Former President Donald J. Trump and 18 others have been indicted by an Atlanta grand jury in a sweeping racketeering case, accusing Trump and some of his former top aides of orchestrating a “criminal enterprise” to reverse the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.
The indictment, an unprecedented challenge of presidential misconduct by a local prosecutor, brings charges against some of his most prominent advisers, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, his former personal lawyer, and Mark Meadows, who served as White House chief of staff at the time of the election.
“Trump and the other Defendants charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favour of Trump,” prosecutors wrote in the indictment.
Trump, running again for President and the early favourite to win the Republican nomination, has now been indicted in four separate criminal investigations since April, including a federal indictment earlier this month over his attempts to cling to power after losing the 2020 race.
Although that case covers some of the same ground as the one in Georgia, there are crucial differences between state and federal charges: Even if Trump were to regain the presidency, the prosecutors in Georgia would not report to him, nor would he have the power to attempt to pardon himself if convicted.
And the new indictment presents the most extensive set of accusations yet against the former President, alleging a vast conspiracy reaching from the Oval Office to the Georgia Republican Party to an election official in a rural county.
The indictment laid out eight ways the defendants were accused of obstructing the election: by lying to the Georgia state legislature, lying to state officials, creating fake pro-Trump electors, harassing election workers, soliciting justice department officials, soliciting Vice-President Mike Pence, breaching voting machines and engaging in a cover-up. It spells out 161 separate acts that prosecutors say were taken to further the alleged criminal conspiracy, including events like Giuliani’s false testimony about election fraud to Georgia lawmakers in early December and Trump’s telephone call to the Georgia secretary of state in early January urging him to “find” 12,000 votes.
The state racketeering law, originally designed to dismantle organised crime groups, allows prosecutors to bundle together crimes committed by different people if they are perceived to be in support of a common objective. The indictment cited acts taken in several other states, including Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and in the District of Columbia.
The investigation was led by Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney. “I make decisions in this office based on the facts and the law,” she said at a news conference, adding that “the law is completely nonpartisan.” She said she was seeking a trial date within the next six months.
A statement from the Trump campaign accused
Willis of being a “rabid partisan” and said her election interference investigation was based on “fabricated accusations”.
Kenneth Chesebro and John Eastman, architects of the plan to use fake Trump electors to circumvent the popular vote in a number of swing states, were among a number of lawyers who advised Trump who were indicted. So was Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign aide who helped coordinate the elector scheme.
Jeffrey Clark, a former senior official in the department of justice who embraced false claims about the election and tried to embroil the department in challenging the Georgia vote, was also indicted. Other lawyers who aided Trump’s efforts who were indicted include Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis.
A number of Georgia Republicans were also indicted, including David Shafer, the former head of the state party, and Shawn Still, a state senator. Cathy Latham, a party leader in a rural county who served as one of the bogus Trump electors, was also indicted.
New York Times News Service