By Joe Miller
This Week: Accountability “Imminent” In Georgia & Beyond
Over the past week, state and federal prosecutors made progress in holding Donald Trump and his MAGA conspirators accountable for working to undermine the will of the American people. On Monday, four Oath Keepers were convicted of seditious conspiracy over the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. The far-right extremist group plotted to forcibly keep Trump in power, and each defendant will now face up to 20 years in federal prison.
Federal agents aren’t alone in investigating election deniers. In Georgia, Atlanta-based prosecutors announced that a decision on indicting Trump and his MAGA allies for 2020 election interference is “imminent,” during a special hearing convened to consider releasing the Fulton County special grand jury report. The eight-month special investigation wrapped up just a few weeks ago and consisted of dozens of high-profile subpoenas for top officials ranging from Governor Brian Kemp to Senator Lindsey Graham. Legal experts have suggested that an indictment for the former president is “highly likely,” and that the evidence against Trump likely amounts to a “smoking gun.”
As investigations into Trump and his MAGA allies move forward, other states have worked to rein-in local MAGA efforts to subvert democratic norms. In Florida, a federal judge ruled that Governor Ron DeSantis violated the state constitution when he suspended democratically elected state prosecutor Andrew Warren last year, but stopped short of reinstating him. Last week, the Arizona Court of Appeals rejected the state GOP’s latest effort to end early voting, ending the party’s second legal attempt in less than a year to curtail voting access.
Elsewhere, election deniers are still working to subvert the will of voters:
In Nevada, newly elected GOP Gov. Joe Lombardo used his annual address to announce a drastic proposal to scale back the state’s popular mail-in voting system. Voting rights advocates and Democratic lawmakers are calling the new restrictions a “non-starter.”
In Arizona, defeated Attorney General candidate Abe Hamadeh is making a renewed push to challenge the 2022 election results after his first case was dismissed in trial court back in December. The former head of Arizona’s so-called Election Integrity Unit is joining the challenge, claiming that now-Governor Katie Hobbs supposedly withheld information about voting machines.
In Georgia, former Senator Kelly Loeffler is becoming increasingly influential in the state GOP in the wake of her controversial post-midterm MAGA report which praised a voter suppression bill for reducing turnout in the 2022 midterm elections.
And finally, MAGA lawmakers in Texas have introduced a range of anti-voter bills targeting Houston-based, majority-minority Harris County. Some of these proposals take aim at county election administrators, raising the charges for some voting-related misdemeanors, despite having no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
