Premature Trump charges in Georgia case may aid defense: Legal analyst.
The premature posting of charges in the Georgia case against former President Donald Trump threatens to further complicate these controversial proceedings, legal analysts say.
On the afternoon of Aug. 14, as the grand jury was still hearing evidence from witnesses, Reuters reported that the Fulton County court website had posted, and then taken down, a charging sheet (pdf) containing 13 counts against Mr. Trump. Hours later, the court clerk’s office later hit back, calling it a “fictitious document,” adding that no “official” document had yet been filed in the case.
When the indictment was handed up by the grand jury at around 9 p.m. and later unsealed, it was revealed that the 13 counts recorded against Mr. Trump matched those from the sheet briefly posted earlier in the day.
According to legal experts, this turn of events created an additional avenue for defense lawyers to attack.
Mike Allen, a former prosecutor and current defense lawyer in Ohio, told The Epoch Times that he has never seen anything like this in his 43 years as an attorney. Others who have decades of experience in court filings were also at a loss to figure out how such a mistake could have been made.
‘Trial Run’ Gone Wrong
Georgia officials initially offered no explanation. But in the afternoon of Aug. 15, county Court Clerk Che’ Alexander, released a statement saying that the document posted was a “test sample” document generated from a “trial run” of the court filing system.
She was anticipating “issues that arise with a potentially large indictment,” and used charges that ”pre-exist” in the court’s computer system to “conduct a trial run.”
“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,” the statement read.
The clerk acknowledged that a news agency had obtained this record relating to President Trump from the court’s online media access portal around noon on Tuesday, but that the document was ultimately “unofficial and a test sample only.”
‘There’s No Way That It Should Happen’
Mr. Allen said that, given the high-profile nature of the case against a former U.S. president and 18 alleged co-conspirators, one would assume that extra care would be taken to avoid such an embarrassing snafu.
“There’s no way that it should happen,” he said, “and if it does, the prosecutor has an obligation to explain what happened; she can’t just stand up there and arrogantly refuse to answer …i t just looks horrible; it looks like it’s a predetermined result.” That erases any notion that the process was fair to the defendants, Mr. Allen said.
All 19 defendants are accused of a racketeering charge, alleging they unlawfully worked together to set aside Democrat President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory over the Republican president. President Trump has never conceded to President Biden, and insists that the election was “stolen” or “rigged.” The indictment alleges that he and his co-conspirators made those claims while knowing they were telling falsehoods—a difficult-to-prove mindset, his lawyers have said.
In an interview before the updated statement from the clerk’s office, Mr. Allen said he doubted that the premature release was intentional. But he said that Fulton Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who orchestrated the investigation for two and a half years, should have addressed the concerns rather than brushing them aside. Mr. Allen said he would have done so if he were in her shoes.
During a late-night news conference on Aug. 14, a reporter quizzed Ms. Willis about the document that Reuters first posted that afternoon. The reporter pointed out that the 13 charges on the early document corresponded exactly with the charges that officials released several hours later. The reporter asked Ms. Willis to explain the situation.
In response, the district attorney said: “No, I can’t tell you anything about what you refer to … I am not an expert on clerks’ duties … I’m not going to speculate. Next question.” The Epoch Times made repeated efforts to obtain answers from the clerk of courts’ office, but received no response to specific questions posed on both Aug. 14 and Aug. 15.
The situation created the impression that Ms. Willis “knew all along that the grand jury was going to indict on the charges that they did,” Mr. Allen said.
“Somebody messed up somewhere,” he said, “but, to me, it’s a circus, and at this point, she’s the ringmaster of the circus.” The Epoch Times left a message seeking additional comment from Ms. Willis.
Mr. Allen wonders how “someone in the clerk’s office could have gotten ahold of that document, fictitious or not, without somebody in the prosecutor’s office releasing it; I know this from experience, from being a prosecutor,” he said.
Grand jury decisions are “jealously guarded,” Mr. Allen said, because citizens serving on
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