Donald Trump indicted over efforts to undo 2020 election defeat in Georgia

By Erik Larson, David Voreacos and Zoe Tillman

Donald Trump and some of his closest allies and former top former administration officials were indicted in Atlanta over efforts to undo his 2020 election defeat in Georgia, the fourth criminal case against the former president as he campaigns for the White House.

The sweeping indictment, approved by a grand jury on Monday, charges Trump and 18 other defendants, including former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and former senior Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark.

Trump, 77, was charged with racketeering, which was the central count in the indictment and included 161 specific acts in furtherance of that conspiracy. The racketeering charge is the most serious in terms of penalties, carrying a minimum of five years and up to 20 years in prison, but Trump and other defendants would be expected to face far less time than the top end penalty.

The former president was also charged with false statements and writings, conspiracy to commit forgery, solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer, and filing false documents, among other crimes. The indictment sets the stage for another dramatic arraignment and, presumably, another plea of not guilty by the former president.

The charges by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis come as Trump has a commanding lead in polls over his Republican rivals seeking the GOP presidential nomination next year.

“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.

All of the defendants face the racketeering charge. The 41-count indictment then assigns an array of alleged crimes across the group, ranging from making false statements, soliciting public officials to violate their oaths, forgery, influencing witnesses, computer theft, and perjury.

Willis used the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly referred to as RICO, to charge Trump and Giuliani. RICO charges are typically associated with street gangs and mobsters, but Willis was the lead prosecutor at a trial that used the law to win racketeering convictions against 11 Atlanta public school educators

Willis didn’t limit the scope of the allegations to her home district of Fulton County, alleging that the criminal enterprise she was prosecuting spanned the other battleground states — Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — and Washington

The charges from Willis cover some of the events detailed in the Aug. 1 indictment by US Special Counsel John “Jack” Smith, who accused Trump of conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Trump was previously charged by Smith with mishandling classified documents, and by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg over hush-money payments to a porn star. He pleaded not guilty in all three of those cases.

Crowded Schedule 

The charges by Willis, a Democrat elected in 2020, come as Trump has a commanding lead in polls over his Republican rivals seeking the GOP presidential nomination next year. Trump has attacked President Joe Biden’s Justice Department, as well as Willis and Bragg, claiming they’re prosecuting him to weaken his candidacy. Those attacks have scored with GOP voters and boosted his campaign fundraising.

But this fourth indictment will compound the demands on Trump’s schedule as he campaigns amid trials already scheduled for next year in the hush-money and classified documents cases. Trump is awaiting a trial date in the election interference case by Smith, who accuses him of conspiring to defraud the US by seeking to halt Biden’s certification as president, ultimately leading to an assault on the US Capitol by a mob of Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. 

‘Find 11,780 Votes’

Willis began investigating Trump soon after news surfaced about his phone call on Jan. 2, 2021, to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger demanding he “find 11,780 votes” – or one more than Biden’s margin of victory out of 4.9 million ballots cast in Georgia. On the Raffensperger call, Trump bullied, pleaded and voiced discredited conspiracy theories.

“There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump told the Republican secretary of state. “There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”

Raffensperger pushed back, saying: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”

The Willis investigation was sweeping, examining two months of pressure applied to Georgia election officials. Beyond the Raffensperger call, Trump also phoned Governor Brian Kemp, Attorney General Chris Carr and Georgia’s then-House Speaker David Ralston, who died in November. Raffensperger’s chief investigator Frances Watson also got a call from Trump, who urged her to look for fraud.

Willis has examined 16 Republicans who supported Trump and signed a false certificate saying they were “duly elected and qualified” presidential electors. They met at the State Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, as Democrats convened to cast their electoral college votes for Biden. At least eight Republican electors got immunity from Willis.

‘Ample Evidence’

In testimony to Georgia lawmakers, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani claimed to have “ample evidence” that the election was stolen, that 10,000 dead people voted, and video footage showed election workers counting a “suitcase” of illegal ballots. He said two poll workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, passed USB drives as if they were “vials of heroin or cocaine.” The women were passing a mint, investigators later determined. Freeman filed a defamation suit against Giuliani, who will concede making false statements about the women, court records show.

Freeman, who is Black, received “hundreds of racist, threatening, horrible calls and messages,” she has testified. “When someone as powerful as the president of the United States eggs on a mob, that mob will come.” 

--With assistance from Natalie Choy