Yesterday, former President Trump and a number of his associates including Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Mark Meadows (plus many others), were indicted on multiple charges related to attempts to overturn the results of the Georgia presidential election. As Ed put it, the Kraken was finally unleashed but it wasn’t the one Sidney Powell was promising.

Today, Trump put up a post on Truth Social promising that an “Irrefutable REPORT” on election fraud in Georgia would be forthcoming. “Based on the result of this CONCLUSIVE Report, all charges should be dropped against me & others.” Here’s the full truth (or whatever they’re called).

I’m going to go way out on a limb and suggest that whatever Trump presents next Monday is going to be a dumpster fire of hot garbage. What it won’t be is irrefutable or conclusive. I say that because this is the same BS approach we saw him take with the classified files mess. He swore he’d done nothing wrong and was being persecuted but eventually we learn that he had this in his Mar-a-Lago bathroom:

The boxes with classified docs are bad but the huge chandelier over the toilet is the real crime. pic.twitter.com/kesIoMSFly

— John Sexton (@verumserum) June 9, 2023

So here we are again and now it’s Trump claiming he’s about to release the Kraken, i.e. the proof the election was stolen. He’s not explicitly calling it the Kraken but really it’s the same empty promise.

I miss the days when conservatives were united in laughing at Stacey Abrams who refused to admit she lost the 2018 election. But now we have Trump doing the same thing and there’s a subset of people cheering him on. Fortunately, the same guy who set Stacey Abrams straight by defeating her twice in a row is there to set Trump straight as well. Here’s Gov. Kemp’s response to Trump.

The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen.

For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward – under oath – and prove anything in a court of law. Our elections in Georgia are secure, accessible, and fair and will continue to be as long as I… pic.twitter.com/jaru2iBDo7

— Brian Kemp (@BrianKempGA) August 15, 2023

That tweet ends: “…and fair and will continue to be as long as I am governor. The future of our country is at stake in 2024 and that must be our focus.”

Naturally, calling Trump out isn’t going over well with his supporters.

This is exactly the wrong message for our country and the rule of law. This indictment isn’t about Pres. Trump claiming the election was stolen. If it was, Stacey Abrams and Hillary Clinton would be in jail.

This is about a Democrat regime using every tool at their disposal to… https://t.co/Ap3tmPG5ov

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) August 15, 2023

Her tweet continues: “…to throw their leading political opponent —our party’s soon-to-be nominee— in prison for life or even giving him the death penalty in our state. The future of our country is at stake not just in 2024 but RIGHT NOW in 2023. And in order for us to save our country from this communists regime we must pull together and use the power we have to stop the Democrat controlled weaponized government.”

The cases of Abrams and Trump aren’t parallel. Stacey Abrams was a liar who lost the election. She wasn’t indicted because, beyond shooting her mouth off about being a winner, she didn’t actually try to undermine the outcome. In fact her campaign folded about a week later. What she did do is file a lawsuit claiming the election hadn’t been fair. Last year that case finally went to trial and Abrams’ team lost on all counts.

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones’ judgment concludes the ambitious case against Georgia’s voter registration and absentee ballot practices after a trial in which voters testified about problems at the polls but few of them were unable to cast a ballot.

“Although Georgia’s election system is not perfect, the challenged practices violate neither the Constitution nor the VRA (Voting Rights Act),” Jones wrote in a 288-page order…

Jones ruled against Fair Fight on claims over Georgia’s “exact match” voter registration policy, absentee ballot cancellation practices and registration inaccuracies…

“The court finds that the burden on voters is relatively low,” Jones wrote about the “exact match” rules. “Here, plaintiffs have not provided direct evidence of a voter who was unable to vote, experienced longer wait times, was confused about voter registration status.”

In short, the election she lost in 2018 was fair and she lost another election last year that was also fair. She wasn’t charged with any crime because lying about the election and filing a lawsuit over it aren’t crimes. What she didn’t do is try to actually overturn the outcome. That’s what Trump and others were charged with doing this week.

Of course that doesn’t mean that Trump will be convicted of any or all of these dozens of charges, but that’s the case the grand jury brought. They found there were lots of direct actions by Trump and others around him that amounted to a conspiracy to overturn the election.

Trump’s counter-case, at least in public, is that he actually did nothing wrong because he won the election but for verifiable fraud. That specific claim is somewhat analogous to what Stacey Abrams was claiming for four years except, as mentioned above, she was wrong. She wasn’t cheated. She just lost. And also, she was never accused of trying to actually overturn the results after the election, only of living in a fantasy land and claiming she’d won when she hadn’t.

There were lots of people willing to indulge Abrams’ fantasy that she was a winner, including folks at the Washington Post.

From the Washington Post Magazine profile of Stacey Abrams: pic.twitter.com/tTIU8gIllT

— John Sexton (@verumserum) May 16, 2020

There are lots of people prepared to indulge Trump’s fantasy as well. But my take is that they both lost fair elections and there’s no evidence to the contrary in either case.