Donald Trump criminally indicted in Georgia for efforts to overturn 2020 election

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Donald Trump and 18 of his associates have been criminally indicted with racketeering in Georgia over a sweeping attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss, the fourth set of charges the former president has faced in as many months and the second related to this attempt to illegally cling to power.

A grand jury in Atlanta, at the behest of district attorney Fani Willis, laid 41 charges – including 13 against Mr. Trump directly – on Monday evening. The first case to charge Mr. Trump’s alleged co-conspirators in the election plot, the indictment also levies criminal counts against former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark, and lawyers John Eastman, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell.

Ms. Willis, speaking with reporters shortly before midnight, said Mr. Trump and his associates formed “a criminal enterprise” to “accomplish the illegal goal of allowing Donald J. Trump to seize the presidential term of office beginning Jan. 20, ‘21.”

She said the grand jury had approved arrest warrants for the 19 people indicted and they would have until next Friday, Aug. 25, at noon to turn themselves in. Her aim is to start a trial within six months, she said.

The indictment is centred on a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) charge, which is typically used to prosecute organized crime groups. It alleges that efforts to throw out election results in Georgia and other swing states won by Democratic contender Joe Biden constituted a criminal conspiracy: Mr. Trump and his associates are accused of putting pressure on Republican legislators and other officials to reverse the result of the vote and “find” additional ballots for Mr. Trump; assembling slates of fake electoral college members; tampering with voting equipment in an effort to show that it had rigged the election; and harassing a Georgia elections worker falsely accused of taking part in voter fraud. Throughout it all, they repeatedly lied that Mr. Biden had won because of wide-ranging election fraud.

The charges came at the end of a marathon day for the grand jury, in which prosecutors made their final presentations and then kept the courthouse open late into the evening so jurors could vote on the indictment.

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The state-level charges land the same month as a federal indictment of Mr. Trump for trying to overturn the election and sparking the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. He also faces a federal case over his handling of classified documents and New York state charges related to a hush-money payment to a porn star. In total, the former president faces 91 criminal charges.

These momentous cases – the first time a former U.S. president has been either criminally charged or accused of plotting a coup against his own country’s government – will unfold in parallel to the 2024 presidential election, in which Mr. Trump remains the runaway favourite for the Republican nomination.

In a statement Monday, Mr. Trump’s campaign described Ms. Willis as a “rabid partisan” who was trying to “maximally interfere with the 2024 presidential race.”

The state-level indictments could prove a particular problem for Mr. Trump: Unlike federal charges, which he could have dismissed via a pardon or pressure on the Department of Justice if he returns to the White House, Mr. Trump would have no direct influence over the prosecution in Atlanta. Georgia also typically allows cameras in its courtrooms, which federal and New York courts do not, raising the possibility of a live-televised trial.

Georgia was the closest state in the 2020 presidential election, won by Mr. Biden with a margin of fewer than 12,000 votes. It is also a place in the middle of a political sea change: Once solidly conservative, it has become increasingly competitive because of an influx of new residents to Atlanta and its suburbs.

In a call with Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, in January of 2021, Mr. Trump demanded that he “find 11,780 votes” to overcome Mr. Biden’s victory. Mr. Trump appeared to threaten Mr. Raffensperger and other state officials with criminal prosecution. “That’s a big risk to you,” he said.

In the state, Mr. Trump’s allies put together a slate of fake Republican electors to substitute for Georgia’s actual electors, who were supporting Mr. Biden. In Coffee County, Ms. Powell and local supporters of Mr. Trump tampered with voting machines supplied by Canadian-owned Dominion Voting Systems, which they alleged without evidence had been used to change Republican votes to Democratic ones. The former president’s operatives are also accused of putting pressure on Ruby Freeman, an election worker, to falsely confess to helping rig the counting of ballots.

The actions in Georgia were part of an effort by Mr. Trump and his associates to reverse Mr. Biden’s victory in several key swing states. The plan was to have state legislatures, members of Congress and then-vice president Mike Pence throw out the election results and accept the slates of fake electors to tilt the electoral college to Mr. Trump.

The Georgia indictment lists a series of White House meetings and phone calls Mr. Trump had with Republican legislators in several states, including Arizona, Pennsylvania and Michigan, as well as Georgia Attorney-General Chris Carr, to press them to help him reverse the election result. The indictment also includes Mr. Trump’s pressure on Mr. Pence and his efforts to have the federal justice department, through Mr. Clark, cajole Georgia into overturning Mr. Biden’s victory.

When most Republican officials refused to go along with the plan, Mr. Trump assembled his supporters in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, and told them to descend on the Capitol as lawmakers were gathering to certify Mr. Biden’s victory.

John Lauro, one of the former president’s lawyers, said Mr. Trump’s actions were not criminal because he sincerely believed he was encouraging Mr. Raffensperger to crack down on voter fraud.

“What he was asking for is the secretary of state to act appropriately and find these votes that were counted illegally,” Mr. Lauro said on the TV program Meet the Press. “That was an aspirational ask.”

Mr. Lauro has also said he would defend Mr. Trump on the grounds that he was exercising his right to freedom of speech and expression under the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution by telling people to overturn the election.

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Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law expert at Harvard University, said such a defence would be “ridiculous.” The charges against the former president don’t relate to his speech itself but to the effort to overturn the election that he was promoting.

“The fact that he used words to plot to overthrow the government doesn’t give him a free-speech defence. It’s like holding up a bank with a note that says ‘your money or your life,’ " he said.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that he would release a report on Monday, Aug. 21 detailing “election fraud” in Georgia. There is no evidence to support the former president’s claims of widespread election-rigging in 2020.

Atlanta braced for protests amid the indictment. Other hearings at the courthouse were rescheduled and crowd barriers set up outside. Perhaps because of the late timing of the indictment, however, protesters did not gather on Monday. At Mr. Trump’s previous court hearings, demonstrations have been peaceful.

Ms. Willis has been investigating Mr. Trump for more than two years. A Democrat, she was elected district attorney for Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, in 2020. Ms. Willis has a reputation for prosecuting large, complicated racketeering cases: these include an attempt by Atlanta school officials to inflate test scores and an alleged street gang led by rapper Young Thug.

Mr. Trump’s legal team has repeatedly tried to shut down the Georgia investigation pre-emptively but has so far been denied by the courts.

There is nothing stopping Mr. Trump from running for or serving as president even if charged or convicted and he maintains an enormous polling lead over his rivals in the Republican primaries. He is also polling roughly even with Mr. Biden in a prospective rematch.

So far, much of Mr. Trump’s legal strategy has been to try to delay the cases against him until after the election in hopes of at least ending the federal cases if he gets back into office.