Was Fulton County Court hacked? How a ‘fictitious’ Trump charge sheet brought chaos to Georgia grand jury

It was the URL heard ‘round the world.

On Monday, a document was briefly posted on a Fulton County court website, seeming to show an extensive list of criminal charges against Donald Trump stemming from the long-running Georgia investigation into his attempts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results, according to Reuters.

The document, which can still be viewed on the Reuters website, was quickly taken down and disavowed by local officials, but not before it set the political world on fire.

Online commentators began speculating that the document was a hack or maybe a leak; after all, the unthinkable and unexpected already happened once in recent months, with the 2022 leak of a draft opinion of the Supreme Court’s eventual decision overturning Roe v Wade.

Republican leaders flew into a rage.

“This is OUTRAGEOUS government conduct and is a very legitimate basis to deem the entire Grand Jury process tainted & corrupted,” Florida Representative Matt Gaetz wrote on social media. “MOTION TO DISMISS!!!”

Mr Trump, for his part, claimed the document was another sign of the “Witch Hunt” against him and asked his supporters for more money.

“This is an absolute DISGRACE. These rabid left-wing prosecutors don’t care about uncovering the truth. They don’t care about administering justice or upholding the rule of law,” he wrote his donors in an email with the subject line “LEAKED CHARGES AGAINST ME.”

The overarching political narratives – judgment day for Trump, or a political prosecution gone too far – had outrun the verifiable facts on the ground.

The Fulton County District Attorney’s office told Reuters that initial reports of the document filed oneline were “inaccurate” but didn’t explain what lead to the reported original upload.

The Fulton County clerk’s office reinforced this message, writing in a statement of “fictious” reports about charges being approved by the grand jury investigating Donald Trump.

“There have been no documents today regarding such,” officials said.

All the while, the actual grand jury process, the body that could eventually recommend Mr Trump’s fourth major criminal indictment of the year, continued throughout Monday, extending into after hours testimony from Georgia officials.

Outside, police continued with a stepped-up security posture including K-9 dogs, as Georgia officials have suggested a charging decision could come this month.

Media organisations surrounded the court complex, with lines of tents and cameras that heightened the atmosphere of anticipation.

The document drama was the latest bizarre twist in a high-profile investigation that began shortly after an infamous February 2021 phone call, in which Mr Trump was recorded giving explicit requests for top state officials to “find” him enough votes to reverse Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia.

Most recently, Mr Trump has falsely claimed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had an affair with a rapper who was the target of a racketeering probe by her office.

The speculation surrounding the charges also overshadowed a major update in the case.

On Sunday, CNN reported that Ms Willis’s office had text messages allegedly linking the Trump campaign team to breaches of voting machines in Coffee County, Georgia.