Former US President Donald Trump, 18 Others Indicted In Georgia
Former President Donald Trump and 18 others have been indicted by a grand jury in Georgia on a total 41 criminal charges stemming from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s long-running investigation into their attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in that state.
Trump has been charged with 13 counts including a charge of violating Georgia’s RICO Act, or Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations.
Prosecutors charged 18 people in addition to Trump, including Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, and lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman.
Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis said that all 19 defendants would be tried at the same time and that she would be asking for a trial within the next six months.
Willis said she was “giving the defendants the opportunity to voluntarily surrender no later than Friday the 25th day of August at noon.” This is the normal procedure. Trump will (most likely) arrive, be processed, and will plead not guilty.
When asked about accusations that the charges are politically motivated, Willis said, “I make decisions in this office based on facts and the law”.
After the Georgia indictment, Trump is now facing four separate indictments at the same time that he’s running for president in 2024.
The charging document in Georgia unsealed Monday offers a sweeping indictment of Trump’s conduct after the election, documenting a breathtaking number of ways that Trump tried to overturn his election loss to Joe Biden.
The document includes Trump’s infamous phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger when he asked Raffensperger to “find” the votes he needed to win the state, the fake elector scheme and a September 2021 letter he sent to Raffensperger again urging him to decertify the state’s 2020 vote.
Trump’s attorneys slammed the indictment, saying in a statement that the grand jury presentation was “one sided” and the events of Monday “shocking and absurd.”
Still, the total number of criminal charges against Trump across the cases he’s facing is staggering: He’s facing 91 charges across the four indictments in all.
