This Week: Civil and Criminal Cases Against Trump and His Supporters Move Forward, While Legal Efforts to Limit Voting Rights Continue to be Fought in the States
This week, in the federal case against former President Donald Trump for allegedly instigating an insurrection after losing the 2020 presidential election, a judge set a March 2024 trial date. Meanwhile, in the Fulton County case against Trump for allegedly leading a vast multi-state criminal enterprise to overturn the 2020 presidential election in seven states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, Trump and his alleged co-conspirators turned themselves in. Three of the alleged co-conspirators said “they became false electors” at the former president’s direction.
In Georgia, MAGA supporters in the state legislature said they will try to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, which could derail the case against Trump and his co-conspirators.
In the federal case stemming from whether Trump obstructed justice and willfully retained national security secrets at Mar-a-Lago, a key witness “retracted his prior false testimony” and provided new information that implicates Trump, prosecutors allege in a court filing.
Georgia Election Board Chairman William Duffey Jr. announced he is retiring from the board after a tumultuous year of contentious meetings packed with MAGA supporters in which he tried to “debunk unfounded claims of election fraud stemming from the 2020 presidential vote.”
The Arizona Supreme Court rejected a request by MAGA supporters to void the results of the entire 2022 statewide election and order new elections in Maricopa County, where a majority of the state’s voters live.
In Michigan, a dispute over documents is delaying the trial of three MAGA supporters who were charged with “tampering with voting equipment” after the 2020 presidential election, while in Pennsylvania, a county tried to delay a court case stemming from allowing an “unauthorized inspection of its voting machines” after the 2020 election.
In Wisconsin, election-denying “conspiracy theorists” accused the nonpartisan administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission of “helping to steal” the 2020 presidential election. This week, MAGA supporters in the state Senate took the first step to remove her from office.
In Pennsylvania, MAGA supporters are fighting in court against voting rights groups, including the NAACP, in support of a technicality to make it easier to throw out mail-in ballots, while in Wisconsin, a circuit court heard arguments over whether to make permanent a ban on allowing voters to cancel their absentee ballot before Election Day and cast a new ballot.
In North Carolina, the governor vetoed legislation passed by MAGA supporters to make same-day voter registration more onerous and make it more difficult to cast an absentee ballot by imposing “stricter mail-in voting rules.”
