Making a Federal Case of It

Trump’s co-defendants are trying to remove their Georgia indictments to federal court. Expect him to do the same.

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Former President Donald Trump and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis are set to face off in a legal battle that will likely run through the 2024 presidential campaign. (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA and Christian MONTERROSA / AFP via Getty Images)

Welcome back to The Collision! Quite a bit has happened since our last issue. No, Sarah hasn’t had her baby, but I’ll be helming the newsletter solo as she gets ready for the new addition to her family—and for a little while afterward.

First, let’s get up to speed on the many developments in Donald Trump’s legal saga, via a new feature we’re trying out.

The Docket

  • March 4, 2024: That’s the date set by Judge Tanya Chutkan to start the trial in the federal case about Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. While other proposed trial dates are subject to change given likely pretrial motions, this one is the first solid trial date for any of the former president’s four indictments. It’s a couple months after special counsel Jack Smith’s preference for January, but Judge Chutkan seemed to have had no interest in the Trump legal team’s request to push the trial to 2026.
  • March 5, 2024: That’s the date of Super Tuesday, the biggest slate of same-day nominating contests and the first and best chance for Republican presidential candidates to scoop up a chunk of delegates in one fell swoop. How could the trial starting the day before GOP voters go to the polls in California, Texas, North Carolina, and a dozen other states affect the race? So much depends on factors we don’t yet know, but Trump’s rivals for the nomination don’t sound particularly jazzed about the schedule. One top adviser to another Republican presidential candidate told The Dispatch this week they believe the trial will give Trump an additional boost at exactly the wrong time. That’s if Trump—currently averaging nearly 54 percent support in national polls of primary voters—even needs any more of a “boost” at that point.
  • And in Georgia, we got a glimpse this week of what Trump and his co-defendants may be arguing in the coming weeks: Fani Willis’ racketeering case should be tried in federal court. Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows testified in front of a federal judge in Atlanta on Monday as part of his motion to remove his indictment from Fulton County to the federal district court. Meadows testified that he believed his actions following the 2020 election were within the scope of his White House position as a member of the federal executive branch.
  • The prosecution, meanwhile, called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who testified that he avoided answering Meadows’ post-election calls because he perceived them as campaign-related rather than official executive branch business. Raffensperger also characterized the famous January 2 call from Trump as a “campaign call”—all to emphasize that Trump and his White House staff were acting as private citizens, not executive branch officials. The judge has not yet made a decision on transferring the case.
  • Meanwhile, a federal judge ruled Wednesday that Rudy Giuliani is legally liable and owes punitive damages to two Georgia election workers who were the subject of conspiracy theories after the 2020 election. Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss sued Giuliani for defamation in 2021 after the former New York mayor and Trump attorney spread attacks about them. A jury will determine how much Giuliani owes them in damages.
  • On the other side of things, the New York Post reported late last week that a lawyer on Jack Smith’s team met with members of Biden’s White House counsel’s office “just weeks” before the special counsel first brought charges against Trump. “Jay Bratt, who joined the special counsel team in November 2022, shortly after it was formed, took a meeting in the White House on March 31, 2023, with Caroline Saba, deputy chief of staff for the White House counsel’s office, White House visitor logs show,” the Post reported, adding that Bratt had two previous meetings at the White House in 2021.

A Strategy of Delay

We should stick with the Peach State for a bit this week, since the Meadows hearing—the first since the Fulton County indictment was unveiled earlier this month—had me asking: What’s coming next in Georgia? I talked with some Georgia-based defense attorneys this week who outlined in broad terms what Trump will try to do next in this racketeering case, and it all comes back to one goal: delay, delay, delay until after the 2024 election, when he will (in his mind) be president and untouchable by prosecution.

The first step for the former president will likely be to petition for removal from the Fulton County Superior Court to federal court, just as Meadows is already trying to do. If the federal judge grants Meadows’ request, that decision could possibly remove the entire case from the Fulton County court to the federal district court and make it unnecessary for Trump to ask for removal himself.

The attorneys in Georgia I spoke with came to different conclusions on how likely an outcome that is, but they both agreed such a motion will be key to Trump’s defense strategy. If Meadows (or possibly Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official who has also filed for removal) can successfully transfer the whole case to federal court, the former president will have a small victory without lifting a finger. A move to federal court would take away Fulton County DA Fani Willis’ built-in “home-court” advantage and give Trump’s team a little more flexibility with filing motions to delay the trial.*

Even if Meadows, Clark, and others are denied, Trump’s team will still almost certainly file for the same removal along the same grounds anyway: as a federal official exercising his federal duties when the alleged crimes occurred, they’ll argue, Trump has the right to be tried in federal court.

If Trump does get his case removed, the next steps from his team will look much like they do in his federal cases: filing every relevant pretrial motion possible in order to slow things down. If the case remains at the Fulton County Superior Court, it will be governed by Georgia’s rules, which have a pretty strict window for filing pretrial motions, 10 days after arraignment. Trump was scheduled to be arraigned on September 6, but on Thursday morning he entered a “not guilty” plea and will waive the in-person arraignment, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. With that plea filed, we might see a rapid fire of motions and special pleas in the next several days—all of which would certainly delay Trump’s trial well past Willis’ proposed October 23 start date.

The bottom line: If Trump wants to delay his Fulton County case—which he absolutely does—he has options. And with the March 4 case in D.C. looming, the possibility that Willis will get her trial before the primary season gets going in earnest is looking less and less certain.

What Upcoming Hearings Will Tell Us

One more thing about this whole dispute over the role Trump and his associates were playing during the time they committed their alleged crimes—were they representatives of the federal executive branch or private citizens working on behalf of a presidential campaign? Therein lies the central issue driving not just the question of venue for this trial—which is, in the end, a relatively small matter—but the substance of the case itself. 

How the removal petitions are resolved won’t determine how a jury will decide those questions. But the Meadows hearing this week gives us a good sense of how the defense is likely to argue in trial, no matter the venue. Not only did Trump believe the certified election outcome in Georgia was incorrect, the argument goes, but that he was taking action as president to ensure the election had been conducted properly. Should a president, they may ask, be prosecuted simply for urging state officials to make sure they had done all they could to ensure the election was fairly executed?

Willis’ challenge will be to successfully convince a jury that this innocent explanation from Trump is bogus. Trump and his team of lawyers and advisers were not conducting due diligence under a genuinely held belief, she’ll say—as she already has—but they were instead lying as part of a conspiracy to steal an election.

Both sides will have a chance to try out these arguments in hearings over the next few weeks. What are the limits to a president’s ability to put political pressure on other officials? When does politicking cross the line into criminal activity? How can a president be held accountable for violating state laws?

The questions of Trump’s position go to the heart of the case and underscore what makes this entire scenario so odd, messy, and unprecedented. Buckle up.

Correction, August 31, 2023: If Trump is successful in removing his case to federal court, it would likely go to the Northern District of Georgia, not Washington, D.C.

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  1. RedBeardRob

    Very depressing to me that Trump's best defense (as a former president and frontrunner for the GOP's 2024 nomination) to these election charges is that he was completely and unalterably detached from reality when it came to the results of the 2024 election, and that he remains so to this day.

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    1. Meggymish

      Well, basically, his defense has to argue he's just crazy, rather than acting purposely to combat a "stolen election," which all of his advisors barring Giuliani et. al. TOLD HIM was not what happened. It depresses me that his defense is "he's not a reasonable person." Though I've seen or heard Sarah say that the reasonable person standard doesn't apply, so what do I know. Nothing, obviously. This whole case is depressing. The fact that Trumpy still far and away the frontrunner at least for the GOP is beyond depressing, it's appalling.

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    Drew Neilley

    Based on the cover photo. “Georgia case to be settled by staring contest. Trump is confident that years of Botox will give him the “W” while Willis is fully prepared to permanently lose her eyesight. Earlier this month, a federal judge denied Trump’s motion for Willis to be replaced by an assistant prosecutor who is “his type” in the staring contest. Willis acknowledged the possibility of Trump’s face being the last image she sees as “something that will haunt me forever” but maintains it would be worth it to hear the look on his face described when he lost.”

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  3. Peterjkovac

    I'm a little disappointed to see this newsletter directly quote the New York Post article about Jay Bratt's meetings at the White House without any additional commentary or explanation. Subsequent reporting from multiple news outlets actually interviewed sources and learned that this was a meeting with a career White House staffer who worked under the Trump administration, and not a meeting with Saba, as the quotation mistakenly assumes. To leave the reader with only the New York Post's (intentional) innuendo without any critical analysis is beneath the quality reporting that I expect from The Dispatch.

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    I related in considerable detail, in another comment on another article that I now can't quite locate, the story of my grandfather, who in the 1920s was the only publicly-admitted Republican in Dawson County, Texas, and therefore the winner by default of the one federal patronage job — U.S. Postmaster. The Klan was very active in local Texas politics then, and the local police chief and mayor, in their robes, were leading a parade through downtown. When they approached the post office, though, my grandfather stood in their path and declared that as the representative of the U.S. Government in that county, it was his duty to ensure continuous access to this United States Post Office, and they were welcome to parade anywhere else they wished, but they'd parade in front of the post office only over his dead body. And then he called out by name the mayor, recognizable under his robes by his shiny dress shoes, and the police chief, recognizable by the blue stripe of his pants leg, and called them hypocrites.

    And they dispersed. Even in the Deep South of the 1920s, Washington couldn't and wouldn't have ignored a Klan lynching of a white postmaster.

    Yes I am proud of this story. But I tell it so that you will appreciate the other perils, besides lynching, that a federal officer like my grandfather might face at the hands of, say, a city government and city law enforcement headed by Klansmen.

    What if my grandfather had been charged with disturbing the peace?

    Is he supposed to make his arguments about the sanctity of that roadway accessing federal property to the High Wizard who's the Sheriff, or the Deputy High Wizard who's the judge?

    No sir, no ma'am, my grandfather would have been able to remove that criminal prosecution from the state courts of Dawson County to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Lubbock Division, 60 miles to the north and presided over by a life-appointed federal judge.

    Should my grandfather have been obliged to ASK PERMISSION to bump that prosecution up to federal court? Holy croakano, what a wacky idea that would be! So no, there's no "motion to remove," there's a "notice of removal," as in: This is now in federal court, until a federal judge sends it back.

    At which point he may then also be needing another one of the federal civil rights laws, a habeas corpus petition or other writ that would transfer his custody to the U.S. Marshal from the Dawson County Jail.

    Suppose it were easy enough to defeat this federal-officer removal right SIMPLY BY ADDING ANOTHER DEFENDANT. "Yes, indeed, I saw Pastor Bob jaywalk at the very same time. [wink-wink] Bob might plead guilty later, in which case his cooperation will be duly noted by the sentencing judge, but for now: He opposes this 'removal' stuff.'"

    No, that would just create an incentive for subterfuge that would render impotent the removal right this federal officer needed. And deserved. And was intended by Congress to have.

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  5. Keith Blank

    If an an argument is that one was following orders from Trump, would one potentially have a coercion case against Trump?

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    Donald E. L. Johnson, Florida

    I don't buy the assumption that voters will rally to Trump's defense as the trials near.

    To the contrary, more pre-trial motions and coverage will wake America up to who they are dealing with in the voting booth.

    I expect and hope that by the opening of the first trial, Trump's poll numbers will be in the 20s and lower.

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    1. Meggymish

      Oh Lord above, I hope you're right. As I've mentioned elsewhere, and granted that the plural of anecdote isn't data, I have a bunch of former Trumpers slllooowwwlllyyy coming around to my position: NEVER Trump. Not for dog catcher, and certainly not for President. I think if another candidate has the guts to take on Trump's legal jeopardies, and tell a few other truths that need telling, they'd be well positioned if as you say his poll number collapse. Though that may be too late to save the GOP. I don't actually care about the GOP in its current iteration, because under Trump, they're mostly wimps about foreign policy, stuck fighting the last war and especially the last war before that one, Vietnam. Claiming supporting Ukraine against invasion by a revanchist totalitarian state is such a huge part of our defense budget (it's not) and that the defense budget is such a huge part of our national spending that it ought to be cut to the bone (it's definitely not, nor would it be wise even if it were). And of course, very few have had the guts to make the actual prolife argument (they're probably scared, but polling has shown that a) people think Roe and companion cases only offered limited abortions, which wasn't true b) people don't like late term abortion especially but c) when early embryotic/fetal development is explained, and it's clearly understood that a human being is who's being killed in abortion, they don't like that, either.) Nobody in the GOP establishment, meaning the head honchos held over by the last GOP Pres. and his cronies, has the guts to make the case for Ukraine's freedom or for the lives of the unborn. Yep, I know being prolife from conception to natural death makes me some kind of "extremist," and nope, I do not care.
      And before anyone here says "aren't you a hypocrite for being simultaneously prolife and in favor of Ukrainian battles going Ukraine's way," let me refer you to "just war doctrine." A peaceful state, Ukraine, was invaded and they have the absolute right to self defense. That was long, sorry, I apparently have many rants stored up about the state of things.

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    "If the federal judge grants Meadows’ request, that decision could possibly remove the entire case from the Fulton County court to the federal district court and make it unnecessary for Trump to ask for removal himself."

    No, nope, not even close.

    The entire case is already in federal court, including Trump and all of the codefendants. What's left in Fulton County Superior Court is a case which is permitted to continue in the meantime, but in which everything that has been done may amount to nothing if remand is refused.

    As for your correction, to make it accurate, it would need to read: "If DA Willis is unsuccessful in persuading U.S. District Judge Steve Jones of the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division, to remand the entire criminal prosecution to Fulton County Superior Court, then it will stay in the U.S. District Court for NDGA — and under no circumstances could it be sent to Washington, since the defendants have a Sixth Amendment right to be tried in the state in which the alleged crimes were committed."

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    Ms. SSM

    No discussion on the speedy’s? I’m curious about how those will work in this case. The Oct 23 trial date is because of the speedy’s filed.

    Also kudos on the swift correction!

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    Aylene Wright

    Uh... just waiting for Beldar on this one, before I venture an opinion, because I am pretty sure the whole case is actually ALREADY in Federal court, the question is whether it gets remanded BACK to the Georgia State court.

    One of the legal questions I had is, I know some co-defendants have filed speedy trial motions and I understand the Georgia state law pretty much forces the prosecution to grant these requests. I assume however that wouldn't apply to federal courts.

    It's fascinating though that some co-defendants are actually using a strategy that's quite opposite the "delay, delay, delay" tactic used by Trump.

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      Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

      The right to a speedy trial is guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. There's an analog in Georgia state criminal practice, which might give a state-law-based procedural right to an EVEN SPEEDIER trial than the Sixth Amendment, as interpreted, has been held to require. I don't know whether that provision would be followed in federal court instead of the federal speedy trial act (which implements the Sixth Amendment guarantee for federal courts).

      But the bottom line is that both state and federal courts routinely handle multi-defendant cases in which some defendants do want a speedy trial, and some don't.

      These defendants likely believe that despite the length of her investigation and indictment, DA Willis actually isn't remotely close to being ready to go to trial on the kind of broad interstate conspiracy she's charged.

      But I doubt they get severed. "If you wanted a quick trial, you shouldn't have gotten into a conspiracy with codefendants who don't," is the snarky version of a considerably longer explanation about the government's and public's interests in trying codefendants alleged to be part of a common conspiracy together with one another. From the trial judge's point of view, severing this off into multiple cases does NOT make the administration of justice simpler or swifter.

      [EDIT: The GA defendants who are only charged with intimidation of local election officials and witnesses probably have the best severance argument, and indeed, could be shed without materially hurting DA Willis' case against the remaining defendants. But that's also a much simpler fact pattern, and DA Willis' office probably IS ready, or could swiftly get ready, to try just those defendants on just those charges.]

      [EDIT #2: DA Willis' decision to use GRICO to allege a common-enterprise conspiracy is, I predict, going to be given considerable deference by either the NDGA or Fulton County courts: "It's unfair to the People, Judge, to let these bad actors skulk off into their own trial when the People are ready, willing, and able to show that they voluntarily embarked with these exact codefendants they're trying to shake loose from now." I think that gets traction; at least it would in a civil conspiracy trial. Maybe not in Georgia state-court criminal procedure and practice?]

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        Azlefty

        "Severance" means they will be tried separately, instead of in one trial, correct?

        What is the advantage from the prosecution's point of view to trying all of these defendants in a single trial? I have no experience in this area other than watching tv and reading some books, but it seems like an awful lot for a jury to keep track of. Aside from Trump and a few others, if I were a juror, I think I'd have a hard time even keeping the names of people straight and who they are, let alone which of the 40-something allegations they are accused of.
        Presumably the prosecution thought through these issues of removal, severance, etc. What are some of the risk tradeoffs she would have considered?

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          Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

          Yes, if severance is granted, in either the state or federal court system, that means some one or more defendants, or possibly counts, or even some defendants as to some counts (but not others), can be parceled off into little penny-packets of due process and impracticality. They'd each need pretrial tending, then they'd each need jury trials, presumably despite massive overlap in evidence and witnesses.

          Again, there might be a hook in the GA criminal procedure code I'm unfamiliar with. DA Willis presumably is, though, as you point out, and likewise presumably factored in the plusses and minuses when making charging decisions.

          These days they let jurors take notes! And of course there are trial graphics and exhibits to make things like organizational charts and relationships comprehensible, if only after close scrutiny.

          As I've said before, good luck to her, and if she were to pull off a verdict in anything remotely resembling her indictment as to Trump and all these codefendants, she will become, probably by acclamation, the most gifted and accomplished state-court criminal prosecutor in American history — and by a wide margin. She has, by indicting broadly, set a high bar.

          Nevertheless:

          In practice judges figure it's up to prosecutors to decide how they want to present their case and against whom, and not their job to second-guess, or correct, except at the margins in the name of judicial economy. Which I suspect is going to mean: Some particularized conflict of interest is going to need to be shown for a severance. Something so severe it can't be cured by separate counsel, nor by careful jury instructions, that would be so obviously unfair as to deprive one or both defendants of fundamental due process. Or such is my guess. We'll know soon enough on this kind of early procedural issue, within a matter of days or very few weeks.

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            Azlefty

            Thanks very much

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      Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

      Bless you, Ms. Wright.

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      PJ

      As I have listened to more and more experts I trust, I am not so sure Beldar is correct on the whole case going to Federal court.

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        Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

        Will you settle for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, in another federal-officer removal case (involving an "acting under" defendant among several dozen others)?

        ===begin quote===
        This statutory exception allows a federal officer independently to remove a case to federal court even though that officer is only one of several named defendants. The Congressional policy permitting federal officer removal could easily be frustrated by simply joining non-federal defendants unwilling to remove if consent of co-defendant(s) were required. Thus in Bradford v. Harding, 284 F.2d 307, 310 (2d Cir.1960), the Second circuit ruled that "[t]he 'general government' must be able to assure each of its officers that a federal forum will be available if he wishes it, whether others sued with him wish it or no." Likewise, in Fowler v. Southern Bell Tel. & Tel. Co., 343 F.2d 150, 152 (5th Cir.1965), the Fifth circuit held "it is settled that the filing of a petition for removal by a single federal officer removes the entire case to the federal court." In Ely Valley Mines, Inc. v. Hartford Accident & Indem. Co., 644 F.2d 1310, 1315 (9th Cir.1981), the Ninth Circuit reasoned that "[s]ince the federal officer is the only one entitled to remove under § 1442, he alone can remove without other defendants joining in the petition, and the entire case is removed to the federal court." In City of Aurora v. Erwin, this court noted the importance to the United States and the absolute nature of federal officer removal jurisdiction, quoting the Supreme Court that exercise of such jurisdiction "'should not be frustrated by a narrow, grudging interpretation.'" 706 F.2d 295, 296 (10th Cir.1983) (quoting Arizona v. Manypenny, 451 U.S. 232, 242, 101 S.Ct. 1657, 68 L.Ed.2d 58 (1981)). On the basis of the foregoing, we hold that G.E. [as one of several dozen co-defendants] properly removed the case to federal court without the consent of co-defendants.
        ===end quote===
        Akin v. Ashland Chem. Co., 156 F.3d 1030 (10th Cir. 1998). Link: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=14937677239245682991

        This precedent is directly on point, and as the cases cited indicate, it's far from the only case so holding. [Edited to dial down snark; sorry. I'm a fed courts nerd and, worse, zealot.]

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        Ms. SSM

        It's not a matter of being correct. It's more like thinking certain arguments will prevail. But when it comes to the law any lawyer including Beldar will tell you that nothing is ever certain.

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      John A Johnson

      I think you are mixing your drinks -- ere, cases.

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      Ms. SSM

      I was hoping for some discussion on the speedy’s. It’s not that you grant a speedy in GA. It’s that you have a very limited time to try someone who demands a speedy or they are acquitted. The timing actually varies by county because it depends on dockets available. GA’s speedy rule is quite strict. And it would apply if the case was removed to Federal Court as I understand the law.

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        Aylene Wright

        Thanks! In general it's a tad confusing as to what Georgia specific procedure rules would still apply if the removal sticks, so thanks for your local perspective.

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          Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

          On the civil side, there's a lot of removal caselaw — most typically in cases where federal jurisdiction is based on diversity of citizenship — that draws a distinction between "substance" and "procedure." On matters of substance like, for instance, the definition of the crimes charged and their essential elements (e.g., for the GRICO allegations), Georgia state law, as interpreted by the Georgia appellate courts, binds the federal courts. But typically things like the setting of trial dates or the application of the rules against hearsay or the process for making a witness respond to a subpoena all fall under "procedure."

          There are exceptions, including a loophole that has sometimes been made to fit elephants, where for instance a provision of state criminal procedure is re-construed to confer a substantive right, meaning in turn it must be honored by the federal courts in lieu of their own parallel procedure. Whether that can be done with the Georgia speedy trial law or not, I have no idea. But if I represented one of those defendants pressing for a quick trial, I'd certainly TRY that argument to, in turn, influence Judge Jones into a severance he might have discretion to deny as a federal judge, but lacks discretion to deny as a federal-judge-applying-GA-law judge. This is very meta, sort of "can God the Omnipotent create a rock too heavy for even Him to lift?"

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            Ms. SSM

            For what it’s worth I think it would be substantive as it confers a statutory speedy trial right that GA case law has long deemed separate from one’s constitutional right to a speedy trial. The Fed statutory speedy rights seem extremely lax in comparison. The constitutional right is the same of course. Thus I’m inclined to think GA grants a substantive right that has to be recognized.

            I could be wrong of course but I don’t see much argument that it wouldn’t.

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          Ms. SSM

          I do not know all that much about how removal to Fed court works. I know GA's rules. I know federal rules generally. But this isn't something I've ever personally dealt with so I am no expert. I work in a very specific area of fed law that does not allow for this so I've never had to know it well.

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    Earl King

    We are about to witness the greatest effort of political “collusion” ever witnessed. IMHO a sexier name for Mike to work under. Trumps defendants and lawyers. Prosecutors along with the vast collusion of political parties, organizations like Unions and Intrest groups. Let alone journalist from either side of the aisle. This is not about Justice. This is about power. Perceived and real. As most of us know big changes are rare but we have big problems that will occupy the next Administration. Entitlements, Debt, Taiwan, climate changes disasters and incessant migration from poor water and resource starved nations to first world nations. Big stuff. Big shit. This is all going to play out with competing groups choosing sides and putting their thumbs on the scale. Legal maneuvers interesting and important but let’s not kid ourselves. Neither guy, Biden or Trump are capable of leading us.

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      John A Johnson

      Keep smoking whatever you have been; ignorance is bliss

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      This comment has been deleted

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        John A Johnson

        I hate to agree with you, Pat, but you are correct on this one, and I as an ex-lawyer think the case for removal is weak

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          Ms. SSM

          I think it's pretty weak for Trump. It's stronger for some of his codefendants. But overall I tend to agree. However reasonable legal minds can differ.

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            John A Johnson

            Well, I have not read how Clark is exactly tied in though I remember at the time that he was offering legal opinions for Trump the defeated candidate but still President that -- my opinion -- were not tied to the "President" part but the "candidate" part, and that is not a DOJ function, which is why I question his argument, and similarly with Meadows. We'll see, and I could be letting my conviction from the moment I first heard that conversation with Reffensberger the day or so after that Trump was guilty as all get out of election interference affect my thinking.

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