Fulton County Clerk Ché Alexander put out a statement on Tuesday, admitting that she accidentally posted, then deleted, a document to the court’s website on Monday that listed charges for Donald Trump well before a grand jury voted to indict the former president.
On Monday, after the bombshell filing was quickly spotted by Reuters then removed, Alexander’s office called it a “fictitious document” and admonished media outlets for sharing it. But on Tuesday, Alexander clarified that document was actually a “trial run” for the impending indictment that came several hours later.
“In anticipation of issues that arise with entering a potentially large indictment, Alexander used charges that pre-exist in Odyssey [court software] to test the system and conduct a trial run,” the release said. “Unfortunately, the sample working document led to the docketing of what appeared to be an indictment, but which was, in fact, only a fictitious docket sheet.”
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Alexander’s office still doubled down on its Monday stance that the charging document was “fictitious,” even though the eventual indictment contained the same charges.
But Alexander clarified that the document “did not include a signed ‘true’ or ‘no’ bill nor an official stamp with Clerk Alexander’s name, thereby making the document unofficial and a test sample only.”
That two-page docket caused quite a stir on Monday when it was posted, then quickly vanished from the Fulton County court’s website. Trump’s legal team was unsurprisingly quick to deem the apparent hiccup an act of political warfare.
“This was not a simple administrative mistake,” Trump’s lawyers, Drew Findling and Jennifer Little, claimed. “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.”
A number of MAGA Republicans in Congress were quick to fall in line, with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) claiming that the “entire system has been weaponized.”
A grand jury eventually voted late Monday night to indict Trump and 18 of his allies for their alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
