In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has charged former President Donald Trump with a series of criminal offenses stemming from an alleged scheme to essentially overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state, and new polling from YouGov and The Economist finds a majority of Americans generally behind the case.
This documentation of that level of approval for Willis’ charges against Trump comes as plea deals keep emerging between the local prosecutors and co-defendants including several attorneys with close ties to the ex-president. The most recent was Jenna Ellis, who cooperated with Rudy Giuliani — who was also charged and has not pleaded guilty — in spreading false claims related to the 2020 presidential race. Her plea documents outline some of these falsities, such as that more than 10,000 ballots in Georgia were cast in the names of deceased individuals in 2020. The actual number discovered after state investigations was in the low single digits.
The new polling was completed on October 24, and those either strongly or somewhat approving reached 51 percent of the overall total. The portion backing Willis’ case was roughly the same among registered voters — as it was among independents, 50 percent of whom either strongly or somewhat approved of the charges. Generally, many more were in the category of “strongly” backing Willis’ case. In the general pool of respondents, that group was 42 percent from the total, with the additional nine percent in the category of somewhat approving.
All of this approval flies, of course, in the face of the constant, angry rhetoric from Trump about the various criminal charges he faces. Prosecutors continue pushing for the reactivation of a gag order in the federal case that also accuses Trump of attempted election interference. (He’s the only defendant there.) Led by Special Counsel Jack Smith, they directly tie Trump’s habits in public rhetoric to threats of violence.
