Trump, Allies Seize on Confusion After Georgia Court Shares ‘Fictitious’ Indictment Document
AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall
Former President Donald Trump’s legal team and many of his allies seized on the release of what appeared to be an indictment document uploaded and then quickly deleted from Fulton County court’s website. Fulton County DA Fani Willis is investigating the 2024 GOP frontrunner over allegations he broke the law in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
Reuters first reported on the two-page document being uploaded and noted, “Charges listed in the document included racketeering, a law used to target members of organizations engaged in illegal activity, as well as making false statements, filing false documents and several conspiracy charges.”
“The Office of the Fulton County Clerk of Superior and Magistrate Courts has learned of a fictitious document that has been circulated online and reported by various media outlets related to The Fulton County Special Purpose Grand Jury,” the county clerk said in a statement.
“While there have been no documents filed today regarding such, all members of the media should be reminded that documents that do not bear an official case number, filing date, and the name of The Clerk of Courts, in concert, are not considered official filings and should not be treated as such,” the statement added.
The statement sparked confusion, which NBC’s Garrett Haake summed up:
This statement just further confuses what happened today. How did a “fictitious” document get posted on their website? Are they accusing Reuters of faking it? There’s no accountability here for a document that Trump allies are seizing on as proving the fix is in against him
Trump ally Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), for example, took to Twitter to declare, “We now have DAs releasing indictments before they are even voted on by grand juries.”
“There is no such thing as justice in this country. The entire system has been weaponized. Fanni [sic] Willis should be relieved of her position,” Boebert added, reacting as though the indictment were genuine.
Trump’s legal team also sent out a statement, saying:
The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office has once again shown that they have no respect for the integrity of the grand jury process. This was not a simple administrative mistake. A proposed indictment should only be in the hands of the District Attorney’s Office, yet it somehow made its way to the clerk’s office and was assigned a case number and a judge before the grand jury even deliberated. This is emblematic of the pervasive and glaring constitutional violations which have plagued this case from its very inception. —Drew Findling and Jennifer Little
The grand jury hearing of evidence related to Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia met on Monday and is widely expected to return an indictment sometime this week, which would be Trump’s fourth indictment this year.
