Georgia Grand Jury Indicts in Trump 2020 Election Case
Former President Donald Trump and Co-Defendants Indicted in Georgia
ATLANTA—Former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants were indicted by a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, on Monday evening in relation to his efforts to dispute the 2020 election results in the state.
The 98-page indictment (pdf) lists President Trump as the first defendant, accusing him of 13 charges, including violation of the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) act, solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree, and conspiracy to commit filing of false documents.
Alongside the former president, 18 others were indicted, including his former attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, as well as his former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
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Each of the defendants faced a number of charges but were all charged on the RICO act. A total of 40 charges were filed in the case.
Those 13 counts against President Trump correspond precisely with the charges listed in a document that Reuters news service reported earlier in the day. The outlet reported that a document listing those charges was briefly posted on the Georgia court’s website on Aug. 14.
However, later in the day, Reuters also reported: “The [clerk of courts’] office described what it called ‘a fictitious document that has been circulated online’ without specifying whether it was the one listing criminal charges against Trump. A spokesperson for the clerk did not respond to a request for further detail.”
Likewise, The Epoch Times sought clarification from the court spokesman but received no response.
President Trump’s campaign, in a statement issued at around 10 p.m. ET, decried the case as another attempt to interfere with the former president’s third run for the Oval Office.
“Like Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, Deranged Jack Smith, and New York AG Letitia James, Fulton County, GA’s radical Democrat District Attorney Fani Willis is a rabid partisan who is campaigning and fundraising on a platform of prosecuting President Trump through these bogus indictments,” the statement read, referring to the three other indictments targeting the former president brought by Special Counsel Smith and Manhattan District Attorney Bragg.
Ms. Willis launched a new fundraising website for her political endeavors late last week, just before the grand jury’s decision was expected.
The Trump campaign questioned the timing of the indictment stemming from incidents that occurred nearly three years ago.
“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. All of these corrupt Democrat attempts will fail,” the Trump campaign said.
Three of the four indictments occurred in overwhelmingly Democrat cities: Washington, New York, and, now, Atlanta. One case is proceeding in Palm Beach County, Florida, but a Washington grand jury was involved in that investigation.
“They are taking away President Trump’s First Amendment right to free speech, and the right to challenge a rigged and stolen election that the Democrats do all the time,” the campaign added.
Alina Habba, an attorney who serves as a legal spokeswoman for President Trump, told Newsmax that she expects multiple defendants to be indicted in this case. However, she says that knowledge is based on “leaks coming out of Georgia.” But, she said she had no specific information. “I”m on standby … it doesn’t matter if you represent the president, or if you’re a journalist, you won’t get anything until they’re ready to leak it.”
She also said she had spoken with President Trump recently and wants people to know: “He is resilient. He is strong. And he really loves this country. So I’m sorry that you are trying to break him down … But he is not the right guy to try and do that to. He is really unbreakable. When it comes to his love for this country, he’s not going to stop fighting.”
In the weeks and months leading to his indictments, the former president has railed against the investigations and resulting charges. He has denounced the accusations as an unethical and possibly illegal “election interference” attempt to bolster his Democratic opponent, President Joe Biden, in his bid to retain the presidency.
President Trump contends that President Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ), and other Democrat foes including Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis have timed the charges to wound his candidacy in the thick of his campaign—accusations they deny. But despite this, the former president has enjoyed a boost in popularity. He attributes this to a backlash against prosecutions that he has maintained are politically motivated.
2020 Election
The Georgia charges come more than 2 1/2 years after Ms. Willis launched an investigation of accusations that President Trump and his allies may have criminally interfered with the state’s election results.
President Trump has continually disputed the election results in Georgia and other states ever since the election. Concerns about election integrity have dogged the Peach State in the past, particularly in Fulton County.
In December 2020, a month after the election, he had asked Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to convene a special legislative session to overturn the election results; Gov. Kemp rebuffed that request and also said he lacked the authority to order an audit of absentee ballots, as the president had requested.
Interest in investigating President Trump’s dispute over the Georgia election results peaked after reports revealed the contents of a phone call between President Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021. During the call, President Trump said: “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more that we have because we won the state.”
Much debate has swirled around the intent and meaning of President Trump’s statements during that call.
Mainstream media outlets often characterize the conversation as one in which the president “demanded” or “pressured” officials to concoct a revised vote tally to benefit him.
Mr. Raffensperger told CBS News that he felt that the president and his team were attempting to intimidate him into taking certain actions.
But President Trump’s spokespersons suggested that Mr. Raffensperger was getting defensive over the president’s criticisms of his work as Georgia’s top elections official.
During the call, President Trump made specific allegations of problems that he believed warranted further investigation, and which would have exceeded the small number of ballots he needed to win the election.
The president said he believed that up to 300,000 ballots “were dropped mysteriously into the rolls,” and he thought that fraudulent signatures may have been placed on the ballots.
There also were 4,502 “voters who voted but who weren’t on the voter registration list,” plus “18,325 vacant-address voters,” the president said. He also alleged that there were 4,925 out-of-staters who voted improperly, along with 2,326 votes tied to absentee ballots that were sent to vacant addresses.
On Jan. 6, 2021, a “Stop the Steal” protest of the election results culminated in the breach of the U.S. Capitol, intensifying criticism of President Trump and his insistence that the election was stolen or “rigged.”
Democrats in Congress proceeded to impeach him, attempting to hold him responsible for the violence that broke out. He was acquitted.
Trump’s Concerns Regarding Georgia
Later that year, on Sept. 17, 2021, President Trump sent a letter to Mr. Raffensperger, telling him that large-scale voter fraud was still being reported in Georgia. President Trump said he was enclosing a report of 43,000 absentee ballots that were counted in DeKalb County, Georgia, despite lacking chain of custody documentation.
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