Sunday, October 8, 2023

My take on the Georgia indictments

Fascinating. Nineteen people are indicted so this is a contrast to the federal charges where Trump was the only named defendant. There is a lot of common territory though because Trump's plans to get states to overturn their elections results happened in Georgia as one of the primary places. These indictments are state-level charges, not federal, because states (unsurprisingly) also have laws against election hijinks. Nineteen defendants, 41 counts, and an average of over 7 counts per defendant since many counts have multiple offenders listed. 

Some of the charges:

A Rico conspiracy to do a bunch of bad shit with many threads and tentacles. 

Solicitation of violation of oath by public officers - trying to get officials to do illegal or unethical shit. 

Impersonating a public official, forgery, false statements for pretending you're an elector when you're not. 

Perjury and false statements galore - to the GA legislature, to investigators, committees. I assume that the perjury charges are based on lying when under oath in a legal proceeding. 

Can the Rico charges stand? Can defendants be charged in Fulton county with offenses that occurred in Coffee County? Is it a criminal false statement to wrongly characterize action in a video, or just a mistake that isn't criminal? This applies to statements about video of counting from the State Farm Arena. However before the State department of GA clarified the actions shown in the video, it may reasonably have been misinterpreted. 

When does conferring with a witness cross the line to the criminal act of influencing witnesses? 

Some of the incidents: Lying about the State Farm Arena video. Lying about election workers. Harassing election workers. Pressuring election workers over their testimony. Falsely saying and signing documents as a presidential electors. Unsanctioned access to voting machines in Coffee County. Lying about what you were doing with those voting machines. Pressuring the secretary of state of GA to find 11780 votes. 

These are the most satisfying indictments yet because the major players will be having to answer for their acts, unless they decide not to mount a defense. It's less complicated when Trump is the sole defendant, but it's fully complete when his henchman are there too. It's also great that they all had to come in and get mug shots. 

Image: PBS


Extras. The report from the investigative grand jury. They were considering indicting Sen. Lindsay Graham too. 


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