This Week: Legal Cases Against Trump Slow as the Year Ends, But Cases Against Fake Electors Who Supported Him Continue To Move Forward
This week, in the Fulton County, Georgia, case against former President Donald Trump for allegedly leading a vast multistate criminal enterprise to overturn the 2020 presidential election in seven states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, Trump argued in court that even if all the facts in the case are true, the case should be dismissed because he was exercising his constitutionally protected right to free speech.
In the federal case against Trump for allegedly leading a coup attempt after losing the 2020 election, the trial judge put on hold the case while Trump appealed the “ruling that found he is not immune from criminal prosecution.” Trump also asked an appellate court to reconsider the gag order on him related to this case.
In the New York civil fraud case in which the judge ruled that Trump and his businesses committed fraud by overvaluing their assets, Trump called his last witness and an appellate court rejected his “challenge to two gag orders.”
In Wisconsin, after ten people who “posed as fake electors” for Trump and filed paperwork falsely saying he won the 2020 presidential election in the state settled a civil lawsuit and admitted that Biden won Wisconsin, calls were made to remove from a state judicial ethics panel an advisor to these fake electors.
In Nevada, six people who were indicted for fraudulently submitting to Congress documents claiming that Trump won the 2020 presidential election in the state pleaded not guilty.
In Michigan, six of the 16 “so-called fake electors” who signed documents falsely claiming that Trump won the state in the 2020 election appeared in court as “prosecutors began outlining their case.” Also in Michigan, a judge set a trial date for three MAGA supporters who were charged with tampering with voting equipment after the 2020 presidential election.
In Arizona, a pro-MAGA state legislator was sanctioned for taking part in multiple lawsuits that challenged the results of the 2020 presidential election.
In Pennsylvania, a federal court, in response to an appeal by pro-MAGA organizations, paused the ruling that “mail-in ballots with missing or incorrect dates on their outer envelopes” should be counted in accordance with federal civil rights law.
In Georgia, plaintiffs asked a federal court to reject gerrymandered congressional and state legislative maps drawn by pro-MAGA legislators that appear to defy a judicial ruling to draw maps that do not violate the Voting Rights Act, while in North Carolina, the NAACP filed a federal lawsuit challenging racially gerrymandered congressional and state legislative maps drawn by pro-MAGA legislators.
