Among the news crews still filming outside the Fulton County Jail on Friday morning is a team with the German news channel Welt, helmed by Washington correspondent Michael Wuellenweber.
“Of course, it’s always interesting how you handle it,” said Wuellenweber, a veteran political reporter based in Berlin, of the media circus that surrounded the surrender of former President Donald Trump. “Every second of his life was covered by TV, and that means, at the end, something ... for American society.”
Credit: John Spink / John.Spink@ajc.com
Credit: John Spink / John.Spink@ajc.com
He described his outlet as the “CNN of Berlin” but said it doesn’t have partners or sources in Atlanta. And so the crew from Germany came down to Rice Street to take in the scene for themselves.
The idea that politics could have factored into the decision to charge Trump and his allies with conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election is novel for the German audience.
“We don’t have ... that part of the population who believe in conspiracy theories, who believe that everything is done by ‘deep state,’ that justice is bought by whomever,” Wuellenweber said. “We believe in our justice (system).
“Prosecutors are not appointed by politicians. Judges are not appointed by politicians. And I have never heard actually, in a criminal case, that political conviction maybe can play a role,” he said.
