Former President Donald Trump and top allies including his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and a top former Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, were indicted Monday on felony charges in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.
The sweeping 41-count indictment also names lawyers John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis and Ray Smith and several others.
A grand jury hearing evidence in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ investigation into whether former President Donald Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 presidential election returned the indictment earlier Monday night.
It’s the fourth time the former president has been indicted in the last four and a half months, and the second time he’s been charged with trying to interfere with the election in the past two weeks.
The charges come after a sprawling two-year investigation by Willis into whether Trump and his allies coordinated attempts to unlawfully alter the outcome of the 2020 elections.”
Trump has denied any wrongdoing, and he has accused Willis of “election interference” by proceeding with the probe while he’s running for president.
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Officials with the Fulton County Court handed the indictment to Judge Robert McBurney.
The case, brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, adds to the legal woes to Trump, the front runner in the race for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.
Over the course of a two-year investigation, Willis has examined Trump’s efforts to pressure state leaders to reverse his 11,000-vote loss to Democrat Joe Biden and organize a slate of illegitimate electors to undermine the process of formalizing Biden’s victory. She has also looked into an attempt by Trump’s allies to manipulate voting equipment in rural Coffee County.
Willis has said she might invoke a racketeering law used to go after organized crime organizations.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing, and accuses Willis, an elected Democrat, of being politically motivated.
Trump, 77, has been criminally indicted three times so far this year, including once by U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith on charges of trying to overturn his election defeat.
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He has long dismissed the many investigations, including two impeachments, he has faced in his years in politics as a politically motivated “witch hunt.”
Willis could invoke the racketeering law to bring criminal charges against allies who worked with Trump to reverse his defeat.
Prosecutors interviewed 75 witnesses, including Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, who asked the state’s top election official to examine absentee ballots in Democratic-leaning areas after Trump’s defeat, and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who urged lawmakers not to certify Biden’s victory.
Other Republicans, like Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, resisted the effort to change the outcome.
The case stems from a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call in which Trump urged Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to reverse his narrow loss. Raffensperger declined to do so.
Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol four days later on Jan. 6 in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent lawmakers from certifying Biden’s victory.
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Georgia, once reliably Republican, has emerged as one of a handful of politically competitive states that can determine the outcome of presidential elections.
Trump persists in falsely claiming he won the November 2020 election although dozens of court cases and state probes have found no evidence to support his claim.
His legal woes have not hurt his political prospects so far as his lead over Republican rivals has grown in recent months, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.
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