As we reported, the Fulton County Clerk of Court office released a lengthy statement Tuesday afternoon attempting to explain how it was that a document they claimed was fictitious, showing open criminal charges against Donald Trump several hours before a special grand jury finished deliberating, was posted to their website. Clerk Che Alexander was practicing, essentially, for when the large indictment was returned, they explained, and the document inadvertently went out to the press queue, and since there was no clerk’s file stamp on the document it should have been apparent that it wasn’t an official document.
That may well be true, but it raises questions as to why fake names wouldn’t have been used or how Alexander knew exactly which charges, and in which quantity, to place on the “fictitious docket sheet,” which had both a case number and judge assigned.
Alexander gave an interview to a local journalist, Tom Jones, and managed to make herself look even worse while looking for sympathy. She’s just a perfectionist with a lot of pressure on her to get this big case right, and she’s human, she says, and mistakenly clicked “send” instead of “save,” and “that’s how the mishap happened.”
JUST IN: Fulton County clerk Ché Alexander who leaked the charges against Donald Trump before the grand jury voted to indict claims she accidentally clicked ‘send’ instead of ‘save.’
That still doesn’t explain how they knew exactly what the charges would be…
“I have no dog in… pic.twitter.com/LU4PuPpnOj
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 16, 2023
We are all human and have all clicked the wrong button on a computer at one time or another. It’s also understandable that a perfectionist would be very frustrated at getting something like that wrong – but wouldn’t the perfectionist already know how to process a large indictment? Wouldn’t a perfectionist have thought of the various bad outcomes of putting the potential defendant’s actual name and actual charges faced on the sheet they’re using for a dry run?
Jones didn’t publish the full interview, instead narrating portions of it and then cutting to Alexander, so it’s difficult to know what phrases might be taken out of context and if there’s additional commentary that was cut, that might make Alexander look even worse.
Alexander told Jones that she doesn’t have a dog in the fight, and explained:
I did a work sample in the system, and when I hit save it went to the press queue. It wasn’t an official document. It wasn’t official charges. It was the dry run. It was a work sample.
Why use the word “fictitious,” she was asked?
That was the best word I could come up with. It was fictitious. It wasn’t real. It didn’t have a stamp on it.
I tell my staff, we just want to be transparent, right? So I don’t have anything to hide.
But it did have a case number, and the exact charges found on the actual indictment. Alexander told Jones that she had access to what those charges could be through the Odyssey system. But why? If the grand jury process is supposed to be secret, why would the clerk’s office have access to potential charges? Does every employee at the clerk’s office have access to that information or just Alexander? And, why was she so confident that an indictment was coming?
