Georgia starts investigation into Trump's election interference

It's by far the most fascinating part of this case at least at the moment. You have him very much looking like a cooperating witness in the Special Counsels case, and here at least on the indictment at face value, he's right up there with culpability at the top. That would seem to put in conflict his potential to cooperate with the SC of course.... or not if he decides to plead guilty in GA as part of a deal for his testimony. Then he ensures his testimony lines up with the one he gave the SC.

Everyone in the lawyer media world expects at least half of the co-conspirators to plead guilty. So I expect here very very soon we'll start seeing team Trump's strategy for getting to these co-conspirators in a way that toes the line with witness intimidation, and obstruction of justice.

 

this is the timeline leading up to Donald Trump's indictment in Georgia,

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why aren't Perdue, Loeffler and Graham included in the indictment.

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I don't know about Perdue or Loeffler in this case (could be one of the un-indicted co-conspirators), but I actually wouldn't be surprised if Lady Lindsay was calling to try to get a sense for what Trump and his crackpot lawyers were trying to do and the legality of it vs actually calling to influence on behalf of Trump. Of course the call notes read as one thing, but I do know that Graham isn't as dumb of a legal mind as idiots like Sydney Powell are. He's also a lifelong Senator who chairs the judicial committee. He's not going to make that call without prefacing with Raffenspurger comments that express intent that covers his butt.

I do think it's possible though that Graham could have made that call to get insights on what is legal, and what is not. Then given back room advice to Trump. That I don't doubt happened. Him overtly breaking the law though when he had to know he'd be recorded or at least notes would be kept on the call seems unlikely.

 

Oh but they will....facts be damed!! The sad part is the maga base doesnt care

I was watching a maga supporter in Iowa being asked, "what if trump is in prison", the dude goes, well he can do the job in prison and I will still vote for him..............yikes, these folks don't care about guilt or innocence, when they asked him if he knew what the charges were, he answered NO, but he is sure trump is not guilty and then added the caveat, why would he do this, he donated his entire salary to veteran organizations

 

Another Trump boot licker trying to spin this on Democrats. Trump committed the crimes! He is NOT above the law, regardless of what your GOP loyalist version of law is. A ballot box is not how this country prosecutes criminals and felons. Nobody is above the law. That includes a grifting con with numerous felony charges running for President.

Republicans testified against him! They told the truth. Don't twist the story to serve your lust for power you lying despicable spineless man.

Sad. The cult is real. Brainwashed fools.

 

Cool. Now I can commit crimes and ask people to vote on my innocence.

Wait, that’s what a jury is. Thank you!

 

Will Georgia case against Trump end up in federal court?

Former President Donald Trump now stands indicted in Fulton County Superior Court, but that does not necessarily mean he will be tried there.

Many legal experts predict Trump’s lawyers will try to move the case to the U.S. District Court just a few blocks away. To do so, they would use a little-known statute that allows U.S. officials charged with crimes to transfer a state criminal case to federal court where it would be presided over by a U.S. District judge. If the case does get moved to federal court and Trump were to be found guilty, he would be convicted of state, not federal crimes.


On Monday, the Fulton racketeering case was assigned to Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, a former prosecutor and state inspector general who was appointed to the bench by Gov. Brian Kemp and sworn into office in February.


Moving the case from Fulton could benefit the former commander-in-chief, who’s seeking the GOP presidential nomination for the third time, because it would most likely bring him a more conservative jury pool.

Whether his legal team can succeed remains to be seen. But former DeKalb County District Attorney J. Tom Morgan thinks such an attempt will be the first move for Trump’s Georgia attorneys.

“That issue could go all the way to the Supreme Court,” said Morgan, now a professor at Western Carolina University. “And as we all know, Mr. Trump likes to litigate anything and everything, whether he has a case or not.”

The primary impetus to move the case is to have an expanded jury pool, not one limited to residents of Fulton County, where President Joe Biden won more than 72 percent of the vote in 2020.


If Trump prevails in his motion to transfer the case, his jury pool would be made up of residents from the Northern District of Georgia’s Atlanta division, which is composed of Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry, Newton and Rockdale counties.

While Biden won overwhelmingly in Clayton, DeKalb, Fulton and Rockdale counties, Trump got at least 36 percent of the vote in Cobb, Douglas, Gwinnett, Henry and Newton counties. He also thumped Biden in Cherokee with 69 percent of the vote.

“They would want a jury picked from a wider area than just Fulton County alone,” Atlanta defense attorney Jack Martin said of Trump’s attorneys. “Fulton County is overwhelmingly Democratic, although there are pockets of Republican voters. But getting the wider area would give them fewer Democratic-leaning counties — and jurors —to worry about.”

It’s also possible, because of the immense publicity surrounding the case, that jurors could be summoned from the entire Northern District, not just the 10 counties in the Atlanta division.

The Northern District is composed of 46 counties spanning the northwestern part of Georgia, from the Tennessee and North Carolina borders down to Troup County on the western side of the state and to Stephens County on the eastern side. It includes conservative strongholds that elected Republican U.S. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Barry Loudermilk and Andrew Clyde.

Culling jurors from an entire district was done in 2021 during the federal hate crimes trial of the three men convicted of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Because of sensational pretrial publicity, jurors were not summoned from just the seven-county Brunswick division, but from all 43 counties that make up the Southern District of Georgia.

A ‘colorable’ defense

The so-called removal statute was enacted by Congress in 1789 to protect federal officials from being harassed and prosecuted by state officials.

There are three conditions that must be met for defendants to move their cases to federal court: At the time of the alleged offense, they must have been a federal official; they must be facing charges “for or relating to any act under color of such office;” and they must raise “a colorable federal defense.”

Trump may be able to meet those conditions, said Atlanta defense attorney Andrew Fleischman.

“The former president is going to claim that he was trying to enforce some sort of federal law” as he pressured Georgia officials to overturn his election loss, Fleischman said. “And then the only question is: Is it colorable?”

Fleischman said a colorable argument “means plausible, just barely plausible, something that you can say with a straight face. And he could. Could he say with a straight face he was trying to ensure election integrity? Yes, he could make that claim.”

It’s also possible that lawyers for Jeffrey Clark, who was an assistant U.S. attorney general, and Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, could try to remove their cases to federal court. And there is court precedent that could allow someone who was acting as an agent of a federal official to make such a request.

Trump’s lawyers have already tried but failed to remove the hush money case brought against the former president in state court in Manhattan to the U.S. District Court in New York.

In that case, Trump faces felony charges involving payments he made to p*rn star Stormy Daniels. Trump is accused of falsifying business records in 2017 to hide $130,000 in reimbursements paid to his then-attorney, Michael Cohen. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and denied having an affair with Daniels.

In July, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in New York said Trump’s lawyers failed to show that the conduct charged in the indictment related to any act performed by Trump as president.

“The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was a purely a personal item of the president — a cover-up of an embarrassing event,” he ruled. “Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a president’s official acts.”

If Trump’s attorneys in Atlanta were to prevail, it would not be the first time a Fulton case was removed to federal court.

In October, U.S. District Judge Victoria Calvert approved a request from defense attorneys to remove to federal court the felony murder case of two members of a multi-agency fugitive task force. Calvert ruled that Eric Heinze and Kristopher Hutchens were acting within the scope of their federal duties when they fatally shot Jamarion Robinson in 2016 at an East Point apartment.

Fulton prosecutors had argued to keep the case in Superior Court, but Calvert found that Heinze and Hutchens met the three conditions to transfer their case. Calvert is now presiding over the case and Fulton County prosecutors will try it.

Atlanta defense attorney Don Samuel, who represents Hutchens, agrees there is a low threshold to be cleared to remove a case to federal court. “Colorable means it isn’t black and white, but close enough. Or, alternately, when you announce your defense, people don’t start laughing,” he said.

Samuel said it may be a close call as to whether Trump can succeed making such an argument.

“The key is that the federal official must, in fact, be engaged in his federal occupation,” Samuel said. “If an FBI agent shoots his wife, or shoplifts at Walmart, the agent cannot remove a state prosecution. So when Trump called (Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021), was he engaged in his federal occupation? Or was he engaged in a purely personal lark of his own?”

Claire Finkelstein, a University of Pennsylvania law school professor, does not believe Trump can prevail in arguing he was acting under the color of his office.

“Trying to win an election is the quintessential personal capacity act,” she said. “The president in that case is a candidate. He’s not acting in his capacity as president of the United States. ... He was acting purely in his personal capacity.”

One thing most legal experts agree upon is that if an attempt is made to remove the case to federal court, the losing party will appeal the judge’s decision to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. And that court’s decision could then be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-ne...-in-federal-court/ADQWGZTHJVAXJHXPGQILZ5VOYA/

 

fwiw

I Read the Georgia Indictment, So You Don’t Have To

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/08/i-read-the-georgia-indictment-so-you-dont-have-to.php

 

Absolute misrepresentation and garbage from a unreliable right wing source. On par with most of the other things trump lovers do to overlook the fact that trump is the most dispicable and unpatriotic politician at any level. Our system of government hangs in the balance and is in danger of giving in to authoritarians thanks to trump and others like him. The sooner we put him in jail the better. For everybody.

 

let's see . . . an assessment from a Harvard-trained litigator with 40+ years of legal experience? or an ad hominem from some internet rando on a basketball forum? tough choice.

 

you conveniently forget that he was not present in the grand jury testimony.

 

The last line of his statement is hilarious.

"...pursuing legal remedies to vindicate what he saw as his rights, are not crimes."

 

Let's see Because he went to Harvard and has 40+ years of legal experience tells me that he is very well trained in flipping the narrative and intentionally misleading people to suit his purposes. Steve Bannon went to Harvard as did many other proponents of trump and his attempts at chaos and insurrection. Study the facts ignore the biases on either end of the spectrum. I stand by my opinion based on an abundance of evidence and facts that trump is the most unpatriotic and dispicable human being ever to hold office at any level.

 

Don't forget Lying Ted Cruz went to Harvard too. He was all part of spreading the Big Lie. Just another greasy traitor whose wife has to know his lips are stuck to Trump's butt 24/7.

 

Oh yeah don't want to forget lying ted cruz. He's the one whose father according to trump was in on the Kennedy assassination. He's a trump boot licker of the utmost degree.

 

I was just thinking about the irony of an African American DA using a harsh RICO law on Trump that was created by tough on crime Republicans to mostly lock up minorities.

It’s also ironic that we only hear republicans talk about how the criminal justice system is weaponized when it goes after a rich, powerful white man.

"'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party."

 

Creditentals only seems to matter to some folks if it fits their narrative.

Life's pretty straightforward when u can just cherry pick which expert u want to believe or trust.

 

...Lindsey...

...honey...

...all of this already WAS decided at the ballot box.
That's the reason for all of this fuss.

Have you not, like, been paying attention?

Lindsey...I pinky-finger swear, girl...

... it's bimbos like you that give decent honest hardworking bimbos a bad name...