COLUMBUS, Georgia—Despite everything, Georgia’s most zealous Republican activists are still all in on Donald Trump.
An enthusiastic crowd of more than 2,000 party delegates welcomed the former president to their state party convention this weekend with open arms. They whooped and cheered throughout his hour-and-a-half speech Saturday afternoon, in which he blasted the new criminal indictment against him as a “witch hunt” and described himself as a martyr for the Republican Party.
Trump’s remarks in the Columbus Georgia Convention & Trade Center marked his first public address since the Justice Department unsealed a 37-count indictment against him and one of his aides Friday. The former president is charged with willfully retaining hundreds of classified documents after he left office and obstructing the federal government’s efforts to retrieve them.
Yet few convention attendees interviewed by The Dispatch expressed even an inkling of concern about the contents of the classified materials listed in the charges, which the indictment alleges included sensitive information about U.S. nuclear programs and the weapons capabilities of the U.S. and other countries.
Audrey is a former reporter for The Dispatch.
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