The Daily Fuckup

Donald Trump answered the Fulton County election-interference indictment on Aug. 31, 2023, by filing a not-guilty plea and waiving arraignment, allowing him to avoid an in-person court appearance for that proceeding. The filing came in the racketeering case brought over efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.

His lawyers also asked the court to sever Trump’s case from some co-defendants. The motion did not seek to break apart the entire prosecution, but it did ask for Trump’s case to be separated from portions of the larger multi-defendant proceeding. That kind of request can affect scheduling, trial strategy and how the evidence is presented if the court grants it.

The filing itself did not change the charges or the merits of the case. It was a procedural response to the indictment returned in Fulton County earlier that month, and it put Trump on record in one of the state cases tied to the post-2020-election effort. The Georgia case already involved multiple defendants and overlapping allegations, which is one reason defense lawyers often press for separate treatment.

By entering the plea on paper and moving to sever, Trump’s legal team took two steps aimed at managing how the case would proceed, not at resolving the underlying accusations. The case remained pending, with the central questions still to be fought over in pretrial litigation and, if it got that far, at trial.