Donald Trump and 18 other defendants have been indicted by a Georgia grand jury in connection with their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential-election results in the Peach State.
Trump is facing 13 felony charges, including conspiracy to commit forgery, filing false documents, Solicitation of Violation of Oath by Public Officer, and violating the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
Other defendants named in the 98-page indictment, which was unsealed on Monday evening, include former White House chief of Staff Mark Meadows and several members of Trump’s former legal team: Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, and Sidney Powell.
Additional Trump allies charged in connection with Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis’s investigation include pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark, Trump campaign official Mike Roman, lawyer Robert Cheeley, former Georgia GOP chair and fake elector David Shafer, fake elector Shawn Still, pastor Stephen Lee, Black Voices for Trump leader Harrison Floyd, publicist Trevian Kutti, lawyer Ray Smith, and three officials connected to the Coffee County voting-systems breach: Cathy Latham, Scott Hall and Misty Hampton.
“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 favor of Trump,” the indictment reads. “That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity in Fulton County, Georgia, elsewhere in the State of Georgia, and in other states.”
All 19 of the defendants are facing racketeering charges.
Prosecutors allege that individuals involved in the efforts “engaged in various related criminal activities including, but not limited to, false statements and writings, impersonating a public officer, forgery, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, computer theft, computer trespass, computer invasion of privacy, conspiracy to defraud the state, acts involving theft, and perjury.” The indictment says 161 separate acts were undertaken to advance the “criminal conspiracy.”
The alleged “criminal enterprise” operated in Fulton County, Ga., but also in other areas, including Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Washington, D.C., according to the indictment.
Willis said during a press conference on Monday evening that the defendants will have until noon on Friday, August 25 to surrender. The district attorney said prosecutors plan to seek a trial date within six months.
Willis’s investigation, which began in early 2021, centered on alleged efforts from Trump and his allies to pressure election officials, and a plan to put forward fake electors. The investigation was launched shortly after Trump called Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger and pressured him to “find” the votes needed to flip the state in his favor. Trump said as recently as last week that it was a “perfect phone call.”
Trump’s campaign put out a statement calling Willis a “rabid partisan” shortly after the grand jury approved the indictment.
“The timing of this latest coordinated strike by a biased prosecutor in an overwhelmingly Democrat jurisdiction not only betrays the trust of the American people, but also exposes true motivation driving their fabricated accusations. They could have brought this two and half years ago, yet they chose to do this for election interference reasons in the middle of President Trump’s successful campaign,” the statement said.
“These activities by Democrat leaders constitute a grave threat to American democracy and are direct attempts to deprive the American people of their rightful choice to cast their vote for President. Call it election interference or election manipulation—it is a dangerous effort by the ruling class to suppress the choice of the people. It is un-American and wrong,” the campaign added.
A spokeswoman for Clark, the former DOJ official charged in the indictment, said in a statement that the Fulton County district attorney is “exceeding her powers by inserting herself into the operations of the federal government to go after Jeff.”
On Sunday, CNN reported on text messages and other communications obtained by prosecutors in the Georgia probe that purportedly connect members of the former president’s legal team with a January 2021 voting-systems breach.
“Just landed back in DC with the Mayor huge things starting to come together! Most immediately, we were just granted access — by written invitation! — to Coffee County’s systems. Yay!” reads one message from January 1, 2021, according to CNN. The message was sent in a group chat of colleagues from Sullivan Strickler, a law firm used by Trump’s team to review the voting systems in Coffee County, a rural Georgia county that Trump won by 70 percent.
“The mayor” appears to refer to Trump’s then-lawyer, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.
That “written invitation” was reportedly authored by former Coffee County elections official Misty Hampton, who falsely told the Trump team in the days after the election that Dominion voting machines could “very easily” change votes from one candidate to another. A Trump campaign official asked Hampton in an email to “obtain as much information as possible” about the voting situation in the county.
Hampton and elections official Cathy Latham ultimately appeared to help the Trump team access the Coffee County voting system, according to messages obtained by CNN. Surveillance footage reportedly shows Latham allowing unauthorized visitors to access the voting systems.
The indictment is the former president’s fourth in four months. He is already facing four felony counts as a result of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election, as well as another 42 felony counts stemming from Smith’s separate investigation into the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.
Before that, Trump was indicted in Manhattan on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with a hush-money payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels.
While Trump could potentially pardon himself if he were to be convicted in the federal cases and were also reelected president, he would have no such power to pardon himself in a state-level case. In Georgia, pardons can only be granted five years after the completion of a sentence, according to the New York Times. The report notes that getting a sentence commuted requires the approval of a state panel.