The Heroines in the Georgia Trump Indictment

Ruby Freeman defended democracy on $16 an hour.

Ruby Freeman.

Amid all the human squalor one encounters in the latest Trump indictment, two heroines stand out: Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Moss. They are the two Atlanta poll workers, a mother and daughter, who were falsely accused by Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump of falsifying presidential ballots. (They are now suing Giiliani, who has already admitted that his claims were false and actionable.) In his famous phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger Trump mentioned Freeman by name no fewer than 18 times. Trump called her “a professional vote scammer.” In fact, she was working temporarily for $16 an hour to help Wandrea, a voter registration officer for Fulton County, attend to the practical details of conducting an election.

Freeman, the indictment (plus some great reporting by Reuters) makes clear, was subjected to bullying not only by Giuliani and Trump, but by three dimwitted foot soldiers dispatched to make Freeman confess to a crime that was already widely known, to anybody paying attention, never to have happened. Two of the three subjected Freeman to this illegal pressure while they knew Cobb County police were listening. Freeman and Moss resisted these efforts and endured various other threats and racist insults, all rendered to serve the wounded vanity of a demented moral slob who belongs in jail. That is the subject of my latest New Republic piece.