Donald Trump has been charged again this Monday, for the fourth time in four months and in what seems to be the most detailed case so far. A grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, has given the green light to bring charges against the president and 18 of his advisers, for a total of 41 counts related to attempts to rig the results of the 2020 election in that state. , which the former president lost by less than 12,000 votes.
The former president has been charged with 13 counts, including violation of Georgia’s racketeering crime law, conspiring to impersonate an official, pressuring an official to betray the oath of office, and conspiring to produce false documents and conspiring to commit forgery in a “criminal association” in which another thirty people also participated, not included in the statement of charges.
Among those charged in a 98-page charge sheet with Trump are some of his top aides: from his former chief of staff Mark Meadows to his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. Also included is Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Ministry official who was involved in attempts to rig the voting results. Lawyers John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro, authors of a plot to use fake voters to vote for Trump, have also been charged, as well as their campaign adviser Mike Roman.
All of them are accused of extortion, in violation of the Georgia law against organized crime with the “illegal objective of stealing the position” of president to benefit Trump, as explained by the prosecutor responsible for the case, Fani Willis, in a conference press. Willis has specified that she aspires to begin the trial against the former president and the rest of the defendants within a period of six months. Trump and the rest of the defendants have until Friday the 25th to appear voluntarily before the court, she has specified.
“Trump and the rest of the defendants accused in this pleading refused to accept that Trump lost, and knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to illegally change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump,” the indictment document states.
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These charges, the most voluminous so far in Trump’s legal cases, add to the three already pending to complicate what is already promised as an electoral campaign in which the Republican’s legal cases will be a key factor. They are the result of two and a half years of investigation headed by Willis, Fulton County prosecutor and Democratic affiliation. The lawyer opened the case after the sound of a telephone conversation between the then president and the Georgia Secretary of State, Republican Brad Raffensperger, was published on January 2, 201. In that call, the magnate asked to “find” 11,780 votes, one more than those obtained by his rival, Joe Biden, in the State.
Those investigations also led him to examine the fake voter scheme and an attempt to steal data from the electronic voting machine computer system in Republican-leaning Coffee County.
Trump has not been slow to react. After learning of the charges, his lawyers have described the accusation as “shocking and absurd”, and have alluded to the mistaken publication of what appeared to be a draft of the statement on the court’s website, for a few minutes and hours before the grand jury returned its verdict. “This biased presentation has been based on witnesses protecting their own political and personal interests, some of whom organized campaigns promoting their efforts against the defendants and/or benefited from book deals and employment opportunities as a result.” Shortly before, the former president had lashed out at Willis, whom he accused of seeking “maximum interference” in the 2024 presidential campaigns.
The case will be added to the three already dragged by the former tenant of the White House and current Republican candidate to return to the presidency. The first indictment came in March, when the Manhattan prosecutor accused him of accounting falsification in connection with payments to buy the silence of a porn actress about her alleged sexual relationship. In June the second came: special counsel Jack Smith accused him of violating the espionage law by keeping classified documents from his presidential term without permission at his private residence in Florida, Mar-a-Lago. On the 2nd, Smith once again filed charges against him, this time in the most serious case to date: the alleged interference by the president in attempts to alter the 2020 election results.
The Georgia case links to that of the federal special prosecutor, but is limited to attempts to change the results at the polls in that state. Georgia voters supported the Democratic candidate, Biden —the winner of those US elections— in November 2020, although only by 11,779 votes. In the January 2 phone call, Trump is heard saying that “I only want to find 11,780 votes”, one more than those garnered by Biden.
“Incorrect data”
The then outgoing president —he had 18 days left in the White House— pleads, flatters, insists and warns Raffensperger, always with the argument he has maintained since his electoral defeat: that he was the real winner and the official data is the result of a huge tongo. The official did not agree. Biden’s victory had been legitimate. “The data that you handle is incorrect,” Raffensperger replies to Trump in that talk.
The now presidential candidate maintains that he only made “a perfect protest call” when phoning the official, as he declared on Monday on Truth, his social network. The tycoon once again encourages the argument that has been taking shape as he has received accusations after accusations and that has become the basis of his electoral strategy: that all his judicial problems are part of a conspiracy of Democratic politicians and related media to prevent him from returning to the White House and becoming a champion of ordinary Republicans. “Why wasn’t this case filed two and a half years ago? Electoral interference! ”, he protests.
In addition to the phone call to Raffensperger, Willis has also investigated illegal computer access to electronic voting machine systems in a rural Georgia county and a plot to use fake voters in an attempt to capture votes from that swing state, which at that time was emerging as a determinant for the national result of the elections and to defeat Biden.
reject false conspiracies
An indictment in Georgia can lead to additional legal complications for the former president. Trump has hinted that, if he became president again, he would issue a self-pardon to close his case. Or he could name a like-minded person at the head of the Justice Department to shelve the federal indictments. But in the Georgia case, being a state case, he couldn’t do either.
“Not only could he not pardon himself, but the Georgia clemency process means Governor Kemp couldn’t either. There is a panel (that decides the) pardons. It is a more complicated process,” former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti told CNN last Saturday. “Nor could I close the investigation in the same way.”
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