The official court website of Fulton County, Georgia, published what appeared to be an indictment against former President Donald Trump on Monday before deleting it — a bizarre, unexplained act that at least one critic says violated Trump’s constitutional rights to due process of law.
Reuters first reported that the document had been filed, then had to update its report when the document was removed from the court website and the office of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis denied that an indictment had yet been issued.
Yet Reuters preserved the initial document, which lists 39 charges against Trump, including the “serious felony” of racketeering. All of the other 38 charges — solicitation of the violation of an oath, false statement, and conspiracy charges — are felonies.
Reuters reported:
The Fulton County, Georgia, court’s website briefly posted a document on Monday listing several criminal charges against former U.S. President Donald Trump that appeared related to his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state, before taking the document down without explanation.
The Fulton County District Attorney’s office said in a statement that no charges had been filed against Trump.
The document was dated Aug. 14 and named Trump, citing the case as “open,” but is no longer available on the court’s website. Reuters was not immediately able to determine why the item was posted or removed.”The Reuters report that those charges were filed is inaccurate. Beyond that we cannot comment,” a spokesperson for the District Attorney’s office said.
Another Republican presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, said that Trump’s due process rights had been violated:
Here we go again: another disastrous Trump indictment. It’s downright pathetic that Fulton County publicly posted the indictment on its website even before the grand jury had finished convening. Since the four prosecutions against Trump are using novel & untested legal theories,… pic.twitter.com/LOYkGcCgm5
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) August 14, 2023
Ramaswamy advised Trump to file for the immediate dismissal of the charges and the grand jury investigation. Conservative talk radio host has given similar advice to Trump in his federal indictments, advising him to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.
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.
This post has been updated.
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