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Framing Ruby Freeman was a key strategy of Trump's coup attempt, and thankfully, it failed [1]
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Date: 2023-08-28
For Americans trying to make sense of the cacophony of multiple indictments now pending against Donald Trump and his numerous alleged collaborators and supporters resulting from their efforts to overturn the 2020 election, some basics should be kept in mind. First and foremost is that, from its very inception, Trump’s coup attempt could not hope to succeed absent the cooperation of the formidable arsenal of right-wing media in this country to provide “cover” for the plot. Trump and his alleged co-conspirators knew that the coup not only had to be accomplished as a fact: It also had to be simultaneously managed and presented as plausible to the American people.
To that end it became necessary to create a focal point, a bright light to draw the attention of the entire media apparatus, both left and right, that lent some kind of actual credibility to the false allegations of election fraud. It didn’t matter that this focal point was a complete fabrication, and it wouldn’t matter that the “traditional” media would eventually investigate and dispute it. All that was necessary was that the dispute itself be manufactured, a palatable bone for the right (and most importantly, Fox News) to chew on, and then the media would do the rest, effectively blurring the lines between fact and fiction, creating an insoluble “he said, she said” maelstrom of accusations and counter-accusations. Under this scenario, Trump’s people would bravely step in to assume the role not as the abusers, not as the destroyers, but rather as the saviors to our democracy.
That focal point was a 62 year old Black woman named Ruby Freeman. And, according to the 98-page indictment now on file in the Fulton County Superior Court, the astonishing lengths Trump and his associates went to frame her show just how critical to the attempted coup she actually was. Along the way, the Trump and his enabler’s tactics, carried out under the color of governmental action, provide a terrifying foretaste of what a second Trump administration would do to ordinary Americans if it were ever allowed to occupy a position of power in this country again.
The American public is understandably unfamiliar with the names of Trump’s co-indictees in the Georgia criminal case. That’s likely because those names were never intended by Trump, or any of his primary (alleged) co-conspirators to be known. As shown by the Fulton County district attorney’s, Fani Willis, indictment, they were the (mostly) hidden part of a broad-based, meticulously planned plot to provide the plausible media cover necessary for Trump to justify his bogus claims to a confused and divided nation. What is essential for Americans to understand is that they were operating under -- and directed by — the formidable cloak of both state and federal governmental sanction. Trump was still the sitting president when their alleged acts were committed, several of his alleged collaborators were employed by the federal government, and the plot was actively (if unwittingly) enabled by credulous and malleable elected Georgia officials who investigated Freeman at the urging of and upon phony evidence allegedly presented by Trump and his associates.
As explained by Fintan O’Toole, writing for the New York Review of Books, the scheme originated when a Republican state senator, Kay Kirkpatrick, forwarded an example of alleged “election fraud” to Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensberger. As O’Toole explains, these were still shots from surveillance cameras within the State Farm arena — where Georgia votes were being tallied and processed -- purportedly showing Ruby Freeman (a temporary election worker who had volunteered to assist in ballot tabulations) “surreptitiously passing around” USB ports, presumably containing fake election ballots, to be introduced into and “infiltrate the crooked Dominion voting machines.” The quotations in the preceding sentence are from Rudy Giuliani, who, according to the indictment, amplified and distorted Freeman’s actions to a meeting of Georgia representatives on December 10, 2020. Tellingly, Giuliani likened Freeman’s actions to distributing “vials of heroin or cocaine.”
At this point the contours of the alleged conspiracy, with all its race-laden innuendo, begin to take shape. Also included in the complaint provided by Kirkpatrick to Raffensberger were social media posts purportedly made by Freeman implying that she had successfully altered the election tally (although the actual content of the posts is ambiguous). O’Toole notes that these posts were cited as justification for Kirkpatrick’s original complaint as forwarded to Raffensberger. As O’Toole relates, the posts were eventually traced to a bogus Instagram account called” @rubyfreeman__georgia.”
In short, as the subsequent criminal investigation authorized by Georgia’s Sec. of State into Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, ultimately found, it appears they were invented — by whom, it is still unclear. But that determination was not made until both Ruby Freeman and her daughter were subjected to a criminal inquiry by both state and federal officials. As O’Toole states:
The potential charges they faced came under three headings: conspiracy to commit election fraud, fraud by poll officers, and the use of counterfeit ballots. Conviction on the second of these offenses alone could have resulted in Freeman and Moss going to prison for up to ten years. “Teams of investigators” from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and the secretary of state’s office were employed to look into these alleged crimes. Two law-abiding Black women were potentially facing the loss of their liberty, reputations, and livelihoods.
In other words, Trump’s scapegoat, the one his “racketeering” enterprise (as it is referred to in the indictment) allegedly planned to impugn to create that necessary media “plausibility,” had been identified and targeted. It was Ruby Freeman, whose name doubtlessly would have earned the same broad-based calumny from right-wing media outlets as Hunter Biden currently enjoys, except in an even more sinister context. As O’Toole writes, “In December 2020 and January 2021, Freeman and her daughter were relentlessly targeted as the devious criminals who had stolen Trump’s victory in Georgia” (The centrality of her role as the target in Trump’s scheme is made clear in “Act 113” of Fani Willis’ indictment, which asserts that she was accused by Trump of having “stuffed the ballot boxes” with votes for President Biden, in statements Trump made to Georgia officials).
The tenor of the indictment and all of its players in in context indicates Freeman was to be the proof, the public face of the supposed “fraud” that Trump desperately would require, had any of his other concomitant efforts in Georgia to subvert the election met fruition. The fact that Georgia’s investigation into Freeman’s actions would drag on over two years (ultimately she was cleared of any wrongdoing whatsoever) gave the plot’s organizers plenty of time to deploy other, even more deplorable tactics against her and her daughter.
Those tactics are fully set forth in the Georgia indictment, and they are appalling not only for their content but for the palpable and callous racism employed in their execution. But they are also instructive: As O’Toole emphasizes, they clearly show how Trump and the people who surround him view ordinary Americans who get in their way, and the lengths that they will abuse the power of the state to persecute such people to achieve their goals. As O’Toole notes, in Trump’s now-infamous Jan. 2, 2021 phone call to Sec. of State Raffensberger (in which he asked Raffensberger to “find” him 11,000 votes) Trump himself referred to Freeman as a “professional vote scammer and hustler.” Because it wasn’t “accidental” that the target of Trump’s alleged machinations was an innocent Black woman. To the contrary, she was just the type of “villain” that he knew Fox News and other right-wing media would salivate over.
As O’Toole writes:
But the salience of race is even harder to miss in Willis’s explication of the alleged conspirators’ attempts to “turn” Freeman. The indictment sets out how the Trump team, having framed Freeman and her daughter, then offered to “help” her if she would do what they wanted. The plan was to “to harass Freeman, intimidate her, and solicit her to falsely confess to election crimes that she did not commit.” An explicit part of the plan involved using Black members of Trump’s racket to offer her this deal.
According to Willis’ indictment, in December, 2020, a white Lutheran pastor named Stephen Lee arrived at Freemans’ residence for the purpose of “misleading” Freeman, urging her to make false statements and misrepresentations about her Nov. 3 actions. As O’Toole points out, at this time Freeman was already being intimidated “by a barrage of online and personal threats.”
As O’Toole writes, and according to the indictment,
..[Lee T]old Harrison Floyd, a leader of Black Voices for Trump, “that Freeman was afraid to talk to [Lee] because he was a white man.” Floyd then recruited a Black woman, Trevian Kutti, a former publicist for Kanye West and R. Kelly and a self-identified member of “the Young Black Leadership Council under President Donald Trump,” to travel from Chicago to Freeman’s home in Georgia. Freeman, who had been understandably frightened by a barrage of online and personal threats, did not answer her door, but called a neighbor who spoke to Kutti. Kutti “falsely stated that she was a crisis manager attempting to ‘help’ Freeman before leaving Freeman’s home.” Later that day, Kutti called Freeman on the phone to tell her that she was “in danger.”
But Freeman, taking Kutti’s words to heart, was fearful and would only agree to meet Kutti at the police station. Freeman’s fear is evident from the call she first made to the police, saying that “it’s just a matter of time that they are going to come out for me and my family.” This sentiment was apparently stoked by Kutti. As reported by Jason Szep and Lisa So, reporting for Reuters, “[Kutti] said she was sent by a ‘high-profile individual,’ whom she didn’t identify, to give Freeman an urgent message: confess to Trump’s voter-fraud allegations, or people would come to her home in 48 hours, and she’d go to jail.”
(emphasis supplied).
The video of Kutti allegedly attempting to intimidate Ms. Freeman was recorded at the police station:
x This video of Trevian Kutti trying to intimidate Ruby Freeman is astonishing.
"I cannot say what specifically will take place. I just know that it will disrupt your freedom."
"You are a loose end for a party that needs to tidy up." pic.twitter.com/j5KeU36cGi — Tami Burages (@tburages) August 17, 2023
At this point, according to O’Toole the sheer cynical racism of the plot becomes patent. Kutti allegedly misrepresented herself as a “progressive” crisis manager, purportedly in order to gain Freeman’s trust. As O’Toole notes, “Another piece of theater was being staged, one in which Kutti and Floyd acted out for Freeman the roles of concerned Black brothers and sisters.” O’Toole emphasizes that this entire sordid episode, apparently set into motion by Trump’s loyal, conspiratorial apparatus. best exemplifies an example of malevolent government power running amok, with no checks on its motivations, impulses or actions:
As so often in this whole story, there is a bizarre circularity to the conspiracy: what Willis alleges here is a crime committed by trying to force Freeman to herself commit the crime of making false claims about a crime of electoral fraud she did not commit. But in all of this dizzyingly convoluted plotting, it is abundantly clear that the desired outcome for the Trump team was a spectacle familiar from totalitarian states: a repentant traitor confessing to her crimes against the great leader. The special American twist would be that the self-confessed vile conniver would be a Black woman who tried to bring down a president who had long played with white supremacist tropes. It was no accident that many of the pro-Trump attacks on Freeman and Moss on social media not only used racist epithets but explicitly called for them to be lynched: “YOU SHOULD BE HUNG OR SHOT FOR YOUR CRIMES.”
In the end, despite these efforts on Trump’s behalf, as alleged in the indictment, Freeman did not “confess” to a crime she never committed. But ultimately the despicable acts which are set forth in Fani Willis’ indictment are more than the desperate acts of one power-hungry sociopath and his enablers. They were, as O’Toole observes, a “state operation” purportedly orchestrated by officials under the false cloak of government legitimacy, against two defenseless Americans. And they were calculated to provide this country’s right-wing media juggernaut with just enough false propaganda to validate and legitimize a coup.
[END]
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