The Jolt: Republicans, even a Trump foe, express outrage at indictment
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis didn’t mention Donald Trump’s name once during his roughly hourlong speech to Georgia Republicans on Thursday. But when reports broke of the former president’s indictment shortly after the event at a Smyrna gun superstore ended, DeSantis had plenty to say.
The presumptive presidential contender rushed to condemn Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and call the case against Trump “un-American.” And he made clear he wouldn’t help extradite Trump from his home in Florida to New York.
Across Georgia, the Republican reaction to the unprecedented charges against Trump ranged from outright rage to more restrained criticism. Former U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, long a Trump defender, called it a “politically motivated case” that seems doomed to fail.
And U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene noted the “profound” irony that she was at the Civil War battlefield in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, when she learned that Trump now reportedly faces criminal charges.
“My president is innocent and the only one standing in the way of these modern day tyrants, just like our founding fathers did, to protect each of us from evil,” she posted on Twitter.
Even Gov. Brian Kemp, once a favorite Trump target, joined the chorus of recriminations.
“It just seems political to me,” he told WSB’s Mark Arum. “It also seems to me in a city like New York, this prosecutor could be focused on violent crime, murders, gangs, drugs and other things – instead of really playing politics here.”
Democrats in Georgia were mostly showing similar restraint in reaction to reports that a grand jury had agreed to bring criminal charges against the former president.
But the Congressional Black Caucus, which claims several Georgia lawmakers as members, and other high-profile Democrats applauded the development.
“The Grand Jury has acted upon the facts and the law,” former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wrote on Twitter. “No one is above the law, and everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence. Hopefully, the former President will peacefully respect the system, which grants him that right.”
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MORE ON TRUMP. Check out AJC.com for wall-to-wall coverage of the indictment news from Manhattan and how it compares to the Fulton County investigation of former President Donald Trump. Some highlights:
- The AJC’s Shannon McCaffrey compares the details of the two cases.
- The New York Times has an article detailing what will happen when Trump is arrested in the coming days.
- Visit this page for live updates as news develops today.
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TRADE OFF. U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff will be leading another economic delegation trip to South Korea next week.
The Democrat has forged tight relations with South Korean executives since his first trip to the Asian nation in November 2021.
He plans to urge further investment in Georgia, which is the site of a number of large Korean manufacturers including the Kia plant in West Point, an SK Battery site in Commerce and the proposed Hyundai factory in southeast Georgia.
The trip takes place a few weeks before the South Korean president makes a state visit to Washington.
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LISTEN UP. With this year’s session of the Georgia General Assembly in the rear-view mirror, we’ve got a final look at what passed, what failed, and what held on for dear life in our Friday edition of the Politically Georgia podcast.
Listen and subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher.
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HATE CRIMES. At a fundraiser at the Delta Flight Museum on Thursday evening, the Anti-Defamation League Southeast presented an award to Delta Air Lines and its CEO Ed Bastian for exemplifying the anti-hate organization’s values.
In an interview with our AJC colleague Kelly Yamanouchi after the ceremony, Bastian commented on the failure of an antisemitism bill that did not receive final votes before the General Assembly adjourned early Thursday morning. The measure, which passed the House, would have defined antisemitism as a hate crime. But it never got a vote in the Senate.
“We’re disappointed that it failed,” Bastian said. “And we hope that in the next session that those differences can be ironed out, because it’s important that we put people over our divided politics.”
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ENDS & ODDS. We’ll still be wading through the final versions of measures that passed at the General Assembly for a while.
- Among the odder items on the list was a measure to regulate bare-knuckle boxing, which was attached in committee to an underlying bill about marriage counseling. State Rep. Alan Powell, the chairman of the House Regulated Industries Committee, took credit for that unintentionally ironic combination.
- Ty Tagami has a roundup of the school-based measures that passed, including a revamp of early literacy in schools to focus on phonological awareness, fluency, decoding, and encoding. A separate bill will require new safety drills, including for “intruder alert situations.”
- Katherine Landergan writes that newly passed initiatives for disabled Georgians have advocates feeling “hopeful, for the first time in a long time.”
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DARK & SONNY. A significant portion of the budget debate on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon focused on the $66 million cut to the University System of Georgia that lawmakers approved.
As the AJC’s James Salzer and Vanessa McCray report, Chancellor Sonny Perdue ripped the cut in a statement Thursday.
“This is an incredibly disappointing outcome, given the work done over the years by our state leaders to elevate higher education and send Georgia on a path to ascension,” Perdue said. “It will have a significant impact on institutions and the services that students and families depend on to advance their prosperity and help Georgia succeed.”
Salzer and McCray also detail the ways the university system will cover the cut, as well as the real reason Senate budget writers gave the ever-popular higher ed system a haircut out of the “teaching line” of the budget.
But the Rome News-Tribune reports Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Hufstetler dismissed Perdue’s reaction as sour grapes.
“(Perdue) is just trying to get publicity because he didn’t get everything he asked for,” Hufstetler said.
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TODAY IN WASHINGTON:
- President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will travel to Rolling Fork, Mississippi, to meet with local elected officials and residents affected by deadly storms that passed through last weekend.
- The U.S. House and Senate are on recess and won’t return for votes until April 17.
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MTG MONEY MACHINE. Washington Post data columnist David Byler is out with an analysis of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s fundraising apparatus and what it tells her about her draw in the Republican Party.
“Her grip on the GOP fringe is apparent in her fundraising haul,” he writes. “Small-dollar GOP donors who see politics as blood sport and often root for the most far-right candidates love Greene.”
Byler writes that Greene has been more successful than other far-right rising stars because she grabbed power after the 2020 election, making moves like supporting former President Donald Trump and promoting the big lie but also the strategic decision to cozy up to Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
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DOG OF THE DAY. It’s been a week, people. And nobody knows that better than the dogs who have been watching the clock and waiting for their people to come home from the Capitol.
That most definitely includes Piper and Thatcher Reynolds, the corgi-and-Westie combo who call Smyrna-based Capitol regular (and Jolt subscriber) Bernard Reynolds their person.
Reynolds reports this snap is of the exhausted Piper and Thatcher “waiting for the final gavel to drop on Sine Die.” To which we say, we are all Piper and Thatcher. Sweet dreams, you two!
Send us your pups of any political persuasion — and cats, on a cat-by-cat basis — to patricia.murphy@ajc.com, or DM us on Twitter @MurphyAJC. We’ve got lots more coming.
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AS ALWAYS, Jolt readers are some of our favorite tipsters. Send your best scoop, gossip and insider info to patricia.murphy@ajc.com, tia.mitchell@ajc.com and greg.bluestein@ajc.com.
About the Authors
Tia Mitchell is the AJC’s Washington Bureau Chief and a co-host of the "Politically Georgia" podcast. She writes about Georgia’s congressional delegation, campaigns, elections and the impact that decisions made in D.C. have on residents of the Peach State.
Patricia Murphy is the AJC's senior political columnist. She was previously a nationally syndicated columnist for CQ Roll Call, national political reporter for the Daily Beast and Politics Daily, and wrote for The Washington Post and Garden & Gun. She graduated from Vanderbilt and holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.
Greg Bluestein is the Atlanta Journal Constitution's chief political reporter. He is also an author, TV analyst and co-host of the Politically Georgia podcast.
