Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley told “Fox & Friends” that the fourth indictment against former President Donald Trump and 18 other individuals is “very troubling,” and argued that challenging election results is not a crime.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charged the former president and the eighteen other defendants with racketeering, conspiracy, false statements and writings, filing false documents and solicitation of violation of an oath by a public officer, among other offenses. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former chief of staff Mark Meadows are among those indicted.
Turley said challenging the 2020 presidential election results are not a crime.
“The indictment is, as we expected founded, on this broad racketeering claim,” Turley said. “You got eighteen individuals that were charged. Willis seems to have charged everything and everyone as allowing God to sort them out. You know, you look at this indictment and every call, every tweet, every speech seems to be a separate criminal act that composes this conspiracy. That raises very troubling questions as to the criminalization of the challenges to elections. I’ve been covering presidential elections for a long time, I can’t remember how many. But in every single presidential election, we track challenges by Democrats, by Republicans.”
“Some of them are based on strong evidence, some are not,” he continued. “Even in this election, you had people like Mark Elias for the Democratic Party, after this in these acts, alleged that voting machines in New York were the cause of flipping an election and challenging that election. Was that a crime? Of course it wasn’t, it was a challenge. They were looking for judicial review. So it’s a very troubling indictment.”
The indictment relates to allegations that Trump and the eighteen others attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia. Following President Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia, the former president allegedly called former Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking him to find over 11,000 votes he needed to win the state. (RELATED: Jonathan Turley Lays Out Reason Jack Smith Might Torpedo Changes Of Early Trump Verdict)
Turley said Trump had a right to raise concerns about the election and appeared suspicious of the indictment’s timing.
“This indictment obviously could have been brought long before yesterday. It seemed to have been timed right in the middle of the election and now we have a pile up. This president is being really pursued, pillar opposed across the country in different jurisdictions.”
He warned the Trump campaign should not discredit this case due to the racketeering charges.
The former president faces four indictments in total in New York, Washington D.C., and Georgia. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Trump with falsifying business records to pay $130,000 in hush money to former porn star Stormy Daniels. Special Counsel Jack Smith, appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, charged Trump with 37 counts for alleged storing classified documents in Mar-a-Lago and charged him with attempting to overturn the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021, in a separate indictment.