The timing made an unfortunate situation worse. Nearly a month ago, on Nov. 26, Jair Bolsonaro reported to prison. The former Brazilian president, after losing his reelection bid a few years ago, plotted against his government and orchestrated Jan. 6-style violence as part of a bid to hold onto office despite the will of the voters.
He was caught, charged, prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to prison, making clear to the world that former heads of state can be held legally accountable for attacking their own country’s democracy.
On the exact same day, roughly 4,000 miles to the north, the state of Georgia dropped its criminal case against Donald Trump — who, according to multiple prosecutors and voluminous evidence, also plotted against his government and tried to hold onto office despite the will of the voters.
It was in August 2023 when the Republican was first criminally indicted in Georgia, with charges stemming from his efforts to overturn the state’s results in the 2020 presidential election. The case took all kinds of twists and turns in the months that followed, but this September, the Georgia Supreme Court ultimately ended the lead prosecutor’s involvement in the case, which unraveled soon after.
This was the last remaining opportunity to hold the president accountable for his alleged 2020 election crimes (special counsel Jack Smith’s case was derailed by Trump’s reelection), and when prosecutors pulled the plug, Trump claimed vindication as if he’d been exonerated.
But that didn’t make sense: The demise of the case had less to do with its merits and more to do with the disqualification of Fani Willis, the prosecutor who brought the case, and her undisclosed relationship with Nathan Wade, whom she’d appointed as the special prosecutor.
Indeed, not only has the public seen evidence to suggest Trump did exactly what he was accused of doing, but previously undisclosed evidence continues to come out. The New York Times reported:
In a newly obtained recording of a phone call from late 2020, President Trump can be heard pressing the speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives to hold a special legislative session to overturn Mr. Trump’s election loss.
After citing false conspiracy theories of election fraud in Georgia, Mr. Trump told David Ralston, the speaker at the time, in the call on Dec. 7, 2020, that he could justify calling a special legislative session by saying it was ‘for transparency, and to uncover fraud.’
“Who’s gonna stop you for that?” the defeated president asked.
“A federal judge, possibly,” Ralston replied.
The Times’ report added that the newspaper obtained a recording of the call — which has not been independently verified by MS NOW — as “part of a trove of investigative documents generated” in the case. This isn’t the only relevant phone call. As many Americans likely recall, Trump called Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Saturday, Jan. 2, 2021, and told the Georgian he wanted someone to “find” enough votes to flip the state’s election results, even if that meant overturning the will of the voters. The president added, while pressuring Raffensperger, “[T]here’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.” Raffensperger recorded the call and offered the public the opportunity to hear Trump explore ways to cheat, begging others to participate in his scheme and even making some subtle threats toward the state’s top elections official. I’ve long believed it was the most controversial phone call ever recorded in American history. But roughly a month earlier, Trump also called the state House speaker and lied about the election results as part of a legally dubious lobbying campaign to overturn his defeat in Georgia. Ralston, before his death in 2022, shared details of the conversation to special grand jurors investigating the election scandal, which in turn contributed to Trump’s indictment. It wasn’t until this week that the audio recording reached the public. We’ll never know what might’ve happened if the case had proceeded to a jury, although given the available information, the president ought to feel great relief that the prosecution was derailed for reasons that had effectively nothing to do with his conduct.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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