Georgia’s leading elected state officials, who are Republicans, reacted Tuesday to Monday’s late-night indictment of former President Donald Trump and 18 other lawyers, aides, and supporters by reiterating that there was no voter fraud in 2020.
Gov. Brian Kemp (R) posted a tweet in response to a Truth Social post by the former president. Kemp did not object to the indictment — which critics have said violates constitutional norms and criminalizes free speech — but to Trump’s 2020 claims.
Secretary of State Brad Raffesnperger, whose infamous phone conversation with Trump (in which the former president said “I just want to find” the votes to win, not “Find me the votes”) helped trigger the grand jury investigation, made a statement: “The most basic principles of a strong democracy are accountability and respect for the Constitution and rule of law. You either have it, or you don’t.”
Raffensperger did not clarify how, exactly, indicting a former president, and the leading opposition candidate in the next election, plus his attorneys, for contesting a vote meant upholding the rule of law or the Constitution.
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who was once considered to be among the targets of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who brought the indictment, was an exception. He tweeted in objection to the indictment, noting the rise of crime in Fulton County:
Notably, Georgia has never indicted Democrat Stacey Abrams for years of claiming the 2018 gubernatorial race was stolen. Nor has it indicted Mark Zuckerberg and others who spent $51 million in private money to turn out the vote in Democratic counties in the state.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.