Former Georgia Lieutenant Gov Geoff Duncan, a Republican, said that former President Donald Trump has the values of an “axe murderer.”
Mr Duncan, who testified earlier this month in the Fulton County probe into the alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, told CNN that Republicans will determine the future of the party in the 2024 election when they decide whether they will support “fake Republican” Donald Trump for the GOP nomination.
“As a Republican, the dashboard is going off with lights and bells and whistles telling us all the warning things we need to know,” said Mr Duncan, acknowledging the state and federal charges that Mr Trump faces.
“Everything we need to see to not choose him as our nominee, including the fact that he’s got the moral compass of more like an axe murderer than a president,” Mr Duncan continued. “We need to do something right here right now. This is either our pivot point or last gasp as Republicans.”
Mr Duncan was also asked about Mark Meadows’ memoir, in which Mr Trump’s former chief of staff said that his role was to “tell the most powerful man in the world when you believe that he was wrong.”
The former Georgia official said sarcastically, “Well, he must have whispered in his ear and not said it out loud because I certainly have never seen examples of him standing up to Donald Trump or the ridiculous nature of where this is headed.”
Mr Meadows was one of Mr Trump’s 18 co-defendants in the Fulton County case and he surrendered in Atlanta last week.
On 28 August, he testified in US District Court in Atlanta as part of his effort to move the state case out of Fulton County and into federal court, during which he was asked about the infamous phone call — when Mr Trump urged Georgia’s chief elections official to “find” votes to overturn the election results in the state.
In an interview earlier this month, Mr Duncan also condemned the former president’s actions on January 6: “We can never repeat that in this country. Certainly, I never want to see that happen in my home state of Georgia, a lot of good peoples’ lives were uprooted, and a lot of people’s reputations have been soiled.”
A grand jury in Georgia delivered 13 felony charges against Mr Trump for his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state.
These charges included conspiracy to commit forgery, filing false documents and Solicitation of Violation of Oath by Public Officer.
In a series of phone calls, he is accused of pressuring Georgia election officials to help him in his campaign, including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In a leaked hour-long call to his office, Mr Trump was heard asking Mr Raffensperger to help him “find 11,780 votes” he needed to win the state.
