President Donald Trump rallies supporters at a Black Voices for Trump event in Atlanta on Sept. 26, 2020.

ATLANTA — With news of former President Donald Trump’s guilty verdict for sexual assault and defamation fresh off the press, Trump continues to be the centerpiece of a fractured Republican Party in Georgia — a state the party must win to take back the White House in 2024.

A group of nine jurors in New York found Trump guilty May 9 for sexually abusing magazine writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s, and then defaming her. He was ordered to pay $5 million in damages.

Georgia House Minority Caucus Treasurer Shea Roberts said while the Republican Party is divided in the state, the verdict likely won’t have impact on Trump’s supporters in Georgia.

“I don’t think it surprises the more moderate Republicans. So I doubt the verdict will move the needle much in one direction or the other,” she said May 9. “Gov. (Brian) Kemp continues to advocate for a candidate other than Trump, while the GOP party leadership today called for those not extreme enough or ‘traitors’ to be disqualified as candidates for office.”

Trump lost Georgia to President Joe Biden by approximately 12,000 votes in the 2020 general election. The majority of the Trump-backed candidates also lost their races in Georgia.

Former Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks lost Trump’s endorsement last year after implying that Republicans should move past the 2020 stolen election claims, which were launched by Trump after his defeat to Biden. He said Republicans, again, could not win the presidential race with Trump as the nominee.

“GOP CANNOT afford REPEAT sexual predator offender as 2024 president nominee. Offends voters badly,” Brooks tweeted after the New York verdict. “America needs strongest GOP candidate. Trump ain’t it…Character matters.”

However, Trump loyalists are counting attempts to dominate Georgia’s Republican Party. 

According to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, far-right group Georgia Republican Assembly is proposing a rule to the state GOP that would give them powers to block candidates from qualifying to run as Republicans if they’re deemed to be insufficiently conservative or a “traitor” to the party.

The group has targeted Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and other Republicans who rejected Trump’s pressure to overturn his election defeat in Georgia, the AJC reports.

“We’re seeing this resolution that they’re trying to get passed where they could kick people off the ballot for not being Republican enough and things like that… I think those people are your diehard Trump supporters, they’ll go down with the ship,” said David E. Johnson, CEO and founder of Strategic Vision PR Group in Atlanta, who has Republican clients in various states. “But I think if you look at the majority of voters who vote Republican or cast a Republican ballot in the primary, they’re not your diehard Trump supporters. They like his policies, but they don’t like him personally.”

Johnson opined that the recent verdict against Trump was more damaging to him than the April 4 indictment against him in New York related to falsifying business records in a hush money case involving adult film actor Stormy Daniels.


“I think more and more Republicans are questioning and I think this verdict just really hurt him. I think it was more damaging to him than the indictment,” Johnson said. “I think the bigger question right now too — and this will be the question as far as how bad will he bleed in Georgia— is does (Fulton County District Attorney) Fani Willis get (GOP Chair) David Schaeffer or other people with those Republican electors to flip on Trump?”

Willis plans to announce a charging decision between July 11 to Sept. 1 related to criminal interference in the state’s 2020 election. Trump and Schaeffer are among the several speculated to face indictments.

Schaffer purportedly led more than a dozen Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate falsely declaring Trump as the winner. His attorney, however, sent a letter to Willis’s office denying any wrongdoing, claiming he and others were following directions from Trump attorneys, the AJC reported.

Trump’s attorney has requested that Willis drop her investigation and quash a report from the Special Purpose Grand Jury, which recommended indictments related to criminal interference in the state’s election; The SPGJ was appointed last year to investigate the claims of election interference to include Trump’s phone calls with Georgia officials.

Willis was expected to respond to Trump’s motion by May 1, however, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney extended the deadline to May 15.

Kimberly Burroughs Debrow was initially representing 10 of the “fake” Republican electors; However, recent court filings indicate she is now representing eight of them who were offered immunity in April.

Kieran Shanahan of Shanahan Law Group is representing purported “fake elector” Cathleen Latham, according to recent court records.

Johnson said the verdict against Trump in New York coupled with the impending announcement of charges related to Trump’s efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results could likely be detrimental to the Republican party in Georgia.

“(The Republican Party) is becoming ineffective and it’s been dominated by your diehard Trump loyalists, but it’s not representative of Republicans in the state as a whole,” Johnson said. “I would say realistically his support probably right now, if we had a knockout drag out primary with a legitimate contender running against him in the primary, I would garner his support to be right now at about probably 30 to 35%.”