On Monday afternoon, Townhall noted how an eagle-eyed reporter at Reuters had caught a briefly posted — and subsequently deleted — document from Fulton County officials appearing to show an indictment against former President Donald Trump on a handful of felony counts.
The Fulton County Clerk said that the charges appearing on the document were not filed — the grand jury was still hearing witness testimony on Monday and had not yet voted on an indictment, after all — and hours later issued another statement calling the posted-and-deleted document "fictitious" without providing any other explanation.
The grand jury ultimately voted late on Monday evening to indict Trump and 18 other individuals on a litany of felony counts and, when the indictment was officially filed, unsealed, and posted to the county clerk's website, it showed the exact same counts against Trump.
Naturally, the question remained: how and why did the county clerk post the charges Trump ended up being indicted on hours before the grand jury voted to indict him on those same charges?
Well, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was not the one to ask.
In her press conference held in the 11:00 p.m. ET hour Monday night following the release of the indictment against Trump and his allies, she didn't have anything to say when asked by Fox News' Bryan Llenas about the fact that the "fictitious" document matched the final indictment — exactly.
"No, I can't tell you anything about what you refer to," Willis responded definitively. "What I can tell you is that we had a grand jury here in Fulton County, they deliberated until almost 8 o'clock if not right after 8 o'clock, an indictment was returned, it was true billed, and we now have an indictment."
Reporter asks Fani Willis about the supposedly "fictitious" Trump indictment posted online earlier that now matched the official charges:
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) August 15, 2023
"I can't tell you anything about what you're referring to... I'm not an expert on clerks duties or even administrative duties so I'm not… pic.twitter.com/FU3qIETmrs
Notably, Willis didn't have anything to say about why the indictment was posted hours before that grand jury had voted to indict anyone. "I am not an expert on clerk's duties or even administrative duties I wouldn't know how to work that system, and so I'm not going to speculate," Willis added.
If the clerk's website had posted a test document to ensure the system was working in anticipation for the grand jury's vote, that would be one thing. But it wasn't. They posted the full list of felony counts against Trump — the same ones the grand jury hours later voted to hand up — under his name and then deleted it, said it was not actually filed, then said it was "fictitious." But was it really phony if it ended up being an accurate list of the counts Trump now faces?
When dealing with any criminal indictment — not to mention one against a former president who is currently the frontrunner to be nominated in his bid to return to the White House — professionalism and remaining above the partisan fray is critically important. Such mishaps, or whatever one wants to call what happened in Georgia on Monday, are unacceptable and only invite more questions and cast doubt on the process as a fair and legitimate prosecution. It's doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to avoid botching an indictment as closely watched as this one, and yet Fulton County couldn't manage to avoid causing more chaos in the already fraught situation.