Trump, Giuliani, Sidney Powell Among Many Indicted by Georgia Jury

A grand jury in Fulton County, Ga., has indicted Donald Trump and several of his associates on charges involving attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state, which Joe Biden won.

The indictment, released Monday night in Atlanta, charges 19 people with a total of 41 felony counts of criminal behavior. Those indicted include Trump; his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows; a former Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark; lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, Ray Smith; and several others. The document mentions 30 unindicted co-conspirators, who are not named.

“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 states.

Each is charged with violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The charges against Trump and others also include a variety of conspiracy charges, solicitation of false statements by public officials, harassment of an election worker, filing false documents, and more. The indictment charges Trump with 13 counts of criminal conduct, bringing the total counts against him to 91.

Some of the charges relate to Trump famously asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find the votes Trump needed to win Georgia and asserting that there was widespread voter fraud in the state, such as dead people voting. Count 28 charges Trump and Meadows with solicitation of false statements by a public officer in the phone call in which Trump asked Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”

Trump and Meadows “unlawfully solicited, requested, and importuned” Raffensperger “to engage in conduct constituting the felony offense of Violation of Oath by Public Officer ... by unlawfully altering, unlawfully adjusting, and otherwise unlawfully influencing the certified returns for presidential electors for the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia,” according to the indictment.

The indictment further notes, “Members of the enterprise, including several of the Defendants, falsely accused Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman of committing election crimes.” They repeated these accusations to state legislators and other Georgia officials, “traveled from out of state to harass Freeman, intimidate her, and solicit her to falsely confess to election crimes that she did not commit,” it says.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who led the investigation, spoke briefly to reporters after the indictment was released. “The indictment alleges that rather than by abide by Georgia’s legal process for election challenges, the defendants engaged in a criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia’s presidential election results,” she said. She pointed out that these are charges, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

The defendants have until August 25 to turn themselves in. Willis said she plans to schedule a trial within six months and plans to try all defendants together. They can petition to be tried individually, but “courts tend to frown on that, because it requires more resources to hold separate trials,” NBC News reports.