Following a Georgia grand jury’s indictment of former U.S. President Donald Trump and 18 other people for alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Democratic leaders described the move as showing that no one is above the law while prominent Republicans said it was a politically motivated act against a candidate in the 2024 election.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a joint statement that Monday’s indictment and three prior ones show “a repeated pattern of criminal activity by the former president.”

“The actions taken by the Fulton County District Attorney, along with other state and federal prosecutors, reaffirms the shared belief that in America no one, not even the president, is above the law,” Schumer and Jeffries said.

Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that President Joe Biden “has weaponized government against his leading political opponent to interfere in the 2024 election” and accused Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis of “attacking President Trump and using it to fundraise her political career.”

Democratic Congresswoman Nikema Williams, whose district includes part of Fulton County, said that Trump tried to disenfranchise voters in Georgia because he did not like the result of losing a fair election in 2020.

“That was an assault on our democracy. But in Fulton County we apply the law equally to everyone–even failed former presidents,” Williams said on X.

Trump attorneys Drew Findling, Jennifer Litte and Marissa Goldberg, in a statement late Monday, called the indictment “undoubtedly as flawed and unconstitutional as this entire process has been.”

“This one-sided grand jury presentation relied on witnesses who harbor their own personal and political interests—some of whom ran campaigns touting their efforts against the accused and/or profited from book deals and employment opportunities as a result,” the Trump attorneys said.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in the 2016 presidential election, said on MSNBC that having a former president accused of important crimes “is a terrible moment for our country.”

“The only satisfaction may be that the system is working, that all of the efforts by Donald Trump, his allies and his enablers to try to silence the truth, to try to undermine democracy, have been brought into the light, and justice is being pursued,” Clinton said.

Republican Congressman Jim Jordan said on X that Monday’s indictment “is just the latest political attack in the Democrats’ WITCH HUNT against President Trump.”

“He did nothing wrong!” Jordan said.

Source: VOA

  georgia, indictment, rico, trump