Trump and 18 co-defendants charged with racketeering in Georgia 2020 election probe
Charges in the sprawling indictment include racketeering and conspiracy.Aug. 14, 2023, 8:38 PM CDT / Updated Aug. 14, 2023, 11:20 PM CDT
By Blayne Alexander, Charlie Gile, Katherine Doyle and Dareh Gregorian
ATLANTA — Former President Donald Trump and top allies including his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and a top former Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, were indicted Monday on felony charges in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.
The sweeping 41-count indictment also names lawyers John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis and Ray Smith and several others. All were charged with violating Georgia's RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization) act.
In an indictment handed up to the judge around 9 p.m. and made public just before 11 p.m., Trump was charged with felony racketeering and numerous conspiracy charges, court filings show.
The racketeering charge carries a sentence of five to 20 years, while a conspiracy conviction can result in a minimum sentence of one year in prison with a variable maximum sentence.
"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 says.
Trump has denied all wrongdoing, as did Giuliani hours before the indictment was made public. Eastman, Meadows, Chesebro, Ellis and Smith all did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Willis said at a late-night news conference that arrest warrants have been issued for all of the defendants and each has until Aug. 25th to voluntarily surrender.
Willis said she intends to try all 19 defendants together.
A grand jury hearing evidence in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' investigation into whether former President Donald Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 presidential election returned the indictment earlier Monday night.
It’s the fourth time the former president has been indicted in the last four and a half months, and the second time he’s been charged with trying to interfere with the election in the past two weeks.
The charges come after a sprawling two-year investigation by Willis into whether Trump and his allies “coordinated attempts to unlawfully alter the outcome of the 2020 elections.”
Among the incidents cited in the new indictment was Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021, phone call to Georgia’s top elections official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, urging him to “find” the votes needed for Trump to overtake Joe Biden and claim victory in the state.
Trump has called that phone call “perfect.”
The indictment also focuses on the so-called fake electors — people who signed a certificate falsely declaring that Trump won Georgia in the 2020 election and that they were the state’s official electors. A number of the bogus electors struck immunity deals with Willis’ office in the past few months, court filings show. Through the indictment, prosecutors number at least 19 unindicted co-conspirators, including 13 who are listed as having allegedly participated in the fake elector plot.
"The false documents were intended to disrupt and delay the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021, in order to unlawfully change the outcome of the November 3, 2020, presidential election in favor of Donald Trump," the indictment said.
The indictment lays out the plot chronologically, listing various efforts by Trump and the alleged co-conspirators to overturn the results in the state, and says that in addition to those who’ve been charged, that there are 30 unindicted co-conspirators.
Willis convened a special grand jury to question witnesses and examine evidence in the case last year. The panel heard from 75 witnesses.
Raffensperger and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who’d also been pressured by Trump and his allies to alter the outcome of the 2020 election, testified before the panel as well. Raffensperger and Kemp are Republicans.
Trump has accused Willis of "election interference" by proceeding with the probe while he's running for president.
The case is the fourth time Trump, the current front-runner in the polls for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, has been indicted on criminal charges since late March.
He was first charged by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to his role in hush money payments toward the end of his 2016 presidential campaign. He’s pleaded not guilty in that case, which is scheduled to go to trial next March.
In June, Trump was hit with a 37-count federal indictment in Florida alleging he illegally held on to and mishandled highly sensitive national security information.
He’s pleaded not guilty in that case, which he also maintains is politically motivated. The documents case is tentatively scheduled to go to trial in May of next year.
The federal prosecutor in the documents case, special counsel Jack Smith, indicted Trump earlier this month on charges of conspiring to defraud the U.S. and trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of presidential power to Biden. A trial date has not been set. Trump has pleaded not guilty.
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