It would help politicians if they read the bills they pass. Instead they just vote how their party votes.
And now one Democrat got schooled on their own moronic law.
You’d think someone campaigning to become Georgia’s next governor might have a working understanding of the state’s own criminal justice system. Apparently that’s too much to ask of Democratic nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms, who was caught on leaked audio privately telling donors she’s “deeply concerned” about President Trump’s crackdown on cashless bail — all while confidently getting the basic facts of Georgia bail law completely wrong.
The audio, obtained by the Daily Caller, captures the former Atlanta mayor pushing back against Trump’s executive order targeting jurisdictions that have eliminated cash bail requirements for violent offenders. Her stated concern was that ending cashless bail policies would disproportionately hurt poor people. Fair enough as a talking point, except Lance Bottoms went on to make a claim about how the law actually works that simply isn’t true.
“I am deeply concerned,” Lance Bottoms told donors in the recording. “I saw that President Trump is signing an executive order on cash bail bond. We want meaningful reform.” Nothing unusual so far — that’s standard progressive messaging on criminal justice reform. But then she kept talking, and that’s where things went sideways for a woman hoping to become the state’s chief executive.
“That has everything to do with who has money to pay to get out,” Lance Bottoms continued. “That doesn’t have anything to do with rising crime. You’re not letting felons sign cash bail bonds. Those are low level misdemeanors for people who, you gotta assume if I can’t renew my tag, then I probably can’t pay a bond either.” There’s just one glaring problem with that entire argument: it’s factually false. Cash bail absolutely does apply to felonies under Georgia law, a basic legal fact codified plainly in the state’s own statutes.
This isn’t some obscure technicality buried in legal fine print that a busy politician might reasonably overlook. This is fundamental, foundational knowledge about how the criminal justice system actually operates in the state Lance Bottoms is asking voters to let her run. If she genuinely believes cashless bail policies only affect people charged with minor misdemeanors, that reveals either a shocking ignorance of Georgia law or a willingness to mislead her own donors about what she’s actually defending.
Context matters here too, and Lance Bottoms’s record on this exact issue as Atlanta’s mayor should give voters serious pause. During her tenure running the city, she signed an ordinance eliminating cash bond requirements for a specific set of low-level offenses like begging, public urination, and public drunkenness. That’s a meaningfully different policy than what Trump’s executive order is actually targeting, which is jurisdictions that have “substantially eliminated cash bail as a potential condition of pretrial release from custody for crimes that pose a clear threat to public safety and order, including offenses involving violent, sexual, or indecent acts, or burglary, looting, or vandalism.”
In other words, Trump’s order is aimed squarely at policies eliminating cash bail for serious violent and dangerous crimes — precisely the kind of offenses Lance Bottoms insisted, incorrectly, weren’t affected by cashless bail debates at all. Whether through genuine confusion or convenient political spin, she’s misrepresenting exactly what’s at stake in this fight to the very donors she’s asking to fund her campaign.
Her record as Atlanta’s mayor deserves scrutiny beyond just this bail ordinance too. Lance Bottoms presided over a significant crime wave during her time running the city, a period that saw violent crime surge in Atlanta even as she pursued criminal justice reforms that critics argued prioritized ideological commitments over public safety outcomes. That track record makes her current confusion about basic bail law even more concerning for Georgia voters trying to assess whether she’s actually equipped to manage statewide criminal justice policy from the governor’s office.
This isn’t the first time Lance Bottoms has raised eyebrows with her comments on crime and justice issues either. During her time as Atlanta mayor, she once described the “symbolism” of hate crime charges as important in a Georgia shooting case, a comment that drew its own share of criticism at the time for seemingly prioritizing political messaging over the substance of actual prosecution and sentencing.
Lance Bottoms will face off against Republican nominee Rick Jackson in the general election on November 3, and this leaked audio hands Jackson’s campaign a genuinely useful contrast to draw for Georgia voters. On one side, you have a candidate whose executive order specifically targets cashless bail policies for violent and dangerous offenders. On the other, you have a candidate who apparently doesn’t understand, or is misrepresenting, how her own state’s bail system actually functions for exactly those kinds of offenders.
Lance Bottoms’s campaign did not respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment on the leaked audio, which is perhaps understandable given how difficult it would be to walk back a claim this clearly and demonstrably wrong. There’s no spin that makes “you’re not letting felons sign cash bail bonds” an accurate description of Georgia law when the state’s own legal code says otherwise.
For Georgia voters concerned about public safety heading into this fall’s gubernatorial election, this episode raises a legitimate and serious question: if Lance Bottoms doesn’t understand the basic mechanics of how cash bail applies to violent felons under current Georgia law, how can voters trust her to responsibly manage criminal justice policy across the entire state as governor? This is exactly the kind of factual gap between a candidate’s confident rhetoric and the reality of the law that deserves far more scrutiny than it’s likely to receive from a friendly national media eager to move past the story.
As this race heads into its final stretch, expect Rick Jackson’s campaign to make good use of this audio, and rightfully so. Voters deserve a governor who at minimum understands the basic legal framework she’d be responsible for overseeing, and this leaked recording suggests Lance Bottoms still has some serious homework to do before she’s ready for that job.
