Donald Trump and 18 others have been charged in Georgia in connection to an alleged criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results—charges his office say are politically motivated.
On Monday night, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis announced that the former president and his allies are accused of a total of 41 charges, with each defendant accused of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
This is now the fourth indictment Trump has faced this year, bringing the total charges against him to 91. Trump denies all wrongdoing, and has pleaded not guilty to all the accusations against him in the other three cases.
While announcing the charges, Willis, whose office has been investigating alleged 2020 election interference for more than two and a half years, said all 19 suspects engaged in a "criminal racketeering enterprise" to overturn Georgia's presidential election result.
In a statement after the charges were announced, Trump's campaign team accused Willis of being a "rabid partisan" who is seeking a "bogus" indictment against the former president, who is the frontrunner in the 2024 GOP presidential primary.
"Ripping a page from Crooked Joe Biden's playbook, Willis has strategically stalled her investigation to try and maximally interfere with the 2024 presidential race and damage the dominant Trump campaign," the statement added. "All of these corrupt Democrat attempts will fail."
Newsweek has contacted Willis' office for comment and reaction.
What Is Trump Charged With?
Trump now faces 13 charges under the Georgia election probe, the most serious of which being a violation of the state's RICO Act, a statute which is more commonly used to prosecute criminal gangs. Anyone found guilty of violating RICO in Georgia faces a minimum custodial sentence of five years, and a maximum of 20 years.
Trump is also accused of solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer; conspiracy to impersonate a public officer; conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree; false statements and writings and filing false documents.
The accusations cover Trump's January 2021 phone call with Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which the former president asked him to "find" the 11,870 votes needed to beat President Joe Biden at the last election.
Trump is also accused of being involved in a scheme to submit a group of 16 fake electors in Georgia to falsely declare that the former president had beaten Biden in the state.
Who Else Has Been Charged?
Willis' office also brought forward charges against 18 other people alongside Trump and announced she intends to prosecute them together.
The other defendants include Trump's former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Trump's former attorneys and advisers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and John Eastman, and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark,
Others who have been charged along with the former president include three people accused of harassing Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman— Stephen Cliffgard Lee, Harrison Floyd and Trevian Kutti.
There are also three Georgia Republicans who are accused of being among the group of fake electors who tried to declare Trump the winner of the state at the last election: Former GOP Chairman David Shafer, former GOP Finance Chairman Shawn Still and Cathleen Alston Latham.
It was previously reported that at least eight of the 16 people who were under investigation over the fake electoral plot in Georgia had been granted immunity.
Other less well-known figures who have been charged include Coffee County elections supervisor Misty Hampton and Georgia businessman Scott Hall, who are accused of attempting to steal election equipment data from Coffee County as part of an effort to back up Trump's false voter fraud claims.
Several of the people who have been charged in Georgia—Giuliani, Powell, Eastman, Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, and Clark—were listed, but not named, as Trump's alleged co-conspirators in special counsel Jack Smith's January 6 indictment against the former president. Trump has pleaded not guilty to four charges in connection to Smith's federal investigation.
The full list can be found here.
What Has Trump Said About the Charges?
In a statement released soon after the charges were announced, Trump's campaign team said: "Like Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, Deranged Jack Smith, and New York AG Letitia James, Fulton County, GA's radical Democrat District Attorney Fani Willis is a rabid partisan who is campaigning and fundraising on a platform of prosecuting President Trump through these bogus indictments.
"Ripping a page from Crooked Joe Biden's playbook, Willis has strategically stalled her investigation to try and maximally interfere with the 2024 presidential race and damage the dominant Trump campaign. All of these corrupt Democrat attempts will fail.
"Combined with the intentionally slow-walked investigations by the Biden-Smith goon squads and the false charges in New York, the timing of this latest coordinated strike by a biased prosecutor in an overwhelmingly Democrat jurisdiction not only betrays the trust of the American people, but also exposes true motivation driving their fabricated accusations," the statement added.
"They could have brought this two and half years ago, yet they chose to do this for election interference reasons in the middle of President Trump's successful campaign.
"The legal double-standard set against President Trump must end. Under the Crooked Biden Cartel, there are no rules for Democrats, while Republicans face criminal charges for exercising their First Amendment rights."
In a separate joint statement, Trump's lawyers Drew Findling, Jennifer Little and Marissa Goldberg said: "The events that have unfolded today have been shocking and absurd, starting with the leak of a presumed and premature indictment before the witnesses had testified or the grand jurors had deliberated and ending with the District Attorney being unable to offer any explanation.
"In light of this major fumble, the Fulton County District Attorney's Office clearly decided to force through and rush this 98-page indictment. This one-sided grand jury presentation relied on witnesses who harbor their own personal and political interests— some of whom ran campaigns touting their efforts against the accused and/or profited from book deals and employment opportunities as a result.
"We look forward to a detailed review of this indictment which is undoubtedly just as flawed and unconstitutional as this entire process has been."
