Hours after a two-page docket listing criminal charges against Donald Trump was posted on—then quickly vanished from—the Fulton County court’s website, the court clerk called it “fictitious” in a statement that seemed to raise more questions than it answered.
The ambiguity, however, seemed to provide the perfect opportunity for Trump’s legal team to cast doubt on the proceedings—with two of his lawyers almost immediately releasing a statement claiming that the document proved that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has “no respect for the integrity of the grand jury process.”
“This was not a simple administrative mistake,” Trump’s lawyers, Drew Findling and Jennifer Little, continued. “A proposed indictment should only be in the hands of the District Attorney’s Office, yet somehow made its way to the clerk’s office and was assigned a case number and a judge before the grand jury even deliberated.”
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Trump’s allies in Congress then quickly parroted the line.
“They published the indictment before the grand jury voted. How is this not due process violation?” tweeted Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH).
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) said that the “entire system has been weaponized,” while calling for Fulton County DA Fani Willis to be “relieved of her position” over the situation.
In a statement, the Fulton County Court Clerk Che Alexander didn’t elaborate on how or why the document had appeared on the court’s website—adding to a similar pronouncement from a spokesperson for the DA’s office who told Reuters that its report was “inaccurate” but refused to elaborate further.
The document, which listed more than a dozen charges, including racketeering and conspiracy, bore an official case number, was dated Aug. 14, and listed the case status as “open.”
The mysterious filing and the flurry of speculation that followed came as a grand jury deciding whether to hand down an indictment began hearing evidence in the case.
Read it at Reuters
