United States former President, Donald Trump and 18 other allies were indicted in Georgia on Monday for conspiracy to overturn his 2020 election loss in the State.
Credible News reports that prosecutors used a statute normally associated with mobsters to accuse Trump, lawyers and other aides of a “criminal enterprise” to keep him in power.
The nearly 100-page indictment details dozens of acts by the former President or his allies to undo his defeat, including beseeching Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State to find enough votes for him to win the battleground State; harassing a State election worker who faced false claims of fraud; and attempting to persuade Georgia lawmakers to ignore the will of voters and appoint a new slate of electoral college electors favorable to Trump.
In one particularly brazen episode, it also outlined a plot involving one of his lawyers to tamper with voting machines in a rural Georgia county and steal data from a voting machine company.
“The indictment alleges that rather than abide by Georgia’s legal process for election challenges, the defendants engaged in a criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia’s presidential election result”, Fulton County District Attorney, Fani Willis, whose office brought the case, said at a late-night news conference.
Other defendants include former White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows; Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani; and a Trump administration Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, who advanced the then-president’s efforts to undo his election loss in Georgia. Multiple other lawyers who devised legally dubious ideas aimed at overturning the results, including John Eastman, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, were also charged.
Willis said the defendants would be allowed to voluntarily surrender by noon Aug. 25. She also said she plans to ask for a trial date within six months and that she intends to try the defendants as a group.
The indictment bookends a remarkable crush of criminal cases, four in five months, each in a different city, that would be daunting for anyone, especially someone like Trump who is simultaneously balancing the roles of criminal defendant and presidential candidate.
It comes just two weeks after the Justice Department special counsel charged him in a vast conspiracy to overturn the election, underscoring how prosecutors after lengthy investigations that followed the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol have now, two-and-a-half years later, taken steps to hold Trump to account for an assault on the underpinnings of American democracy.
Credible News reports that Trump had been indicted three times before. He was first indicted in March 2023 by the Manhattan district attorney on state charges related to a hush-money payment to an adult-film star in 2016.
Trump was again indicted in June 2023 by a federal grand jury in Miami for taking classified national defense documents from the White House after he left office and resisting the government’s attempts to retrieve the materials. Both Trump and his aide Walt Nauta have pleaded not guilty.
Trump’s third indictment consists of four counts related to the Jan. 6 riot and attempts to overturn the 2020 election, was expected in the days leading up to the announcement. Trump said July 18 that he was a target in the investigation and predicted he would be indicted and arrested.