But Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney’s order to release the final report, along with Judge Scott McAfee’s decision to permit cameras in his courtroom, give the American public important information that we can use as citizens to reach our own conclusions. Information that is critical for us to examine how the country holds people to account — and for us to judge their fitness for office.
Though courts won’t save American democracy, the proceedings against the former president can keep voters trained on what’s truly at stake. Scratch the surface of the complaints against Willis’ prosecution and you find the un-American view that Democrats and those in their coalition are unfit for self-governance. Trump’s people specifically sought to disenfranchise Atlanta’s Black Democrats at the polls, and now they say the Black Democrat elected by those voters can’t seek justice in court.
Contrast that position with the all-Republican slate of state attorneys general who, with the support of then-President Trump and more than half of Congress’ Republican members, filed suit before the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court in December 2020 seeking to invalidate Biden’s win in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan based on false claims of widespread election fraud that focused largely on those states’ Black population centers.
Zoom out a bit and it’s clear the former president’s actions flowed from almost 20 years of Republican efforts to suppress the votes of underrepresented minorities, young people and other groups that have historically given Democrats an edge among the country’s changing electorate.. Trump lost the national popular vote but won the Electoral College, thanks to his razor-thin margins in key swing states.