no-brainer” and “bringing death and destruction” until “Trump guarantees POTUS until 2024 is “. as it should be. “
Deidre Holden, Paulding County’s longtime election director, told Reuters her office had relayed the news to the police and the FBI. “I’ve never had anything like this before,” she said. “It was terrifying.”
Almost eight months after the election, a staggering proportion of Americans still believe the 2020 election was fraught with fraud. According to a new Monmouth poll, about 32% of voters believe Biden’s election was fraudulent, a rate that has remained constant since November.
“The continued effort to question the validity of last year’s election is deepening the partisan divide in ways that could have long-term consequences for our democracy,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, “even if the most Americans don’t. don’t quite see it that way yet. “
