Georgia court website publishes, then takes down, list of criminal charges against Trump

A list of criminal charges in Georgia against former President Donald Trump briefly appeared Monday on a Fulton County website, but prosecutors said Trump had not been indicted in a long-running investigation of the 2020 presidential election.

A Fulton County grand jury began hearing from witnesses Monday. Shortly after 12 p.m., Reuters reported on a list of several criminal charges to be brought against Trump, including state racketeering counts, conspiracy to commit false statements, and solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer.

Reuters, which later published a copy of the document, said the filing was taken down quickly afterward. A spokesperson for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said the report of charges being filed was “inaccurate,” but declined to comment further.

Prosecutors were widely expected to present those counts to the grand jury. It was unclear why the charges were detailed in a filing while grand jurors were still hearing from witnesses.

For two and a half years, Willis has been investigating actions taken by Trump and others in their efforts to overturn his narrow loss in Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden. Barriers and street closures around the courthouse in downtown Atlanta, as well as statements made by Willis, had indicated that a presentation to a grand jury was likely to begin this week.

Clark Cunningham, a Georgia State University law professor, said the filing on the court’s website was likely a clerical error listing what charges prosecutors are planning to ask the grand jury to vote on. “The grand jury doesn’t sit around and write indictments, it’s presented to them,” he said. “I think this tell us what they are planning to present to the grand jury, and the grand jury could say no,” he said.

Trump and his lawyers will likely seize on the erroneous filing to claim the process is rigged, but Cunningham said he doesn’t believe it will ultimately impact the case.

“Will his lawyers make a lot of noise about it? Yes, they will. Will Mr. Trump make a lot of noise about it? Yes, he will. I’m sure there will have to be an explanation for it,” Cunningham said.

One person who said he’s been called to testify to the grand jury suggested on Monday that the process may be moving quicker than anticipated. George Chidi, an independent journalist, had tweeted previously that he was asked to testify on Tuesday, but later posted he was going to court on Monday, adding: “They’re moving faster than they thought.”

Chidi wrote in a story for The Intercept last month that he barged “into a semi-clandestine meeting of Republicans pretending to be Georgia’s official electors in December 2020.” He described being thrown out of the room just after entering, told that it was an “education meeting.”

Former Democratic state Sen. Jen Jordan, who had been subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury, said as she left the Fulton County courthouse late Monday morning that she had been questioned for about 40 minutes. Former Democratic state Rep. Bee Nguyen also confirmed that she testified. News outlets reported that Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the secretary of state’s office, was seen arriving at the courthouse earlier Monday.

“No individual is above the law, and I will continue to fully cooperate with any legal proceedings seeking the truth and protecting our democracy,” Nguyen said in a statement.

Nguyen and Jordan both attended legislative hearings in December 2020 during which former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and others made false claims of widespread election fraud in Georgia. Trump lawyer John Eastman also appeared during at least one of those hearings and said the election had not been held in compliance with Georgia law and that lawmakers should appoint a new slate of electors.

Sterling and his boss, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — both Republicans — forcefully pushed back against allegations of widespread problems with Georgia’s election.

Trump famously called Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, and suggested the state’s top elections official could help “find” the votes Trump needed to beat Biden. It was the release of a recording of that phone call that prompted Willis to open her investigation about a month later.

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