Former Georgia DA on Trump election charges: ‘I wouldn’t want to be one of the defendants’

Former Fulton County District Attorney Charlie Bailey on Wednesday discussed his experience working with current District Attorney Fani Willis, who brought the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act election case in Georgia against former President Trump and 18 co-defendants, and said he was confident that any charge Willis brings will have the evidence to back it up. 

“I wouldn’t want to be one of the defendants in this case, I’ll tell you that,” Bailey said during a Wednesday interview on MSNBC. 

“It’s a strong case. Now, every case is only as strong as the evidence at trial, and an indictment, of course, they’re allegations. But once we get to trial,” Bailey said, “I’ll tell you this about Fani Willis: She doesn’t put a charge down unless she’s got the evidence to back it up, so I think it tells a strong story about the attempt to overthrow our election here in Georgia.”

Bailey, who worked with Willis on a past case that brought RICO charges, stressed his confidence in Willis to bring the evidence to back up the sprawling case charging Trump and his allies with orchestrating a criminal enterprise to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. 

Bailey also discussed separate motions filed by Mark Meadows — Trump’s former White House chief of staff who was charged in the Georgia RICO case — to have the case moved to federal court and to have all charges dismissed on the basis that he was carrying out federal official duties and is therefore immune from state prosecution.  

Bailey said that argument rings similar to a case Trump makes frequently, “which is focused on ‘who I am,’ not ‘what I did.’ And, you know, frankly, that’s got a very authoritarian ring to it.”

“But you see that as an excuse a lot,” he continued. “That ‘I can do whatever I want because I was chief of staff,’ ‘I can do whatever I want because I was the President of the United States,’ and that simply is not the law.”