Closing summary
It is now 4pm in Washington DC. Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
Colton Moore, a Republican state senator in Georgia, has moved to impeach the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis. Moore wrote a letter to Governor Brian Kemp in which he called for an emergency review of Willis’s actions, after Willis delivered a 41-count indictment against former president Donald Trump and his operatives on state racketeering and conspiracy charges over efforts to reverse Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss in the state.
Fulton county DA Fani Willis has faced a wave of racist abuse online since the indictment, including from Trump, who used a thinly veiled play on the N-word on Truth Social. “They never went after those that Rigged the Election,” Trump wrote. “They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!”
Calls to violence have proliferated across far-right sites since the charges against Trump were made public on Monday night. The names, photographs and home addresses purportedly belonging to members of the Fulton county grand jury that indicted Trump and 18 of his co-defendants this week are circulating on social media.
US district judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case against Trump, has canceled tentative plans to hold a hearing on 25 August on a protective order for classified evidence.
Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, needs to “take a sledge-hammer” to his GOP rival Vivek Ramaswamy and “defend” Donald Trump during the first Republican presidential primary debate next week, allies of DeSantis have urged in a memo.
The New York mayor turned Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani made a largely fruitless visit to Mar-a-Lago to plead for help paying “ballooning” legal fees arising from work for the former president, according to a CNN report. Trump, “who is notoriously strict about dipping into his own coffers, didn’t seem very interested” and only “verbally agreed” to help pay some bills and to support fundraisers for his ally, the report said.
Donald Trump’s legal advisers have urged the former president not to hold a press conference next week in response to his latest indictment, according to an ABC report.
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Georgia’s Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has attacked Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis over her indictment of Donald Trump and 18 other co-defendants, criticizing her for her “communist style persecution”.
“They want to silence President Trump so he can’t campaign and they are committing election interference. This is a conspiracy by Biden and the Democrats coordinating from the Federal DOJ all the way to State DA’s!” Greene tweeted on Thursday.
“We can not allow this to happen! Republicans must act in our capacity to stop this. Otherwise our country is over,” she added.
Fulton County DA Fani Willis wants March 4th as the court date to begin her communist style persecution of President Trump for simply saying his election was stolen.
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) August 17, 2023
That is the day BEFORE Super Tuesday!!
They want to silence President Trump so he can’t campaign and they are…
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