Donald Trump is in deeper legal peril than Richard Nixon ever was, but that doesn't mean the Georgia state prosecution will have an easy time securing a conviction, a former Republican representative for Pennsylvania said.
Charlie Dent, former representative for Pennsylvania’s 15th congressional district, wrote an opinion piece on Saturday in which he argues that Fani Willis could have speedbumps in prosecuting the former president. Willis has already made a few missteps, and Trump's top-notch legal team will "pounce" on every one of them, according to the piece.
Dent compares his 13 successful elections to 2020, when Trump made a now-infamous phone call to Brad Raffensperger.
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"In 2006, my campaign manager, Shawn Millan, noticed a serious discrepancy in an unofficial precinct tabulation that inflated my opponents vote total by several hundred votes. Shawn politely informed county election officials of what he and I thought was an inadvertent, incorrect transposition of a tabulation in one precinct, which upon official certification of the election was caught and corrected," Dent wrote. He then added:
"Contrast that with former President Donald Trump’s 'perfect call' with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In that recorded one-hour call, Trump berated Raffensperger and demanded he find nearly 12,000 votes, claiming massive election fraud. In a gob-smacking act of brazenness, Trump even went so far as to suggest that Raffensperger could find himself in legal jeopardy if he didn’t remedy the Georgia election in the former president’s favor. Remember the former president presided over the United States Justice Department at the time of that call. That is no small threat. Where I come from, that takes a lot of brass."
Dent adds:
"This whole Trump legal morass is unprecedented. No former president has ever had anything close to this sort of legal jeopardy. Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal pales in comparison to the myriad of legal problems facing Trump."
Yet, a victory for Willis is still in doubt, the ex-lawmaker wrote.
"How this noise surrounding Trump all translates in a Georgia courtroom trial of the former president is anyone’s guess. For now, it appears convicting Trump in Georgia is by no means a certainty. That said, I suspect any other elected official who made a call similar to Trump’s would most assuredly be convicted. But no one ever said life was fair."
