Hours after former President Donald J. Trump was indicted in Georgia on fees accusing him of a conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election, his aides and allies awoke to a social-media publish from the Republican front-runner inviting individuals to a news convention on Monday.
“A Large, Complex, Detailed but irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia is almost complete & will be presented by me at a major News Conference at 11:00 A.M. on Monday of next week in Bedminster, New Jersey,” Mr. Trump wrote on his social media website, Truth Social, simply earlier than 9 a.m.
He added that will probably be a “CONCLUSIVE Report” after which “all charges should be dropped against me & others.”
The report in query, in accordance with individuals conversant in the matter, is a doc of greater than 100 pages that was compiled at the least partially by Liz Harrington, a Trump communications aide who is commonly described as among the many true believers in his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him by widespread fraud.
The doc focuses on what detractors of the election have insisted are widespread voting anomalies in Georgia throughout that marketing campaign, the individuals stated. It has been within the works for a lot of weeks, in accordance with one of many individuals conversant in the matter.
Ms. Harrington has been making calls to individuals exterior of Mr. Trump’s marketing campaign concerning the occasion, in accordance with two individuals conversant in the matter. She posted on X, the positioning previously referred to as Twitter, 4 hours after Mr. Trump introduced the news convention.
“Georgia has among the most corrupt elections in the country — and they haven’t gotten better since 2020, they’ve gotten worse!” she wrote. “Tune in Monday!”
Ms. Harrington declined to remark when contacted. She additionally seems, though unnamed, in a key scene detailed in Mr. Trump’s first federal indictment, over his mishandling of categorised paperwork.
She was within the room with Mr. Trump at his residence in Bedminster, N.J., in the summertime of 2021, when the previous president was recorded rustling by papers and discussing a delicate navy doc that he lamented he might have declassified as president. Three individuals conversant in the matter stated she is among the girls heard talking in a recording of that dialog, a partial transcript of which seems within the indictment.
All kinds of Mr. Trump’s previous claims about fraud in Georgia have already been debunked, and it stays unclear exactly what might be within the report he talked about in his publish. It can be unclear whether or not Mr. Trump’s promised news convention will go ahead on Monday, when the membership is predicted to be closed and holding solely personal occasions.
Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, denounced Mr. Trump’s feedback a short while after the previous president posted them.
“The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen,” Mr. Kemp wrote. “For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward — under oath — and prove anything in a court of law. Our elections in Georgia are secure, accessible, and fair and will continue to be as long as I am governor. The future of our country is at stake in 2024 and that must be our focus.’’
Mr. Trump’s Truth Social post came as people in his expansive orbit of lawyers and advisers have grown increasingly concerned about what he says publicly about the four criminal indictments he is facing. The judge overseeing his federal case over attempting to subvert the election has already warned Mr. Trump and his lawyers against making “inflammatory” statements that would compromise witnesses or the jury pool.
Mr. Trump’s determination to revisit his baseless claims concerning the 2020 election in such a high-profile setting — with a news convention devoted solely to the subject — cuts towards months of efforts by his allies and advisers to restrict the extent to which he focuses on a topic that has already proved to be a political loser.
That is very true after the 2022 midterm elections, when the candidates he endorsed and who promoted his claims of a stolen election fared poorly.
Source: www.nytimes.com