November 6, 2021

Fulton County, Georgia's Trump Investigation (Brookings report)

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Fulton-County-Trump-Investigation_Brookings-Report_October2021.pdf

Executive Summary

On Saturday, January 2, 2021, at around 3:00 p.m., former President Donald J. Trump placed a call to Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Throughout the roughly hour-long call, the former president repeatedly insisted that he had won the state of Georgia “by hundreds of thousands of votes.”1 As purported evidence, Trump cited “rally size” and “political people” who he said assured him that “there’s no way they [the Biden campaign] beat me.”2 He cycled through a list of conspiracy theories to explain his loss, covering “3,000 pounds” of shredded ballots; drop boxes “being delivered and delivered late”; a particular “professional vote scammer and hustler” who Trump claimed destroyed no fewer than 18,000 of his votes; and “the other thing, dead people.”3 At one point, when Raffensperger responded to one of Trump’s false claims by cautioning him that “the problem you have with social media [is that]...people can say anything,” Trump answered: “Oh, this isn’t social media. This is Trump media.”4

But Trump did more than merely complain about the election and catalog disinformation. He urged, and ultimately threatened, Raffensperger to reverse the election outcome— culminating in a demand that Raffensperger “find 11,780 votes” that could be deemed fraudulent and tossed out.5 That number mattered to Trump for a single reason: It was exactly one more vote than the margin of Joe Biden’s 11,779-vote victory in the state.6 As Trump apparently saw it, if Raffensperger’s office complied with his request and identified 11,780 votes for
disqualification, Trump would be named the winner of the state’s presidential election (and presumably could use that development to seek a broader unraveling of the certified election results in other states confirming his defeat).

The transcript and audio file were reported by The Washington Post the following day, garnering widespread attention across a nation already aware of Trump’s refusal to accept the certified election results and assent to a peaceful transition of power. But this was no mere transgression of norms alone. Georgia law was also implicated. Trump’s entreaties to Raffensperger on the January 2 call, along with other steps he took to reverse his Georgia election loss, have exposed him and others involved to potential criminal liability in Georgia. On February 8, 2021, Raffensperger’s office opened a probe into Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss in the state.7 Two days later, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis announced the launch of a criminal investigation into Trump’s conduct vis-à-vis the election.8 At issue was not just Trump’s January 2 call to Raffensperger. The former president had publicly pressured and personally contacted several other officials in Georgia—including the governor, the attorney general, and the secretary of state’s chief investigator—about the election and how they might assist him in flipping the state’s electoral votes over to him even after the results had been duly certified.9

In this report, we consider the relevant facts and context of Donald Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. We analyze the extent to which these actions make the former president vulnerable to state criminal liability. We also assess how Trump’s attorneys may defend his conduct in pre- and (if any) post-indictment proceedings, as well as in the court of public opinion.

*snip*