The Other "Big One" in Georgia

 

Fani Willis

Confession: I have not finished reading the Georgia indictment of Donald Trump.  Not only is it 98 pages long, it is less accessible than the federal indictment, being written in dense legalese instead of plain English.  The federal is told in narrative form, or rather in multi-narrative form.  It has sections separately describing what Team Trump was doing in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (not Nevada, for some reason), followed by a section on the pressure on Mike Pence and a section on the "exploitation" of riots at the Capitol.  Following this are four very brief sections alleging violation of four federal statutes, but never specifying which act applied to which count, or which acts were per se illegal and which were not in themselves illegal, but were taken in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy.  In other words, the federal indictment gives a clear and coherent factual narrative, but does not specify which acts violated which laws.*

The Georgia indictment is a different matter.  It charges 161 distinct acts, all in rigid chronological order, rather than narrative order.  Thus actions associated with, say, appointing a false slate of electors may be interspersed with actions associated with seeking to illegally access voting machines, or attempts to intimidate Ruby Freeman.  On the other hand, the Georgia indictment makes very clear which actions were actual crimes and which were merely taken in furtherance of the overall conspiracy.  And it is not too difficult to tell by context and proximity which actions were taken in furtherance of which crimes.

Both indictments make the false electors the center of the case.

The federal indictment charges the rather vague crimes of fraud on the United States, obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against civil rights (specifically, the right to have one's vote counted).  The Georgia indictment is more specific.  Neither the federal government nor any state, including Georgia, has specific laws forbidding people who are not electors from meeting and casting votes for the losing candidate. So the Georgia indictment charged the fake electors with impersonating public official and falsifying official documents.  Sounds reasonable to me.  It also charges everyone who lied about the election to Georgia legislative committees with false statement.  I do not know enough about Georgia law to know the difference between false statements and perjury.  Regardless, witness testimony to a legislative committee is usually given under oath, and is usually prosecutable as perjury or some similar crime for lying, so the indictment seems reasonable.  

Team Trump's attempts to pressure both the legislature and the Secretary of State to overturn the election are charged as solicitation to violate oath of office.  That is certainly reasonable and appropriate for the Secretary of State.  Many of Trump's defenders have defended his urging state legislatures to overturn the vote as protected by the right to petition.  I actually have some sympathy for this view and am not convinced that trying to persuade a legislature to pass unconstitutional legislation is a crime, absent some sort of bribe or threat.

The Georgia indictment also charges a few Georgia-specific crimes.  It was known that a local election official in Georgia illegally accessed voting machines.  It turns out she was acting at the behest of Sidney Powell.  And while the threats to Shay Moss and Ruby Freeman were well documented, up until now they were known mostly as victims.  In fact some of the defendants came to Freeman's door or made unwanted phone calls to her, offering to "protect" her if she would falsely testify that she engaged in election fraud.  Freeman refused.  Her role was actually more heroic than I had been led to understand until now.  Of all the crimes in the indictment, this harassment of an ordinary citizens seems most outrageous.

There are some questionable parts of the indictment as well.  In particular, it alleges actions outside of Georgia, and therefore beyond the authority of any Georgia prosecutor.  It defines rather broadly what constitutes an act "in furtherance" of the conspiracy.  In fact, a common technique among Trump supporters is to ask with mock incredulity whether actions such as asking for a phone number, sending a tweet, urging other to watch TV, renting a room, or encouraging others to attend a hearing are crimes.  The answer, of course, is that these things are not, by themselves, crimes, but can be crimes if undertaken as part of a criminal conspiracy.  Renting a room is not a crime.  Renting a room to commit crimes in -- in this case, impersonating electors and forging electoral certificates -- is an act in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy.  The indictment also alleges a whole serious of actions  involved in planning to assemble fake electors to cast fake certificates that are not crimes but are clearly undertaken in furtherance of a crime.  Likewise, encouraging someone to attend a legislative committee meeting in order to lie to the committee is an act in furtherance of a crime.  But I am inclined to agree that some of the actions alleged, such as sending tweets or encouraging people to watch TV, seem rather remote and dubious. While it is helpful in understanding the indictment for it to specify what acts were taken in furtherance of a conspiracy and what were actual crimes, it also feeds Trump supporters' paranoia more than the rather vague federal indictment.

And, most famously, the Georgia indictment brings in a large assortment of co-conspirators -- 19, to be specific.  All indictments up until now have either targeted Trump alone or named one or two co-conspirators at most, although the existence of others was more or less admitted.  In fact, the federal indictment names six unindicted co-conspirators, five of whom are easily identified and one who remains a mystery.  The Georgia indictment names a great many more.  Some are nationally prominent.  Some are not nationally known, but are persons of some importance in George.  A few are local election officials little known outside their county.  And a few (most notably the ones involved in intimidating Ruby Freeman) are just regular folks.  

And I am inclined to think that naming many defendants is the part of the indictment that raises the most alarm an paranoia among Trump supporters.  Up until now for all the claims of persecution and "they're coming for you next," no one was actually targeted except for Trump himself, along with a few close associates.  Naming so many people makes it easier to tell Trump supporters that they could be next.

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*It is also clear from the federal indictment that the attempt to overturn the election was more intense in Georgia than in the other states.  The other states had Republican legislatures but Democratic Secretaries of State. Team Trump therefore limited itself to trying to persuade the state legislatures to overturn the results, and, when the attempt failed, to choosing fake slates of electors.  Georgia, by contrast, had a Republican Secretary of State, so Trump repeatedly pressured him to change the vote outcome.  This was the most clearly criminal part of the attempt to overturn the election, so it is appropriate that