Former President Donald Trump promised he would hold a news conference on Monday to refute allegations against him in a Georgia indictment unsealed this week.
Reacting to Tuesday’s charges, the 2024 Republican presidential frontrunner said he would release a report at his resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, to dispute the allegations. He also said it would clear the other 18 people charged in the indictment.
“A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia is almost complete & will be presented by me at a major News Conference at 11:00 A.M. on Monday of next week in Bedminster, New Jersey,” Trump said in a Tuesday morning post on Truth Social, his social media website.
“Based on the results of this CONCLUSIVE Report, all charges should be dropped against me & others — There will be a complete EXONERATION! They never went after those that Rigged the Election. They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!”
Now, some of his closest advisors have asked him to cancel the news conference, ABC News reported, saying the briefing would complicate his legal problems.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp tweeted a message of his own in response to Trump’s social media post.
“The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen. For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward — under oath — and prove anything in a court of law,” Kemp wrote.
Meanwhile, Trump’s legal bills continue to mount. He has been charged in four separate criminal cases and has provided some money to associates being investigated.
Before he entered the 2024 race, the political action committee Save America was paying his legal bills, The New York Times reported. The question now is whether that practice is legal under Federal Election Commission (FEC) rules if the money was sent from donors to pay campaign expenses, not legal bills.
“Under prevailing FEC interpretation, this whole discussion is moot,” Saurav Ghosh, a former lawyer at the Federal Election Commission and now director of a nonprofit federal campaign finance reform group, told the newspaper. “He can pay all the lawyers for all the matters, and according to the FEC, these rules don’t even matter.”
Still, Ghosh added: “Is that an abuse of donors? I think it sets a very bad precedent.”
Trump supporters continued to criticize the Georgia indictment and Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis.
“I know that Fulton County is the most liberal county, I think, in all of Georgia. The DA there is a Democrat,” U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News.
“I know that they’re trying to use a [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations] statute. I don’t know exactly what they’re going to come out with. But I know this: Between Manhattan and Fulton County and D.C. — the most liberal jurisdictions in the country — it’s very unfair to President Trump.”
