‘Flailing’ Georgia attorney general condemned over charges for Cop City protesters | Georgia

Georgia’s top law enforcement official has drawn accusations of using the weight of his office to lift his own political fortunes by bringing a new indictment against protesters of the Atlanta police training center known as Cop City.

Amid bluster about “holding the line against antifa”, Georgia attorney general Chris Carr announced charges against three activists late last week even as his bid to become Georgia’s Republican nominee for governor limps along, with less than double-digit support in polling ahead of a 19 May primary.

The move has caused some to question Carr’s timing and motives in his bid for political power.

“Carr’s gubernatorial campaign is flailing,” said Paul Glaze, a veteran of Democratic political campaigns in Georgia. “It’s the last gasp of a dying man.”

The three protesters have been charged in suburban Cobb county with criminal damage to property and arson, just weeks before the statute of limitations on the charges expired, since the alleged actions occurred four years ago.

In addition, defendants Katie Marie Kloth, Tyler John Norman and Hannah Kass are already named among the 61 people indicted in Carr’s 2023 racketeering, or Rico case filed in neighboring Fulton county – the largest use of a law associated with the mafia against a protest movement in US history.

A Fulton judge dismissed that indictment in December on the technical grounds of governor Brian Kemp not having authorized the prosecution. The state has appealed the judge’s decision and Carr’s office shared with the Guardian a signed letter from Kemp dated 31 December authorizing the attorney general to continue prosecuting such cases.

“Carr didn’t file this indictment until after he lost the Rico case,” said Matt Scott, editor at the Atlanta Community Press Collective, a digital outlet that launched to report on the movement against the training center and has since expanded its coverage.

“It’s an open attempt to bring some sort of punishment against Cop City protesters, nicely timed with the primary next month,” he said.

“[But] if his tough on crime narrative were working, he probably wouldn’t be in the spot he’s in, polling as poorly as he is,” Scott added.

Kloth, Norman and Kass now face felony charges that could bring up to five years in prison in connection with actions on 12 May 2022, when they allegedly “intentionally damage[d]” the Smyrna headquarters of Brasfield & Gorrie, one of the lead construction companies on the $109m training center, by spray-painting windows and walls and allegedly causing a fire in “brush and straw” outside.

Elizabeth Taxel, a clinical professor at the University of Georgia school of law, expects defense attorneys might raise due process concerns of fairness. The new indictment “asks defendants to defend themselves in two jurisdictions for the same conduct, against the same prosecuting entity”, she said.

Opposition to the $109m police training center, which opened last spring, came from a wide range of local and national organizations and protesters, centered on concerns around police militarization and clearing forests in an era of climate crisis. Atlanta police have said the center is needed for “world-class” training and to attract new officers.

The attorney general has been the driving force in the years-long effort to prosecute protesters against the training center. Several of the state’s efforts have faltered to date – including dismissal of the Rico case and withdrawal of money laundering charges against the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, a bail fund.

But Carr has persisted. “We are not Oregon. We are not New York. We are not California,” he told reporters at a recent press conference. He also underlined that all three defendants were from out of state.

Such criticisms have been hammered by Kemp and assorted officials since the movement against Cop City began forming in 2021, to “name white outsiders, or antifa, as the villain”, said Glaze. Activists say this approach ignored a multi-racial groundswell of popular local opposition to the project, including record-breaking attendance of about a thousand at an Atlanta city council meeting.

Kemp has stayed out of the current governor’s race and declined to endorse. Carr’s effort to continue putting Cop City protesters in the spotlight “has potency in middle and south Georgia”, Glaze said. “[But] it’s all political posturing … it’s what he’s got to work off of.”

Xavier de Janon, a defense attorney in the Rico case, said Carr’s talking points in bringing the new indictment “match the federal government’s obsession with a non-existent antifa”.

“I’ve been saying for years that this is political theater, a political prosecution,” De Janon said.