Georgia court appears to accidentally leak list of Trump criminal charges online

ATLANTA (TND) — The website for Fulton County Georgia briefly displayed a list of criminal charges against former President Donald Trump Monday before that section of the site was taken down.

Following the digital kerfuffle, prosecutors in the county took a moment to emphasize that Trump has not been indicted in the state on any charges.

The Fulton County District Attorney Fanny Willis has been pursuing a parallel case to Special Counsel Jack Smith, investigating accusations that Trump tried to overthrow or dismiss the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

The charges listed online, which were first reported by Reuters, included state racketeering counts, conspiracy to commit false statements, and solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer.

A Fulton County grand jury began hearing from witnesses Monday morning; the list was published shortly after 12 p.m. ET. Reuters reported that the list was taken down shortly after it went up and a spokesperson for Willis said the report of charges being filed was “inaccurate,” but declined to comment further.

While the charges are expected to be presented to the grand jury for a vote, it is irregular that they would have been offered to those jury members, let alone the public, while they were still hearing from witnesses.

In typical Trump fashion, the former president weighed in on the morning's jury activities through a series of impassioned posts on his Truth Social media platform Monday.

"Would someone please tell the Fulton County Grand Jury that I did not tamper with the election," Trump wrote in all caps in a message posted around 8:40 a.m. "The people that tampered with it were the ones that rigged it, and sadly, phoney Fani Willis, who has shockingly allowed Atlanta to become one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the world, has no interest in seeing the massive amounts of evidence available, or finding out who these people that committed to this crime are."

"She only wants to 'Get Trump'," he added. "I would be happy to show this info to the G.J."

Trump also bashed former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who said on CNN Saturday that he was summoned to testify to the grand jury Tuesday – Duncan was also one of the few Republicans to openly criticize Trump's attempts to overturn the election.

"I am reading reports that failed former Lt. Governor of Georgia, Jeff Duncan, will be testifying before the Fulton County Grand Jury. He shouldn’t," he said on Truth Social.

I barely know him but he was, right from the beginning of this Witch Hunt, a nasty disaster for those looking into the Election Fraud that took place in Georgia. He refused having a Special Session to find out what went on, became very unpopular with Republicans (I refused to endorse him!), and fought the TRUTH all the way. A loser, he went to FNCNN [Fake News CNN]!

The former president has already been warned about potential witness tampering and intimidation in his other indictments, and the judge overseeing his 2020 case in D.C. issued a protection order Friday over concerns he might share evidence from that case.

The potential case in Georgia against Trump famously emerged barely three days into the new year of 2021 when The Washington Post obtained audio of a phone call between the then-president and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, a Republican, on Jan 2., 2021. In the now infamous call, Trump kept pushing false claims about the results in Georgia to Raffensberger and his office's general counsel, trying to both admonish and flatter the Peach State's highest elections officer to find a more favorable result.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry,” Trump said at one moment in the call. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated.”

“Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong," Raffensberger responded.

Media outlets, pundits and legal observers have all called attention to another statement Trump made in the call, in which he infamously asks, if they can just find around 11,000 votes so he can win.

All I want to do is this," Trump said. "I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.

For two and a half years, Willis has been investigating actions taken by Trump and others in their efforts to overturn his narrow loss in Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden. Barriers and street closures around the courthouse in downtown Atlanta, as well as statements made by Willis, had indicated that a presentation to a grand jury was likely to begin this week.

Former Democratic state Sen. Jen Jordan, who had been subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury, said as she left the Fulton County courthouse late Monday morning that she had been questioned for about 40 minutes. Former Democratic state Rep. Bee Nguyen also confirmed that she testified. News outlets reported that Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the secretary of state’s office, was seen arriving at the courthouse earlier Monday.

No individual is above the law, and I will continue to fully cooperate with any legal proceedings seeking the truth and protecting our democracy,” Nguyen said in a statement.

Nguyen and Jordan both attended legislative hearings in December 2020 during which former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and others made false claims of widespread election fraud in Georgia. Trump lawyer John Eastman also appeared during at least one of those hearings and said the election had not been held in compliance with Georgia law and that lawmakers should appoint a new slate of electors.

Read the full list of potential charges here.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report