Attention to the Unseen

Kim Wehle writes: In the months leading up to this indictment, Trump’s lawyers tried mightily to kill this case, filing a 483-page motion seeking to have District Attorney Fani Willis removed and the report from the investigative grand jury (or “special” grand jury) that preceded the charging grand jury thrown out. The motion was denied, but the effort signaled that Trump may be especially worried about this case. He should be, for these reasons: First, Georgia’s RICO statute carries a…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee first put on his robes in February this year. About six months into his new gig, he was assigned to oversee perhaps the biggest case in Georgia history: the criminal indictment of former President Donald Trump and 18 others who prosecutors say organized efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s narrow 2020 victory in the state. McAfee, 34 years old, has spent much of his career as a prosecutor, first for the Fulton County district attorney and…

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Norman Eisen and Amy Lee Copeland write: When the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney, Fani Willis, filed criminal charges against Donald Trump and over a dozen of his allies for their attempt to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results, she did something ingenious. In contrast to the special counsel Jack Smith’s latest laser-focused federal indictment of Mr. Trump, Ms. Willis charges a wide range of conspirators, from people in the Oval Office to low-level Georgia G.O.P. functionaries, and is the first to plumb the…

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Laurence H. Tribe, Donald Ayer, and Dennis Aftergut write: Now that Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis has indicted former President Donald Trump for his effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, Trump’s first chessboard move is likely to be a motion to “remove” the case—that is, to transfer it from state court in Atlanta to federal court in the Northern District of Georgia. This maneuver shouldn’t work, as it didn’t work in July in New York, but once…

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Richard L Hasen writes: If the recent federal indictment of Donald Trump on charges related to his attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election was a streamlined surgical strike aimed at ensuring a clean case and a speedy trial of the former president before the 2024 election, Monday night’s Georgia indictment is the equivalent of a blitz. With 19 defendants and 41 charges, the heart of the indictment is a sprawling state racketeering charge that places Trump at the center…

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Lisa Needham writes: The latest Trump indictment is out, and it’s a blockbuster. Let’s start with the numbers, shall we? A grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, returned an indictment that has: 19 defendants, including the former president of the United States and 6 lawyers in his orbit 41 criminal counts across all defendants 13 criminal counts against the former president himself 8 types of manners and methods used to further a criminal enterprise 161 overt acts of racketeering activity…

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Politico reports: Donald Trump slammed the judge presiding over his newest criminal case early Monday, testing her three-day-old warning that he refrain from “inflammatory” attacks against those involved in his case. In a Truth Social post just before 1 a.m., Trump assailed U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan as “highly partisan” and “very biased and unfair,” citing as evidence a statement she made during the sentencing of a woman who participated in the mob that breached the Capitol on Jan….

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The New York Times reports: When President Donald J. Trump’s eldest son took the stage outside the Georgia Republican Party headquarters two days after the 2020 election, he likened what lay ahead to mortal combat. “Americans need to know this is not a banana republic!” Donald Trump Jr. shouted, claiming that Georgia and other swing states had been overrun by wild electoral shenanigans. He described tens of thousands of ballots that had “magically” shown up around the country, all marked…

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Jay Kuo writes: [Fulton County District Attorney] Fani Willis understands RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization] law well. She’s famous for having brought broad state RICO charges to bust up a ring of administrators and educators who were in on a scheme to help students cheat on standardized tests, using money to reward those who aided the effort while punishing those that refused to help. Willis explained state RICO law perfectly then. “You don’t, under RICO, have to have a…

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