Georgia court officials are saying a document outlining the charges against former President Donald Trump that surfaced hours before his formal indictment was a “fictitious document” and a “sample” that was posted online as a “test.”
On Monday, a document outlining 13 charges against the former president was posted, hours before a Fulton County grand jury indicted Trump. He was later charged with 11 offenses.
Attorneys Drew Findling and Jennifer Little claimed the incident was typical of what Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis does in a statement released by the Trump campaign.
“The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office has once again shown that they have no respect for the integrity of the grand jury process,” the statement said, according to The Hill. “This was not a simple administrative mistake. This is emblematic of the pervasive and glaring constitutional violations which have plagued this case from its very inception.”
According to a statement issued by the court, attributed to the Office of the Fulton County Clerk of Superior and Magistrate Courts, the document was merely a “sample working document.”
“In anticipation of issues that arise with entering a potentially large indictment, Alexander used charges that pre-exist in Odyssey to test the system and conduct a trial run,” the statement said, referring to Fulton County Clerk of Superior and Magistrate Courts, Ché Alexander.
“Unfortunately, the sample working document led to the docketing of what appeared to be an indictment, but which was, in fact, only a fictitious docket sheet,” the statement said, adding that Alexander had the document removed and — hours before the actual indictment was handed up — said no indictment had been issued.
“Because the media has access to documents before they are published, and while it may have appeared that something official had occurred because the document bore a case number and filing date, it did not include a signed ‘true’ or ‘no’ bill nor an official stamp with Clerk Alexander’s name, thereby making the document unofficial and a test sample only,” the statement said.
Ironically enough, as noted by The Hill, the “sample working indictment” included charges that were the actual indictment.
“The Office understands the confusion that this matter caused and the sensitivity of all court filings. We remain committed to operating with an extreme level of efficiency, accuracy, and transparency,” the statement said.
When DA Willis was asked about the initial document Monday, she replied, “No, I can’t tell you anything about what you refer to,” according to Fox News.
“What I can tell you is that we had a grand jury here in Fulton County. They deliberated till almost 8 o’clock, if not right after 8 o’clock, an indictment was returned. It was true billed. And you now have an indictment,” she said.
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
Note the plethora of conspiracy charges, with some RICO tossed in. Real lawyers know that just about nothing is a provable RICO in front of a fair court. Woke prosecutors are increasingly criminalizing speech in America, and this threatens all of us. https://t.co/UMpgSBcAXm
— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@pnjaban) August 14, 2023
Earlier this week, the Trump campaign criticized DA Willis and other prosecutors over his indictment related to allegations that he attempted to invalidate the state’s 2020 election results.
The Trump campaign mocked Willis as a “rabid partisan who is campaigning and raising money on a platform of prosecuting President Trump through these bogus indictments” in a statement that was not attributed to a specific spokesperson.
“Ripping a page from Crooked Joe Biden’s playbook, Willis has strategically stalled her investigation to try and maximally interfere with the 2024 presidential race and damage the dominant Trump campaign. All of these corrupt Democrat attempts will fail,” the campaign said in a statement.
“These activities by Democrat leaders constitute a grave threat to American democracy and are direct attempts to deprive the American people of their rightful choice to cast their vote for President,” the campaign statement added. “Call it election interference or election manipulation—it is a dangerous effort by the ruling class to suppress the choice of the people. It is un-American and wrong.”
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