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GOP
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Late Friday, there was a new court filing from the office of Fulton County DA Fani Willis. It's pretty long, but the bottom line is that of the 16 fake Georgia presidential electors the Republicans tried to put forward in 2020, 8 have agreed to turn state's evidence in exchange for immunity.
This seems like big news, and it probably is, but figuring out exactly what it means... well, there's just not enough there. Consider this: USA Today spoke to Emory University law professor Kay Levine, and this was her assessment:
Without knowing the details, it suggests to me that there are eight people who the office at one point considered would be targets of this investigation and has decided that they would be more useful to this investigation as witnesses, rather than targets. That's the reason for an immunity deal.
Thanks, Captain Obvious, Esq. If only we had gone to law school, and then taught law students for however many years, then maybe we too could have figured that out.
Anyhow, this news leaves us with the interesting question of whether it's only eight people who have actually flipped, or if there are more. And if it is only eight, why? Meanwhile, the only thing we feel confident in saying is that you don't reach these kinds of deals with people unless you are strongly inclined to prosecute... someone, whoever that someone might be.
That brings us to the other piece of news on this front, which actually broke a couple of weeks ago. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution laid hands on a copy of letter that Willis sent to law enforcement officials in Georgia in which she said that if she's going to announce any criminal indictments in this case, it will be between July 11 and September 1, and that various agencies should be prepared to respond to "acts of violence that will endanger the safety of those we are sworn to protect."
This letter flew below the radar a little bit, but it's almost certainly a bigger clue, at the moment, than the eight immunized phony electors. Although the timeline doesn't exactly honor Willis' promise, back in February, that charging decisions were imminent, it does strongly suggest that indictments are coming. There's no need for law enforcement to spend time and money prepping for something that's not actually going to happen. Meanwhile, there's only one person whose indictment could rouse people to violence, and it ain't Rudy Giuliani. So if you combine the letter with the eight turncoats, it strongly hints that more legal woes are in Donald Trump's immediate future. (Z)