Trump and 18 of his allies charged with trying to rig elections in Georgia

On August 14 in Georgia, Donald Trump and 18 of his allies were charged with trying to reverse Trump's defeat in the state's 2020 election. Prosecutors have used a law commonly associated with organized crime to charge the president, lawyers and other aides with a "criminal enterprise" to hold on to power, reports AP.

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The nearly 100-page indictment details dozens of actions by Trump and his allies to undo his electoral defeat. For example, asking the Georgia Republican Secretary of State to find enough votes to win the state, harassing an election commissioner who faced false allegations of fraud, and trying to convince Georgia lawmakers to ignore the will of the voters and appoint a new electoral slate from the Trump-friendly Electoral College. .

Persons involved in the case

One particularly brazen episode also features a conspiracy involving one of his lawyers. He tried to access voting machines in a rural Georgia county and steal data from the company that makes the machines. “The indictment alleges that instead of complying with the legal process to challenge the election, the defendants engaged in criminal racketeering to overturn the results of the presidential election in Georgia,” Fulton County District Attorney Fanny Willis, whose prosecutors filed the case, later said.

The indictment conjures up the underworld of mafia bosses and gang leaders. It accuses Trump, his former chief of staff, Trump's lawyers and the former mayor of New York of being members of a "criminal organization" that has operated in Georgia and other states.

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Those accused include former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Trump's lawyer and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Trump administration Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who supported Trump's efforts to undo his Georgia election defeat. Charges were also filed against other lawyers who supported legally questionable ideas to overturn the results, including John Eastman, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro.

Willis said the defendants would be allowed to voluntarily surrender by noon on August 25. She also said she plans to seek a trial date within six months and that she intends to try the defendants collectively.

The indictment completes a series of criminal cases - four in five months in different cities. This can be discouraging for anyone, let alone someone like Trump, who simultaneously balances the roles of a criminal defendant and a presidential candidate.

The Georgia case overlaps with Trump's recent indictment in Washington, including efforts he and his allies made to disrupt the counting of electoral votes at the Capitol. But the new case has 19 defendants, a distinction from the narrower case brought by special prosecutor Jack Smith, which so far only names Trump as a defendant.

Trump's Reaction

A cryptic publication of a list of criminal charges that were to be filed against Trump after the meeting appeared on the county's website. Reuters, which released a copy of the document, said the statement was quickly removed. The oversight was quickly attacked by Trump's legal team to undermine the integrity of the investigation.

Trump and his allies, who have characterized the investigation as politically motivated, immediately seized on the apparent error, claiming the trial was rigged.

In a statement following the indictment, Trump's legal team said "the events that unfolded today were shocking and absurd, from the leaking of an alleged and premature indictment to witnesses testifying to the district attorney being unable to give any explanation for what happened."

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Lawyers said the prosecutors presenting the case "relied on witnesses who have personal and political interests, some of whom campaigned to advertise their efforts against the defendants."

Some details

Many of the 161 acts of Trump and his associates outlined in the Georgia indictment have already received widespread public attention. For example, the January 2, 2021, call in which Trump urged Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" the 11 votes needed to reverse his electoral defeat. Prosecutors said the call violated a Georgia law that prohibits soliciting a public official to break an oath.

Giuliani, meanwhile, is accused of perjury to lawmakers. He claimed that more than 96 mail-in ballots were counted in Georgia, despite there being no record of them being returned to the district election committee. He also claimed that Michigan voting machines erroneously recorded 000 votes for Biden, which were actually cast for Trump.

In a statement, Giuliani did not directly respond to any of the allegations, but called the indictment "an affront to American democracy" and "just the next chapter in a book of lies."

Also charged are individuals who, according to prosecutors, helped Trump and his allies in Georgia to influence and intimidate campaign workers.

Prosecutors charged one man, Steven Cliffgard Lee, with allegedly coming to Freeman's home "with the intention of influencing her testimony." Last year, Freeman and her daughter Shay Moss testified to Congress about how Trump and his allies seized on November 2020 CCTV footage to accuse both women of electoral fraud. These accusations were quickly debunked, but were widely circulated in the conservative media. Both black women received death threats within months of the election.

Powell and several co-defendants are also accused of hacking into voting machines in Coffee County, Georgia and stealing data belonging to Dominion Voting Systems, a manufacturer of voting machines. The firm has long been the focus of conspiracy theories.

Trump allies have targeted Coffee County in search of evidence to support their theories of widespread election fraud, allegedly copying data and software, according to evidence released by the Congressional Unrest Committee on Jan. 6.

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In addition to two election-related cases, Trump faces a separate federal charge of illegal possession of classified documents, as well as a New York state case accusing him of falsifying business records.

As the indictments mount, Trump -- the leading Republican nominee for president in 2024 -- frequently cites his reputation as the only president to face criminal charges. He campaigns and raises funds speculating on these topics, portraying himself as a victim of Democratic prosecutors trying to catch him.

Republican allies again quickly rallied to Trump's defense, calling the cases against him a desperate scam.

As ForumDaily wrote earlier:

• On January 6, 2021, the US Congress met in Washington, D.C. to approve the results of the presidential election. At the same time numerous supporters of the incumbent US President Donald Trump crowded under the Capitol building to protest against these results. The situation quickly escalated and turned into chaos.
• House of Representatives and Senate confirmed Joe Biden's win early Thursday morning January 7. During the protests near the Capitol, at least 4 people died, there were victims. The chaos near the Capitol was condemned by the leaders of many countries.
• US President Donald Trump returns to Twitter after 12 hours of blocking his account and posted a video in which he severely condemned the people who broke into the Capitol, and also admitted defeat for the first time in the elections.
• This assault resulted in Trump's second impeachment trial launched.
• 45th US President Donald Trump files lawsuit in D.C. court against the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Uprising and the National Archives to keep records made during his presidency secret, demanding executive privileges.

• On August 8, 2022, the FBI issued a warrant for search at the resort Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of an investigation into the handling of presidential documents, including classified documents that may have been delivered there.
• FBI agents seized secret recordings from the home of the 45th US President Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago, Florida during an unprecedented search. Some of them have been marked as top secret.
• In this case, the US Department of Justice is investigating, Did the 45th President of the United States Donald Trump violate several federal laws related to the handling of classified documents. But that's not all: several other departments also opened cases against the 45th president.
• In addition, the FBI released the agent's testimony, which became the reason for the search of Trump's estate.
• On June 9, the U.S. Department of Justice released an indictment against Trump for mishandling classified documents after he left office in the White House - he faces 400 years in prison.
• About who in the United States has access to top-secret documents and how unique are the papers that Trump took with him to Mar-a-Lago, read in our material.

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