This Week: Legal Problems for Former President Trump and His Allies Intensify, While MAGA Supporters Continue to Oppose Efforts to Ensure Free and Fair Elections
This week, state and federal investigations of former President Donald Trump continued, while the prosecution of Trump in New York picked up steam.
In Georgia, a Superior Court judge ordered Rudy Giuliani to appear in person before a special grand jury investigating whether Trump and his allies broke Georgia law in their efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state.
Federal prosecutors investigating Trump for taking and refusing to return classified documents learned that his employees moved documents the day before a visit by the FBI and were told by multiple witnesses that Trump showed classified documents to visitors.
Prosecutors in New York informed Trump attorneys in the “hush money case against the former president” that they have an incriminating audio recording of Trump and a witness. A judge in this case set a March 2024 trial date and warned Trump that he could be held in contempt if he makes public evidence provided to his lawyers.
In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton, a “close” Trump ally who filed a lawsuit to overturn election results in “battleground states” Trump lost, was impeached on charges of “bribery, obstruction of justice and abuse of the public trust.” Trump called the impeachment “very unfair.”
MAGA supporters in the Texas legislature passed a bill to allow the state to take over elections in Harris County, a “Democratic stronghold,” but not in the rest of the state.
In Arizona, Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed a bill passed by MAGA supporters to force the state to remove itself from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which states use to share data to ensure accurate voter rolls and prevent voter fraud. She also vetoed a number of MAGA-supported bills to make it harder to register voters, vote early, and count early ballots.
In Florida, three federal lawsuits were filed over MAGA-supported legislation signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis to make it harder to register voters, harder to vote by mail, and “easier to purge voting rolls.”
In the Michigan House, MAGA supporters were “skeptical” of legislation to make it easier to vote, while in Nevada, MAGA supporters voted against making it a felony to “serve on a false slate of presidential electors” and against prohibiting local governments from hiring people “convicted of illegally conspiring to steal an election from serving in roles where they might use their position to commit fraud in future elections.”
In Wisconsin, a judge set a trial date in a case over ten MAGA supporters who “posed” as presidential electors for Trump in 2020, even though Trump lost the election in the state.
