Donald Trump speaks at Valdosta Regional Airport in Valdosta, Georgia, December 5, 2020 (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP)
A federal judge has ruled that Donald Trump knowingly signed a fraudulent legal statement in his attempt to overturn the 2020 Presidential vote in the swing state of Georgia.
The false statement was part of Trump’s protracted campaign to seize Georgia’s 16 electoral votes, dismissing Joe Biden’s victory margin of 11,779 votes. The effort included shakedowns of Georgia’s Republican Governor and Secretary of State: “I just want to find 11,780 votes….I think I probably did win [the state] by half a million votes….There’s nothing wrong with saying that…you’ve recalculated”.”
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US District Judge David Carter revealed Trump’s fraud as he ordered John Eastman, the Trump lawyer trying to overturn the election, to provide more e-mails to the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
Trump’s legal statement was part of a lawsuit claiming a Georgia county had improperly counted more than 10,000 votes of dead people, felons, and unregistered voters.
Carter wrote in an 18-page opinion:
In an 18-page opinion, Carter said that the former president had “signed a verification swearing under oath” that his camp’s inaccurate numbers about the Georgia votes were “true and correct” or “believed to be true and correct”.
The e-mails show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public. The Court finds that these e-mails are sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Carter has already ruled that Eastman and Trump probably committed a felony with pressure on Vice Presidential Mike Pence to obstruct Congress in its confirmation of Biden’s Electoral College victory.
