Lt. Gov. Burt Jones says he wasn’t ‘surprised’ by Trump indictments

Published 8:59 am Tuesday, August 29, 2023

Lt. Gov. Burt Jones says he wasn’t surprised by the recent indictments handed down by a Fulton County grand jury against former President Donald J. Trump.

“I was not surprised,” Jones told The Union-Recorder in a telephone interview recently. “This hasn’t been an investigation. It’s been a PR (public relations) effort on the part of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. She has spent 2½ years dragging this thing out.”

Jones, a Republican from Jackson who served in the Georgia Senate for 10 years before being elected lieutenant governor, said during that time Willis had conducted several media interviews to promote the idea of convening a grand jury to investigate allegations of Trump interference in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

Jones, who is expected to seek the office of governor following the now-second term of current Gov. Brian Kemp, also addressed the fact that he was excluded from Willis’ investigation due to a conflict of interest.

Willis supported a Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor during the primary and Fulton County Superior Court Chief Judge Robert McBurney contended the district attorney could not bring Jones into the grand jury investigation.

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Jones said. “[The defendants] were expressing their opinions in a lot of cases, and for them to be charged, booked and fingerprinted as though they are common criminals is something that I just find to be very disturbing.”

Jones was one of the “fake electors” that claimed Trump won the 2020 Georgia presidential race and sought to conduct a secret meeting at the Georgia capitol on Dec. 14, 2020. The effort turned out to be a failed attempt to overturn Pres. (Joe) Biden’s presidential victory in Georgia.

Jones noted that although Trump was indicted on multiple charges, it hasn’t hurt him in the polls.

“It certainly hasn’t hurt him,” said Jones, who remains a big supporter of Trump, who holds a sizable lead as the frontrunner for Republican presidential nomination despite facing grand jury indictments in three states, as well as criminal charges by a federal grand jury.

When the former president was seeking re-election, Jones, who represented Milledgeville and Baldwin County in the 25th Senatorial District and several other surrounding counties in central Georgia, introduced Trump at a number of political fundraisers throughout the Peach State..

“Look, I’ve been a Trump supporter when nobody was a Trump supporter,” Jones said.

When Trump mounted his first run for the presidency, Jones served as co-chairman of Trump’s campaign. He remained actively involved in the Trump/Pence campaign from 2016 through 2020.

“I liked the way our economy was going while he was president,” Jones said of Trump’s presidency. “Compared to what we have right now, it’s totally different under President (Joe) Biden. Right now, we’ve got high-energy costs at all levels. We’ve got open borders. We’ve got almost an apologetic type leader where he js apologizing all over the country and the world. I think he’s made us weaker on the world stage. Biden also has made our economy weaker.”

Like many diehard supporters of the former president, Jones believes the criminal allegations will be disproven. Jones maintains he still believes in the criminal justice system.

“I think several jurisdictions have weaponized the criminal judicial system to come after him,” Jones said.

The lieutenant governor said he could not speak on the federal case against Trump in Washington, D.C. or the state indictments against him in New York and Florida.

“Even though I have not agreed with the process in Fulton County, I do still believe in our judicial system as a whole when it comes to juries,” Jones said. “I think when you get a case before a jury and present all of the facts from both sides then I still have confidence that people can see through what is real and what is sensationalized.”