Former President Donald Trump claimed in an interview with Fox News Digital late Monday that the charges filed against him in Georgia are “politically inspired.”
Georgia prosecutors say Trump and 18 others including his lawyers, John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, as well as former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows “joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome” of the 2020 election.
“This politically-inspired indictment, which could have been brought close to three years ago, was tailored for placement right smack in the middle of my political campaign,” Trump told Fox News Digital, echoing an earlier statement Monday from the Trump campaign.
Trump said Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis “should focus on the people that rigged the 2020 presidential election, not those who demand an answer as to what happened.”
“Just like she has allowed Atlanta to go to hell with all of its crime and violence, so too has Joe Biden allowed the United States of America to go to the same place with millions of people invading our country, inflation, bad economy, no energy, and lack of respect all over the world,” Trump told Fox News Digital.
This is the fourth indictment Trump is facing. The former president, who is the current GOP 2024 frontrunner, has already been charged in three separate cases this year. He denies any wrongdoing in all the cases and says they are politically motivated.
Donald Trump for the second time this month has been indicted on charges related to 2020 election subversion, this time in the state of Georgia — a stunning fourth time this year that the former president has faced criminal charges.
But could the former president, who remains the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, assume the Oval Office again if convicted of the alleged crimes? In short, yes.
University of California, Los Angeles law professor Richard L. Hasen — one of the country’s leading experts on election law — said Trump still has a path to the presidency should he win reelection in 2024.
“The Constitution has very few requirements to serve as President, such as being at least 35 years of age. It does not bar anyone indicted, or convicted, or even serving jail time, from running as president and winning the presidency,” he said in an email to CNN earlier this month.
Legal experts have pointed to the 14th Amendment as a way to keep Trump from holding office if he is convicted, which includes a “disqualification clause” that bars anyone from holding public office if they “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
“There’s a big open debate over whether that element of the 14th Amendment is self-executing, and then open to judicial enforcement or whether Congress would need to pass legislation to enforce that provision. And that’s a debate that the legal academies are currently having now, we have no answer for that,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, an assistant professor of law at Georgia State University.
“But to the extent that there might be a conviction in Georgia or in Washington, DC, for these election-related crimes,” Kreis said, “I think that that’s another big open question about how these charges might relate to [Trump’s] ability and his eligibility to hold the office of the presidency.”
The indictment charges former President Donald Trump with “unlawfully soliciting” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to violate his oath of office during their now-infamous January 2, 2021, call in which Trump asked Raffensperger to help him flip Georgia’s results in the 2020 election.
“So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state” Trump said to Raffensperger during the call.
Trump and his then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows – who was also on the call and charged in the indictment – are accused of unlawfully soliciting, requesting and importuning Raffensperger in his capacity as a public officer, according to the indictment.
Trump is also charged with knowingly making false statements to Raffensperger during that call.
The indictment lists 13 false statements Trump “knowingly, willfully and unlawfully” made on the January 2 call, including “that close to 5,000 dead people voted in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia.”
The indictment echoes an accusation made by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith in his earlier federal indictment of Trump, in which Smith’s office claimed Trump lied to Raffensperger during the call while trying to enlist the official’s support.
The indictment also cites a letter Trump wrote to Raffensperger months after leaving office, dated September 17, 2021 — in which Trump asked him to de-certify the 2020 election results — as another example of a knowingly-false statement Trump made to Georgia’s chief election officer.
