https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dona ... -2mq7s8d2t
Donald Trump and several allies were indicted in Georgia last night, charged with launching a “criminal enterprise” to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election in the state, after demanding that officials “find” the extra votes to reverse President Biden’s victory.
In the indictment issued by district attorney Fani Willis in Fulton County after a two-year investigation, Trump, 77, was accused of racketeering, forgery and a string of other election crimes as he and associates pressured Georgia officials to overturn his narrow defeat to Biden. The indictment, which hinges on laws originally designed to prosecute the mafia, could prompt the first televised criminal trial of a former president in US history.
Prosecutors issued 11 charges against Trump, two weeks after he pleaded not guilty to federal charges related to his attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat to Biden. The former president now faces 89 criminal charges as he campaigns to take back the White House in a potential rematch with Biden at the 2024 general election. Trump already faces 78 charges in three other cases that are expected to go to trial in New York, Miami and Washington next year. He is the only former US president ever to be charged with a crime.
[Willis also issued charges against 18 other Trump allies and associates, including his former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who assisted the multi-pronged campaign to undo the defeat in Georgia.
In a press conference last night, Willis called on Trump and the other defendants to surrender for an arraignment in Fulton County by “no later than noon” on Friday. The district attorney said she intends to try all 19 defendants together and would seek to bring the case to trial within six months.
/Challenging Trump’s allegation of political bias, Willis said: “I make decisions in this office based on the facts and the law. The law is completely nonpartisan.”
The 98-page indictment laid out the sprawling “enterprise” by Trump and his inner circle to subvert the election result in Georgia, the crucial battleground state that Biden won by fewer than 12,000 votes. Prosecutors alleged that the former president’s team lied to Georgia officials, harassed election workers, breached voting machines and enlisted allies to serve as fake electors to declare the state for Trump.
“Trump and the other defendants…refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and wilfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favour of Trump,” the indictment said.
Trump has vehemently denied all the charges against him, claiming that they are part of a collective “witch hunt” orchestrated by Biden and the Democrats to thwart his return to the White House at next year’s presidential election. In a statement last night, Trump denounced Willis as a “left-wing prosecutor orchestrating this latest witch hunt for Crooked Joe.”
Earlier on his Truth Social platform yesterday, Trump railed at the investigation in Georgia and repeated his claim that the election was stolen from him.
“I DID NOT TAMPER WITH THE ELECTION,” the former president said. “THE PEOPLE THAT TAMPERED WITH IT WERE THE ONES THAT RIGGED IT.”
The battle for Georgia was one of the most hotly contested of the 2020 election. Biden defeated Trump by just 11,779 votes to take the state’s 16 Electoral College votes. Trump had won Georgia in 2016 and flipping the state played a key role in Biden’s overall victory.
Trump’s aggressive bid to overturn that defeat first came to public attention when a recording emerged of a phone call in which the then-president and pressured Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, to “find” the votes to swing the result his way.
“So look, all I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.” He warned Raffensperger that he was taking “a big risk” if he did not bow to the president’s demand. Raffensperger insisted that the result in Georgia was accurate and refused to intervene.
The latest indictment saw racketeering added to the mounting catalogue of charges against the former president. Trump was charged under Georgia’s so-called Rico law, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act, which was modelled on federal legislation and designed to help take down the Atlanta mafia.
Defendants can be charged under the Rico law, if prosecutors can show that there is an organisation of people who commit crimes together on a recurring basis. Willis, 52, has used the legislation in previous prosecutions.
Ahead of the indictment, Trump has launched a renewed barrage of attacks and smears against Willis, who is black, calling her “racist” and making unfounded claims that she had an affair with a gang leader she was prosecuting. Willis has said she has received threats and racist abuse, referring to her as the N-word and a “Jim Crow Democrat *****”. She urged her colleagues to work remotely as the decision to charge Trump has loomed, fearing a backlash by the former president’s supporters. Security around the Fulton County courthouse has been beefed up recently, with barricades erected around the building.
Biden’s razor-thin victory in Georgia was confirmed by two recounts and then certified by the state’s governor, Brian Kemp, and Raffensperger, both Republicans. Rather than concede, however, the Trump campaign launched a wide-ranging campaign to overturn the result in Georgia, as it did in other swing states won by Biden.
As Trump and his inner circle pressured Georgia state officials to reverse the defeat or block Biden’s victory from being certified, his legal team launched a string of lawsuits making false claims of election fraud. Along with other battleground states, a group of Republican activists was recruited in Georgia to serve as fake electors who would declare Trump the victor in the state. Trump and his allies circulated a video falsely accusing a Georgia election worker of discarding ballots.
Willis, a Democrat, was sworn in as district attorney on January 1, 2021, the day before Trump made his infamous call to Raffensberger. She has spent more than two years investigating the former president’s and his allies’ campaign to overturn his defeat in Georgia.
Trump’s legal team has sought to invalidate the grand jury hearing evidence against the former president and to have Willis disqualified from the investigation. Georgia’s supreme court threw out the motion last month. Prosecutors in Fulton County have interviewed around 75 witnesses over nine months, including senior Georgia officials and some members of Trump’s inner circle. The former president did not testify during the investigation.
The charges in Georgia overlap with those brought by special counsel Jack Smith in a federal indictment earlier this month related to Trump’s sprawling campaign to overturn the 2020 election, culminating in the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Evidence collected by Georgia prosecutors will feed into Smith’s case against the former president in Washington.
Smith charged Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction; and conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted. The allegations include lying repeatedly about mass voter fraud and pressing officials to change results to keep him in power. The most serious charges carry the possibility of 20 years in prison.
Trump faces a further 40 felony charges brought by Smith related to the hoard of classified government documents seized at his Florida home last year and taken from the White House after he left office. Among those charges, the former president is accused of breaching the US Espionage Act. Smith has accused Trump of showing the details of the documents, said to include military and nuclear secrets, to visitors at his private homes.
The former president was also indicted in New York in March over hush money payments made to the porn star Stormy Daniels to conceal an alleged affair with Trump ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Earlier this year, he was also found to be responsible for the sexual assault of writer E Jean Carroll in civil case. Carroll has since sued Trump for defamation over comments he made after being ordered to pay her $5 million in compensation.
Despite his mounting legal troubles, which will see him attending court hearings in four jurisdictions as he campaigns for the White House next year, Trump still retains a commanding lead in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. The former president has used each indictment against him to galvanise his devoted support base and raise millions of dollars in donations.
The Morning Consult poll tracking the Republican race places Trump on 59 per cent among primary voters. His nearest challenger, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, trails on 16 per cent, with the rest of the field in single digits.
The case in Georgia could be the only one of Trump’s forthcoming trials to play out on live television. Unlike federal or Manhattan courts, where the former president appeared for his three previous arraignments, Georgia requires cameras to be allowed into trial proceedings with the approval of the judge.
A court docket presented by the district attorney Fani Willis in Fulton County comes days after Trump pleaded not guilty in a federal court in Washington DC to charges related to attempting to overturn the overall election result.
The new docket suggests that , Trump, 77, will be accused of a range of charges, including racketeering, conspiracy and false statements. The docket has since been removed from the Fulton County court website, and the local district attorney’s office said that no charges had yet been filed against the former president.
The document posted on the court’s website was dated August 14 and named Trump, citing the case as “open,” according to Reuters. It said the two-page document cites the “violation of the Georgia Rico (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations) Act,” “solicitation of violation of oath by public officer,” “conspiracy to commit false statements and writings” and “conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree,” among other charges. The document was then no longer available on the court’s website, with no immediate explanation of why it had been removed.
“The Reuters report that those charges were filed is inaccurate. Beyond that we cannot comment,” a spokesperson for the District Attorney’s office told the news agency.
If an indictment is confirmed, Trump would be a defendant in four separate criminal investigations. He is the only former president ever to be charged in a criminal case.
Trump has denied all of the charges, saying that they are part of a collective witch hunt designed to stop him returning to the White House after next year’s presidential election. In a post on his Truth Social platform yesterday, Trump railed at the investigation, insisting: “I DID NOT TAMPER WITH THE ELECTION.”
Trump had launched a barrage of attacks and smears against Willis, who is black, calling her “racist” and making unfounded claims that she had an affair with a gang leader she was prosecuting. Willis has said that she has received threats and racist abuse in recent days, and security around the Fulton County courthouse has been beefed up.
Despite his mounting legal troubles, Trump retains a commanding lead in polls of Republican candidates for the party’s presidential nomination.
While similar in nature to the federal case in Washington, the indictment presented by Willis in Atlanta is limited to his activities in Georgia.
Biden won Georgia’s 16 Electoral College votes in 2020 beating Trump, who carried the state in 2016, by 11,779 votes. Georgia was one the most hotly contested battles of the 2020 election and flipping it played a significant part in Biden’s overall victory.
After the result was announced, Trump telephoned Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, saying: “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.” The extra votes would have secured the state for Trump. Raffensperger, who was re-elected last year, refused to help.
Evidence collected in the Georgia case will play a significant part in the special prosecutor Jack Smith’s federal case against Trump in Washington.
The nature and scale of the charges differ, however. Trump has been charged under Georgia’s so-called Rico law, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act, which was modelled on federal legislations and designed to help take down the Atlanta mafia.
Defendants can be charged under the Rico law if prosecutors can show that there is an organisation of people who commit crimes together on a recurring basis. Willis, 52, has used the legislation in previous prosecutions.
Last month, Georgia’s supreme court rejected Trump’s bid to halt the investigation. Court records showed that the justices unanimously dismissed a petition, filed by Trump’s lawyers, in which he sought to disqualify Willis and to quash a special grand jury report, compiled this year, that recommended indictments against certain individuals. It has been widely expected for months that Trump would be one of those named in the report.
The report had remained under seal while Willis finalised her investigation. The special panel, which did not have the authority to issue its own indictments, produced the report after interviewing about 75 witnesses over the course of nine months, including some of the state’s top officials and others. Trump was not interviewed as part of the investigation.
The case in Georgia could be the only one of Trump’s forthcoming trials to play out on live television. Unlike federal or Manhattan courts, where he appeared for his previous arraignments, Georgia requires cameras to be allowed into trial proceedings with the approval of the judge. quote]
