Hours before a Georgia grand jury handed down an indictment charging Donald Trump and 18 allies over efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss late Monday, a mysterious document posted on the court’s website erroneously suggested the former president had already been charged before the file was quickly deleted.
The posting of the case before grand jurors voted on the indictment — and officials’ failure to explain what happened — gave the former president an opening in court and on the campaign trial to try to paint Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ case as tainted and the criminal justice system as rigged against him.
There is no evidence that the grand jury process was somehow compromised, or that the document was intentionally leaked by prosecutors or court officials. But the court’s clerk did little to tamp down speculation, refusing to say how the erroneous filing got online or publicly rule out whether it could have been the result of a hack.
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