This Week: Legal Problems Deepened for Former President Trump and His Enablers, While MAGA Supporters Continued to Infringe on Voting Rights in the States
This week, special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis continued to close in on Donald Trump in their investigations of the former president.
Smith appears to have finished collecting testimony and evidence, including information related to Trump’s business dealings in China, Saudi Arabia, and five other countries while he was president and since he left office, as part of the investigation into Trump taking and refusing to return classified documents.
Meanwhile, in Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis signaled she is close to charging Trump and/or his allies for crimes “related to alleged interference in Georgia’s 2020 election.”
Also in Georgia, a Black voting rights advocate appointed to the Ware County Board of Elections was removed from the board under a new state law and replaced with a MAGA supporter.
In Michigan, Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who failed in her attempts to “undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election,” is facing “a new ethics case” over a “frivolous” effort to undermine the 2020 election in the state.
In Arizona, a judge threw out failed MAGA gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s last remaining effort to have absentee ballots thrown out on a technicality. Meanwhile, a federal appeals court took up whether the state can enforce a law that could disenfranchise voters by making it harder for people who change residences often to be legally registered voters.
The League of Women Voters of Arizona settled a case with MAGA supporters this week in a lawsuit brought “to protect voters from intimidation at ballot drop boxes” in the state. The settlement required the MAGA supporters to “publicly condemn” voter intimidation.
In Nevada, MAGA supporters in the state Senate voted against giving the state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate that wins the national popular vote.
The proposed Senate budget in North Carolina would repeal the state’s membership in the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which states use to share data to ensure accurate voter rolls and prevent voter fraud.
In Texas, MAGA supporters in the state House pushed through two bills to give state officials oversight over elections only in Harris County, and abolish the “job of the administrator” that runs elections in the county. Harris County is the state’s largest progressive county.
