Indictment of Donald Trump and Top Allies for Attempts to Overturn 2020 Presidential Election Results in Georgia
Key Highlights :
The former President of the United States, Donald Trump, and his top allies, including his attorney Rudy Giuliani, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, were indicted on Monday, July 19th, 2021, on felony charges in connection with their 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, among others. All were charged with violating Georgia's RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization) act.
The indictment handed up to the judge around 9 PM and made public just before 11 PM, charged Trump with felony racketeering and numerous conspiracy charges. The racketeering charge carries a sentence of five to twenty years, while a conspiracy conviction can result in a minimum sentence of one year in prison with a variable maximum sentence. The indictment stated that “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 also focused 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 the office of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in the past few months, according to court filings.
Willis said at a late-night news conference that arrest warrants have been issued for all of the defendants and each has until August 25th to voluntarily surrender. Willis said she intends to try all 19 defendants together. The indictment was handed up by a grand jury hearing evidence in Willis' investigation into whether Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 presidential election.
Among the incidents cited in the indictment was Trump’s January 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. The indictment also states that 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 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, there are 30 unindicted co-conspirators. Witnesses and evidence were examined by a special grand jury convened by Willis last year, and the panel heard from 75 witnesses, including Raffensperger and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.
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. Trump has accused Willis of “election interference” by proceeding with the probe while he’s running for president.
This is the fourth time Trump 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. 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.
This indictment is yet another chapter in the ongoing saga of Donald Trump and his allies’ attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. It remains to be seen what the outcome of these cases will be, and how it will affect Trump’s chances of running for president again in 2024.
