The premature posting of charges in the Georgia case against former President Donald Trump threatens to further complicate these controversial proceedings, legal analysts say.
When the indictment was handed up by the grand jury at about 9 p.m. and later unsealed, it was revealed that the 13 counts recorded against President Trump matched those from the sheet briefly posted earlier in the day.
According to legal experts, this turn of events created an additional avenue for defense lawyers to attack.
‘Trial Run’ Gone Wrong
Georgia officials initially offered no explanation. But on the afternoon of Aug. 15, county court clerk Ché Alexander released a statement saying that the document posted was a “test sample” document generated from a “trial run” of the court filing system.She was anticipating “issues that arise with a potentially large indictment,” and used charges that “pre-exist” in the court’s computer system to “conduct a trial run.”
“Unfortunately, the sample working document led to the docketing of what appeared to be an indictment, but which was, in fact, only a fictitious docket sheet,” the statement read.
‘There’s No Way That It Should Happen’
After reading the updated statement from the clerk’s office, Mr. Allen remained skeptical.“I don’t believe any of it. It makes no sense. The copy would have had to been given to them by someone in the prosecutor’s office. As an excuse, it’s laughable,” he said.
Mr. Allen said that, given the high-profile nature of the case against a former U.S. president and 18 alleged co-conspirators, one would assume that extra care would be taken to avoid such a snafu.
“There’s no way that it should happen,” he said, “and if it does, the prosecutor has an obligation to explain what happened; she can’t just stand up there and arrogantly refuse to answer ... it just looks horrible; it looks like it’s a predetermined result.” That erases any notion that the process was fair to the defendants, Mr. Allen said.
All 19 defendants are accused of a racketeering charge, alleging they unlawfully worked together to set aside President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory over the Republican president. President Trump has never conceded to President Biden and insists that the election was “stolen” or “rigged.” The indictment alleges that he and his co-conspirators made those claims while knowing they were telling falsehoods, which is difficult to prove, his lawyers have said.
Mr. Allen said he doubted that the premature release was intentional. But he said that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who orchestrated the investigation for 2 1/2 years, should have addressed the concerns rather than brushing them aside. Mr. Allen said he would have done so if he were in her shoes.
During a late-night news conference on Aug. 14, a reporter asked Ms. Willis about the document that Reuters first posted that afternoon. The reporter pointed out that the 13 charges on the early document corresponded exactly with the charges that officials released several hours later. The reporter asked Ms. Willis to explain the situation.
In response, the district attorney said: “No, I can’t tell you anything about what you refer to ... I am not an expert on clerks’ duties ... I’m not going to speculate. Next question.” The Epoch Times made repeated efforts to obtain answers from the clerk of courts’ office but received no response to specific questions posed on both Aug. 14 and Aug. 15.
The situation created the impression that Ms. Willis “knew all along that the grand jury was going to indict on the charges that they did,” Mr. Allen said.
“Somebody messed up somewhere,” he said, “but, to me, it’s a circus, and at this point, she’s the ringmaster of the circus.”
Mr. Allen said he wonders how “someone in the clerk’s office could have gotten ahold of that document, fictitious or not, without somebody in the prosecutor’s office releasing it.”
Grand jury decisions are “jealously guarded,” Mr. Allen said, because citizens serving on these panels are supposed to work in secret.
Additional Concerns
Mr. Allen had other criticisms of the district attorney’s approach, too. He said he found it “preposterous” that Ms. Willis stated that she wanted to try all 19 defendants together and to complete the complicated case involving 41 total charges, many with multiple defendants, in just six months.“It shows a predisposition to ‘get Trump,’” Mr. Allen said. “I would definitely be filing a motion to dismiss.”
However, a number of legal experts are skeptical as to whether such a challenge would succeed.
President Trump’s legal team has already signaled that it would challenge the premature release of the charges. They insisted in an Aug. 14 statement that “this was not a simple administrative mistake.” Rather, they said, it was “emblematic of the pervasive and glaring constitutional violations which have plagued this case from its very inception.”
They allege that Ms. Willis was attempting to recover from a “major fumble” and “clearly decided to force through and rush this 98-page indictment.”
Ms. Willis, however, told reporters that her office follows the facts and the law.
She has given the defendants a deadline of noon on Aug. 25 to surrender on the charges or face arrest.
