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We finally got the very limited portion of the Georgia special grand jury report Thursday, and Donald Trump's team wasted little time putting out a statement in response.
The problem with this statement, which came from a spokesman for Trump's 2024 campaign, is that it's nonsense.
Here's how it starts:
The long awaited important sections of the Georgia report, which do not even mention President Trump’s name, have nothing to do with the President because President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong.
OK, let's stop right there.
For one thing, the three sections that were released were hardly the "important" parts of the report. If anything, they might be the least important, since they don't name anyone.
That makes the next part of that statement even more misleading, where it notes that the released sections "do not even mention President Trump's name." While that's a true statement (congrats), the Trump team is counting on the person reading or hearing that statement being either uninformed or misinformed.
Team Trump's statement reads more like a paranoid confession — or at least a concern.
As a Deadline: Legal Blog reader and "Deadline: White House" viewer, you already knew that we weren't expecting to see any names mentioned in Thursday's limited release. Indeed, that was the whole point of Judge Robert McBurney's ruling in keeping much of the report secret for now. That is, because the full report names people who haven't been charged and couldn't defend themselves, it would be unfair to release that part now, as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis argued in court last month. So it's unremarkable that the report portions that were released don't name Trump — because they don't name anyone.
Team Trump also claimed the released sections "have nothing to do with the President because President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong." On the contrary, the grand jury's report about 2020 election interference to overturn Trump's loss has everything to do with him and, though it doesn't name him (as we just discussed), even the limited portions released suggest he did do something wrong.
Perhaps the most important takeaway from the report so far is where the special grand jurors wrote: "We find by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election." Arguably, that sentence alone shows both that the report has at least something to do with Trump and that, in pushing his big lie, he did do something wrong (i.e., lying).
The statement goes on:
The President participated in two perfect phone calls regarding election integrity in Georgia, which he is entitled to do — in fact, as President, it was President Trump’s Constitutional duty to ensure election safety, security, and integrity. Between the two calls, there were many officials and attorneys on the line, including the Secretary of State of Georgia, and no one objected, even slightly protested, or hung up. President Trump will always keep fighting for true and honest elections in America!
As for Trump's "perfect" phone calls — presumably referring to his pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" Republican votes that didn't exist — I'll leave it to the full report and Willis to speak to whether the former president was "entitled" to do so, or whether they consider that evidence of a crime. For now, especially in light of the special grand jury's conclusion that there was no widespread fraud in the election, Team Trump's statement reads more like a paranoid confession — or at least a concern.
And as for the last line — that "President Trump will always keep fighting for true and honest elections in America!" — I'll let that speak for itself.