(Updates with statements by prosecutor Fani Willis)
Washington, Aug 14 (EFE).- A grand jury from Georgia (USA) indicted former President Donald Trump (2017-2021) on Monday for allegedly trying to manipulate the results of the 2020 elections in that state, where the Democrat Joe Biden won by a narrow margin.
Trump was charged along with 18 other people. Among those charged with the former president are his former personal lawyer and former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, and his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, among others.
According to the nearly 100-page charging document, the former president faces 13 charges, including soliciting a public official to violate his oath or conspiring to impersonate a public official.
But the main charge on which the indictment rests, and which all defendants face, is that of violating the law against corrupt Georgia organizations, and which, if confirmed, requires a prison sentence to be served.
In a press conference after the news was made public, the prosecutor in charge of the case, Fani Willis, explained that the grand jury made its decision after learning the information collected over two and a half years by the prosecutors in charge of the investigation.
The indictment charges “19 individuals with violating Georgia laws with a criminal conspiracy to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election in this state,” according to Willis.
The prosecutor assured that her intention is for the 19 defendants to be tried at the same time, and although she did not give an estimate of the date on which this trial could be held, she did confirm that her office will try to make it happen in the next six months.
He also emphasized that Trump, like the rest of the defendants, is innocent until proven otherwise.
Willis explained that arrest warrants have been issued against all the defendants, and that they have until Friday, August 25 to “turn themselves in voluntarily.”
The decision, which was released late in the day, represents the fourth criminal charge faced by the ex-president in recent months.
According to leaks about the investigations of the case published by the media, the origin of the investigation was a call between Trump and the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, in which the ex-president allegedly asked him to “seek” the votes that were necessary to undo Biden’s victory in the state.
Before the indictment was officially released, the former president lashed out at Willis on his social network, Truth Social, and denied accusations that he tried to rig the election results in the state.
“I made a perfect phone call in protest, why didn’t they file the charges two years ago?” the former president wrote.
In recent months, various Trump allies have gone before the grand jury to testify, such as Giuliani or Raffensperger himself, who was responsible for ratifying the electoral results in Georgia.
This new indictment comes after Trump was indicted by a Washington, DC grand jury on four counts for allegedly trying to overturn the result of the 2020 US presidential election, an attempt that culminated in the January 6 assault on the Capitol. 2021.EFE
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