Lynn Lomas mulled the latest indictments against former President Donald Trump and his allies as she walked her dog in the shade of Grant Park’s lush trees Tuesday morning.
Belle Starr, her 8-year-old Catahoula leopard dog, huffed and puffed in the heat. As she weighed the news, Lomas felt the same way: Exasperated.
“It’s been shocking to sit through it all,” she said. “I think it’s very strange that people who appear very intelligent still support him — I just can’t understand why.”
Trump had a roughly 20-point lead over his closest Republican rival in an April UGA poll of likely Georgia GOP voters. A June poll commissioned by Gov. Brian Kemp’s political network found Trump to be neck-and-neck with President Joe Biden in a hypothetical matchup in Georgia.
Lomas, like other people who spoke with Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporters for this article on Tuesday, lives in Fulton County, the largest county in Georgia and home to a diverse population of more than 1 million. Of those, 45% are Black; 44%, white; 8%, Asian; and 7%, Hispanic. The county leans heavily Democratic; President Joe Biden carried 73% of the county’s vote in 2020.
While Trump stands indicted in Fulton County Superior Court, many legal experts predict his lawyers will try to move the case to the U.S. District Court.
Lomas, who called her Atlanta home a “fairly liberal community,” said she thinks the Fulton grand jury indictments against Trump and 18 of his allies represent the best chance for a conviction. The former president has also been indicted in New York, Miami and Washington.
“I feel like he’s a duck — things just roll off of him,” she said. “Hopefully, fingers crossed, something comes of it.”
Trump, who is running for reelection, has denied wrongdoing in Georgia as he has in the other cases.
“So, the Witch Hunt continues! 19 people Indicated (sic) tonight, including the former President of the United States, me, by an out of control and very corrupt District Attorney who campaigned and raised money on, ‘I will get Trump,’” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Why didn’t they Indict 2.5 years ago? Because they wanted to do it right in the middle of my political campaign. Witch Hunt!”
Ronald Ceesay pondered the new indictments Tuesday morning as he waited with his parents for a table for his mother’s birthday brunch at Gocha’s Breakfast Bar off Cascade Road.
“For this to happen to a presidential candidate at all, it would destroy their campaign,” Ceesay said. “However, Donald Trump is actually emboldened by these things.”
Ceesay said it’s clear to him that Trump tried to overturn the election, citing Trump’s phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which the former president urged him to “find” the votes needed to defeat Biden.
“The question is how much of an impact this will have on the 2024 election or the Republican primaries,” said Ceesay, who was headed to Connecticut for his freshman year at Wesleyan University after brunch, “and if there will actually be any consequences.”
Credit: Wilborn Nobles
Credit: Wilborn Nobles
Ashley Harris discussed the charges during a stop at the 14th Street Starbucks. The Georgia case, she said, has more merit than the other indictments against Trump.
“There’s more evidence here. There’s the phone call,” she said, referring to Trump’s conversation with Raffensperger. “But I do think he is entitled to a fair trial. I don’t want to go in thinking just because I don’t like the guy that he should be convicted.”
James Gibbs, a retired banker who lives in Roswell, said Trump and his allies need to be held accountable for allegedly trying to overthrow the government.
“You can’t be putting people in office who’re incompetent,” he said.
He’d like to see Trump sent to prison for life. But he doesn’t think it’s likely, reasoning, “He was the president.”
Elsewhere in Fulton, residents considered the scope and historic nature of the case.
“There’s no past example I have to live through,” Colm Jenkins said as he filled his car up at a service station in East Point, adding the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol blindsided him.
“Is the whole system corrupt or is this one guy?” R.J Ingipaya said as he shopped at a Target in East Point, referring to charges against four defendants from South Georgia’s Coffee County who are accused of tampering with voting software and ballots.
The Rev. Charles R. Ramsey Jr., pastor of the Trinity AME Church in Atlanta, who visited Buzz Coffee and Winehouse off Cascade Road Tuesday afternoon.
“No one is above the law,” the clergyman said, “even the president.”
