This Week: As Indictments of Former President Trump Pile Up, Conspiracy-Fueled Election Lawsuits by MAGA Politicians Continue to Fail
This week, former President Donald Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly leading a failed coup attempt after losing the 2020 presidential election. The effort to “steal” the election included organizing fake electors in numerous states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, according to the indictment.
In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis implied an additional indictment over Trump’s “attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat” is likely when she said her office is “‘ready to go’” on the case. In a sign the indictment could happen in the coming days, security barricades went up around the Fulton County Courthouse. Meanwhile, a judge rejected Trump’s attempt to have the investigation thrown out before he is indicted.
In the case against Trump stemming from whether he obstructed justice and willfully retained national security secrets at Mar-a-Lago, the Justice Department added new charges against Trump in a superseding indictment, alleging that Trump attempted to obstruct the investigation by trying to destroy evidence from a video surveillance system. Trump defended himself by saying, “these were my tapes.”
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed charges against 16 “fake electors” for signing documents falsely claiming that Trump had won the 2020 election. Two of the 16 “fake electors” pleaded not guilty this week, including the former state GOP co-chair. Also in Michigan, “far-right” former gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley pleaded guilty over his role at the U.S. Capitol during the January 6th insurrection.
In Arizona, election-denying secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem dropped his longshot appeal of a ruling that threw out the lawsuit he filed challenging his election defeat. He wanted the court to order a “redo of the election.”
MAGA supporters in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives also dropped their longshot appellate case to strike down the state law that expanded mail-in voting.
In Wisconsin, a judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by a state lawmaker and “election conspiracy” theorist who attempted “to stop military absentee ballots from being counted.”
In Georgia, MAGA “promoters of election fraud falsehoods” on the Spalding County Board of Elections approved a motion to require hand recounts in “all future elections.”
