Slate: “Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has opened a criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s attempt to interfere with Georgia’s election, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. While the former president faces potential criminal liability in several states, including New York, now that he has left office, the Georgia probe may pose the most immediate threat. All available evidence suggests that prosecutors are considering charges that amount to election fraud—a felony offense under Georgia law, and the very crime that Trump claimed he sought to stop.
“You know, under new counts, and under new views, of the election results, we won the election,” Trump said. He instructed Raffensperger to “work out on these numbers” to reverse Biden’s victory—and warned that the secretary of state might face criminal charges unless he complied with this order.
As election law expert Rick Hasen noted at the time, there is no question that Trump was asking Raffensperger to manufacture enough votes to overturn the Georgia election on the basis of paranoid delusions. The former president’s call was thus not only corrupt, but very likely criminal. Under Georgia law, it is illegal to falsify any records used in connection with an election, or to place any false entries in such records. And any person who “solicits, requests, commands, importunes, or otherwise attempts to cause the other person” to falsify voting records is guilty of “criminal solicitation to commit election fraud in the first degree.” The crime is a felony offense, punishable by up to three years in prison (and no less than one year). An individual is culpable even if they failed to induce fraud.
It’s easy to see how Trump’s conduct falls squarely within these prohibitions. The former president commanded Raffensperger to alter election records—on the basis of absurd lies—to hand him Georgia’s electoral votes. He thus asked the secretary of state to commit election fraud. This solicitation is, itself, a felony. Trump would likely argue that he lacks the requisite intent because he did not want Raffensperger to falsify the records, just to correct them. (Or, in his own words, get them “straightened out.”) This defense would hinge on the claim that Trump truly believed there were 11,780 legitimate votes for him waiting to be found. But that is a question for the jury, not a reason for prosecutors to decline charges.””