Former Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy of Florida, who served on the Jan. 6 committee investigating the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, spoke with Scripps News about what happened to lead to Trump's historic booking in Georgia on Thursday.
"I keep hearing people say it's unprecedented and indeed it is," Murphy said. "It's unprecedented in our democracy for a candidate to lose, to pursue all of the legal measures to try to prove the case that there was fraud or that there were problems with the election, and to get to mid-December after the election and not be able to have any of those court cases find in his favor that there was anything wrong that would change the outcome of the election. And then to continue to press in many different ways to try to overturn the outcome. And this particular situation in Georgia is a result of the efforts that [Trump] made at the state level to pressure folks to overturn the state-level outcomes of the election."
Former President Donald Trump booked, released in GA election case
Trump was only in the Fulton County Jail for minutes before being released on a $200,000 bond.
"When we engage in a democracy, when you sit for elected office and when you campaign, you campaign your heart out. Obviously you want to win. If it doesn't turn out in your favor, the right thing to do to protect our Constitution and our democracy is to engage in a peaceful transfer of power. And that simply didn't happen in the last presidential election," Murphy said.
Murphy said the case will continue to play a big part in the coming election, as well.
"As it relates to the politics of this coming presidential [election,] it's really up to the Republican Party to have a primary where they put up other candidates. The fact that he hasn't shown up for the debates is just another reflection that the former president believes he's above the law, above the rules. He doesn't have to play by the same set of rules that others do," Murphy said. "In a democracy, when you have leaders who feel like they're above the Constitution, and put their own political future above the people of this country, that's a really dangerous place to be in."
