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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: When a Florida Man from Queens is indicted in Georgia [1]

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Date: 2023-08-16

Well, we knew it was coming and come it did, like a tidal wave. The RICO indictment from Fulton County, Georgia, is a sweeping and extensive story of corruption and cover-up from the state’s Coffee County to the Trump White House.

The number of national and local figures caught up in this is pretty impressive.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Following Trump indictment, agency moves on investigation of Lt. Gov. Jones A state agency is moving ahead with plans that will determine whether Lt. Gov. Burt Jones faces criminal charges as part of a scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Jones is one of 30 people who prosecutors said participated in a conspiracy to overturn the election but were not charged in a Fulton County indictment released late Monday. But Jones may yet face charges, and his fate will rest with a special prosecutor who will determine whether further investigation is needed.

The New York Times: Who Has Been Charged in the Election Inquiry in Georgia

x Whether it’s Trump being indicted under laws meant for the KKK or it’s Trump being indicted under laws meant for the mafia, the former president has a remarkable ability to connect with different constituencies — New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) August 15, 2023

The Washington Post: Here’s who else was charged in Georgia (other than Trump)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Who’s who in the Georgia Trump indictment

x This GOP official's quote of Trump's actions shortly after the November election continues to be an all timer pic.twitter.com/tHSTYq4MI0 — Sam Stein (@samstein) August 15, 2023

Simon Rosenberg/”Hopium Chronicles” on Substack:

Notes on The Indictment of 19 Republicans For Attempting To Overthrow An American Presidential Election in Georgia Agree with this tweet from former Republican Stuart Stevens: x This is basically a Rico indictment of the Republican Party. As it should be. Every Republican elected official who refused to acknowledge the winner of the 2020 election is an unindicted co-conspirator. — Stuart Stevens (@stuartpstevens) August 15, 2023 We have a long road ahead of us to ensure these treasonous criminals are brought to justice, and that our democracy is firmly protected from future assaults. But something important has changed in recent weeks. We are no longer talking just about what Donald Trump did. We are now coming to understand that the vast conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election was a party-wide Republican effort, involving hundreds of prominent Republicans across the US, including the RNC Chair. We need to be calling it now “The Republican Party’s effort to overturn the election” and not just limit it to Trump, or “Trump and his allies.”

x This underscores the uniqueness of the Georgia problem for Trump. The state’s popular GOP governor, who already crushed a Trump-backed primary challenger, is calling Trump out on election lies he’s soon to have to go to trial over https://t.co/jseFdfmyIA — Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) August 15, 2023

Lisa Needham/”Public Notice” on Substack:

Trump's Fulton County indictment, unpacked Trump and 18 others face felony charges for being part of a conspiracy that began before the 2020 election and continued after January 6. Another thing surfaced in this indictment is that the efforts to undermine the election in Georgia didn’t end after January 6. The very next day, as the nation was reeling from seeing an insurrection play out on live television, Sidney Powell and three other defendants — Cathy Latham, one of the fake electors; Misty Hampton, an elections supervisor for Coffee County; and Scott Hall, a bail bondsman — began in earnest their efforts to illegally access Dominion voting machines. CNN had previously reported this appeared to be a “top-down push by Trump’s team” to access voting software and data and the indictment shows that as late as April 2021, an unnamed, unindicted co-conspirator was illegally sending data copied from Coffee County voting equipment to an attorney associated with Sidney Powell.

David Rothkopf/The Daily Beast:

Trump Must Go to Jail if Convicted When Nixon escaped punishment for his crimes, the people got the message that the president is above the law. We can’t make the same mistake again. Just as hundreds of insurrectionists who answered his call to attack the Capitol are serving time, so should he be. Just as anyone else who stole national security documents from the federal government and then obstructed justice time and time again to hang on to them would be incarcerated for years, so should he be. Just as Michael Cohen or Reality Winner went to jail, so should former President Donald Trump. It is not enough for him to be found guilty and then to sit poolside at Mar-a-Lago wearing an ankle bracelet.

x I'm struck once again by both the staggering scale of Trump's conspiracy to lie and the incandescent, provable stupidity of the lies themselves. The indictment is a vivid reminder of those maddening days when we watched people willingly fall for an obvious con. — David French (@DavidAFrench) August 15, 2023

Richard L. Hasan/Slate:

The Biggest Difference Between the Georgia Indictment and the Jan. 6 Indictment But the biggest difference between the federal case and the state case isn’t the number of defendants or counts in the indictment. It’s about the central role that race is likely to play not in the federal case but in the state case, from the race of the prosecutor, to the focus on Black election worker Ruby Freeman, to the essential nature of the race-baiting bogus voter-fraud charges in Georgia that formed Trump’s basis for falsely claiming that he was the rightful winner.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Fulton County charges are a new test of Trump’s limits in Georgia The former president has shrugged off other indictments accusing him of mishandling sensitive documents, subverting the will of the voters and covering up hush money paid to a porn star. But Georgia presents a different challenge for Trump and his allies. Trump can’t halt Willis’ prosecution if he wins next year’s election, and he can’t rely on a pardon from Gov. Brian Kemp if he’s convicted. That power rests in Georgia’s pardons board, whose secretive process spans years.

x Statement from Rudy Giuliani tonight after his indictment in Georgia: pic.twitter.com/brLFAB8BkX — Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) August 15, 2023

So it WAS all about Hunter Biden! Who knew?

Politico:

Special counsel obtained Trump DMs despite ‘momentous’ bid by Twitter to delay, unsealed filings show Judge Beryl Howell lit into Twitter for taking steps to give Donald Trump advance notice about the search warrant. Ultimately, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell held Twitter (now known as X) in contempt of court in February, fining the company $350,000 for missing a court-ordered deadline to comply with Smith’s search warrant. But the newly unsealed transcripts of the proceedings in her courtroom show that the fine was the least of the punishment. Howell lit into Twitter for taking “extraordinary” and apparently unprecedented steps to give Trump advance notice about the search warrant — despite prosecutors’ warnings, backed by unspecified evidence, that notifying Trump could cause grave damage to their investigation. “Is this to make Donald Trump feel like he is a particularly welcomed new renewed user of Twitter?” Howell asked. “Twitter has no interest other than litigation its constitutional rights,” replied attorney George Varghese of WilmerHale, the firm Twitter deploys for much of its litigation. But Howell returned to the theme repeatedly during the proceedings, wondering why the company was taking “momentous” steps to protect Trump that it had never taken for other uses. In the hearing on Feb. 7, 2023, Howell referenced Musk, asking: “Is it because the new CEO wants to cozy up with the former president?

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