“You look at this indictment and every call, every tweet, every speech seems to be a separate criminal act that composes this conspiracy,” Fox’s Jonathan Turley whined.
August 16, 2023

Fox legal analyst Turley is “not actually paid for legal analysis. He's paid to fabricate serious-sounding legal rationales for Fox propaganda,” C&L's own Susie Madrak once wrote. That could not be a better description of Turley's comments about the Georgia criminal indictment handed down against Donald Trump and 18 of his co-conspirators Monday night.

It was no surprise to see Turley whining on Fox & Friends Tuesday morning about Trump's fourth and latest felony criminal indictment. This one was the second set of felony charges for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and illegally hold on to power.

There are now 91 criminal charges against Trump, a former president and the Republican frontrunner for the presidential nomination next year.

But none of that seemed to trouble Turley. He didn't even seem to think it worth mentioning. Nor did he say anything about the very disturbing behavior outlined in the 97-page indictment, probably because he knew he couldn't defend it. But Turley used lots of serious-sounding legal rationales to attack the indictment.

First, Turley complained about District Attorney Fani Willis "baffling" statement that she knew nothing about the “serious mishap” of the clerk’s office prematurely publishing the indictment. As if that was at least as significant as the criminal charges themselves.

Then Turley suggested, without actually saying so, that the indictment has no merit. “Willis seems to have charged everything and everyone and is allowing God to sort them out,” he sneered. But you know that Turley, who somehow remains a law professor at George Washington University, knows the truth about Trump's treasonous and criminal behavior because of this Freudian slip: “You look at this indictment and every call, every tweet, every speech seems to be a separate criminal act that composes this conspiracy.”

Yet still Turley pretended the only wrongdoing was by the D.A. “That raises really troubling questions as to the criminalization of the challenges to elections,” he added. As if innocent “challenges” were all that Trump, et al. ever did. Then Turley quickly moved on to bothsides the matter with a false equivalency: “Even in this election, you have people like Marc Elias for the Democratic Party, after these acts, allege 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,” Turley intoned in his very serious voice.

I don’t know what Marc Elias did in New York but I’m willing to bet he never called up the New York secretary of state and asked him to “find” enough votes to win, as Trump famously did when Georgia went for Joe Biden. That’s not “judicial review” and I’m sure Turley knows that.

It never ceases to amaze me that Turley is still a law professor at George Washington University or at any institution other than Trump U.

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