Fulton County Officials Describe Document Listing Possible Trump Charges as ‘Fictitious’

ATLANTA – Hours after a document uploaded and then removed from a Fulton County website showed a raft of serious racketeering and other felony charges against former president Trump, the Clerk of Courts released a statement Monday calling the document “fictitious.”

“The Office of the Fulton County Clerk [...] has learned of a fictitious document that has been circulated online and reported by various media outlets related to the The Fulton County Special Purpose Grand Jury,” the statement released by Clerk of Courts Ché Alexander said. 

The Reuters news agency first reported on the document, which bore a case number, named a judge, and referred to as many as 39 separate charges against Trump.

“It looks like a draft case information that would be filed with the Fulton County Clerk,” said Georgia State University Criminal Law Professor Clark Cunningham, commenting on the document before the Clerk’s statement was released.

“It's got a case number. It's got a file date. So, you know, it almost certainly was filed with the clerk by mistake,” he said. “But I think it probably has some relationship to reality.”

The statement from the Clerk’s office further stated that “documents that do not bear an official case number, filing date, and the name of The Clerk of Courts, in concert, are not considered official filings and should not be treated as such.”

Reuters reporter Sarah Lynch on Twitter had shared a screenshot of the document, in addition to Reuters reporting the link. 

“In case there is a lot of web traffic to the link we posted, here is a screen shot of the document listing charges against Trump before disappearing from the Fulton Co court website,” she tweeted. 

Trump lawyers Drew Findling and Jessica Little said in a statement on Monday that the series of events was "emblematic of the pervasive and glaring constitutional violations which have plagued this case from its very inception."

Several Trump allies on Monday took issue with the document's leak and argued that it could become fodder for future legal appeals.

Indictments are required to be presented in open court pursuant to Georgia law. 

"Somebody messed up real bad," said Andrew Fleischman, a Georgia criminal defense lawyer. “It's not unprecedented for folks to upload the wrong file, directly, on the E-file system. I've done this before. It was the worst week of my life. I filed the wrong document. I had it mislabeled in my file."

"We don't do stuff under seal in Georgia usually. So, indictments are normally delivered in open court”