'Toxic': GOP insiders say Trump has destroyed the Georgia party

Many Republicans in Georgia blame former President Donald Trump for twice costing them winnable Senate races: In 2020, when his talk of widespread voter fraud depressed Republican voter turnout, and in 2022, when hand-picked Senate candidate Herschel Walker went down in flames against Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA).

And on top of all this, Trump has now been indicted in the Peach State for his efforts to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden, which The Daily Beast reports has created a "toxic" dynamic for the Georgia Republican Party heading into the 2024 presidential election.

Jason Shepherd, the former chairman of the Cobb County Republican Party, tells The Daily Beast that Trump's legal troubles aren't just hitting the party legally, but also financially, as it has to defend some of its own members who were swept up in the former president's fake electors scheme.

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In particular, Shepherd said that the Georgia GOP has already been inundated with hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills and "that number’s only going to climb."

One Georgia Democrat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Trump's indictment would drive a wedge inside the Georgia GOP, given that many of the state's leaders -- including Gov. Brian Kemp -- have been relentlessly attacked by Trump for refusing to give into his demands to rescind the certified results of the 2020 election.

"The state GOP is already a mess and this will make the divisions maybe worse, but if anything more clear," they said.