@What_Exit you were too quick to close that vacuous thread. You never know, somebody might have come along soon enough with the actual story.
Here it is:
TL;DR: WaPo reported that story about Trump calling GA Elections Investigator Frances Watson demanding that she “find the fraud” (or however he worded it). WaPo reported it based in input from some second- (or third-?) party sources, who quoted some of Trump’s words from memory. WaPo included the quotes, which were not Trump’s actual words, but the intent was clear and accurate enough (arguably).
When the actual recording was recently exposed, WaPo issued a correction to the actual words Trump was quoted as saying.
Now, rightwing politicians and commentators are blasting WaPo for the absolutely false, fake, phony reporting, and also reporting that WaPo totally retracts their bogus report in shame. When in fact WaPo merely corrected the exact words Trump was quoted as saying, but the gist of it remains.
Read the story cited above for the details.
ETA: Above link is to a story-about-the-story at AlterNet. I’ll post a link to the actual WaPo story if I find it.
It has the paragraph describing the correction, in italics, at the beginning. Trump’s exact words were not “find the fraud” (as even I myself mis-quoted in the OP above), rather that the investigator would find “dishonesty”. There were some other corrections to Trump’s exact wording too.
ETA: It’s that AlterNet article, however, that focuses on the way rightwing politicians and commentators are “exploiting” the correction to “whitewash” Trump’s culpability in that call.
How many people are on a Grand Jury? How many of them does it take to indict? What are the chances of getting a truly unbiased jury? Even more problematical, what are the chances of getting an unbiased jury for a criminal trial, which requires a unanimous vote to convict?
While I agree that the recording in no way exonerates Trump, this is another example of why using quotations when you don’t actually have a solid source is bad journalism. Summarizing the contents, intent, and how it was perceived by the official would have been plenty and would have eliminated the need for future correction if the actual recording came out.
And in the vast majority of cases the prosecutor gets an indictment (assuming they want one…sometimes they don’t). The old saying is, “If a district attorney wanted, a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich.”