Former President Donald Trump was slapped late Monday with charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia — an unprecedented fourth indictment against the 45th commander-in-chief.
He and 18 other defendants including his lawyer Rudy Giuliani were named in the 98-page indictment. According to the indictment unsealed before midnight Tuesday, Trump faces 13 charges related to the 2020 election, including the most serious charge of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO.
“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,” read the indictment. “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.”
The RICO statute carries a five year mandatory minimum sentence. Under Georgia state law, if convicted neither Trump nor anyone else could be pardoned for the crime.
Trump was also charged with making false statements in his now infamous call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the state’s top election official, claiming thousands of dead people voted.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis brought the charges after a two-year probe by a special grand jury.
The Georgia case comes on the heels of Trump’s historic indictment by special counsel Jack Smith on separate charges of seeking to overturn his national election loss to President Biden.
Trump has defended as “perfect” his call demanding that Raffensperger change the vote totals and claims he only intended to ensure the election result was correct.
Trump has repeatedly trashed Willis, calling her a “racist” for targeting him.
“(Willis) … is having an impossible time showing that my ‘PERFECT’ phone call was bad,” he wrote on his social media site.
Following the release of the sealed indictment, the Trump campaign released a statement, characterizing the case built by Willis as politically motivated.
“Ripping a page from Crooked Joe Biden’s playbook, Willis has strategically stalled her investigation to try and maximally interfere with the 2024 presidential race and damage the dominant Trump campaign,” read the statement. “All of these corrupt Democrat attempts will fail.”
Along with ex-New York City Mayor Giuliani, Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and lawyers including John Eastman were reportedly indicted.
The Georgia investigation was launched after Trump phonedRaffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, to demand that he should “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we (need).”
Raffensperger pushed back against Trump, explaining that the state had categorically debunked conspiracy theories about supposed widespread fraud in Biden’s win.
A damning audiotape of the call was released a day later.
Days later, a violent mob of Trump’s extremist supporters stormed the Capitol Building on Jan. 6 in a failed effort to block Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.
The Georgia grand jury wound up investigating the call along with a weekslong push to overturn Trump’s loss in the Peach State.
Trump’s team spread bogus claims about Atlanta election workers rigging votes for Biden and unsuccessfully pushed Republican lawmakers to proclaim him the winner despite losing the certified vote.
The probe also looked at Trump’s scheme to create an alternate slate of fake electors that could have challenged Biden’s real slate for legitimacy in Georgia.
It’s unclear if any of those bogus electors have agreed to cooperate with the probe in hopes of avoiding being charged in the plot.
The panel heard from more than 75 witnesses, including Trump allies like and Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who told the panel that Trump would’ve believed extraterrestrial aliens rigged the election for Biden.
The Georgia case will likely overlap somewhat with special counsel Jack Smith’s case against Trump.
Smith has charged Trump with carrying out a broader effort to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, a scheme that allegedly included the Georgia plan and culminated with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. .
U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan plans to set a date for Trump’s trial in the Jan. 6 case at an Aug. 28 hearing.
He faces a May 2024 trial in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case and a March 2024 trial on New York State charges tied to hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels.
