And then there were four. Donald Trump was indicted for the fourth time on Monday, August 14. This time, it was a Georgia grand jury in Atlanta's Fulton County that indicted the former president for attempting to reverse the 2020 presidential election in this swing state.
After two and a half years of investigation, prosecutor Fani Willis began her presentation of the case in the morning, before a grand jury of 23 people who were to vote by a simple majority to indict the former president. During the witness hearings, presided over by Judge Robert McBurney, the decision was fast-tracked to close the case in the evening, well after the court's theoretical closing time of 5 pm.
Trump was indicted on 13 counts early on Monday evening, along with 18 other people, including his advisor, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and a Justice Department official under his administration, Jeffrey Clark. A total of 41 different charges have been brought against the 19 defendants, including "false statements and documents, usurpation of public office, forgery and use of forgeries," witness tampering, a series of computer crimes and perjury.
"Defendant Donald John Trump lost the United States presidential election held on November 3, 2020," says the 98-page indictment. "One of the states he lost was Georgia. Trump and the other Defendants charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and wilfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump."
Trump is notably charged under Georgia's extortion and conspiracy statute, which generally applies to organized crime. The maximum sentence is 20 years of imprisonment. These charges also carry a minimum sentence of five years, unlike the other trials in which Trump has been summoned.
The main accusation concerned his attempt to reverse the votes. Trump lost Georgia by around 12,000 votes out of 5 million cast in 2020. Trump and his supporters claimed in the aftermath of the election that fraud had been committed but recounts and an audit conducted by Georgia's Secretary of State, a Republican, Brad Raffensperger, had found no evidence of widespread fraud.
With legal appeals challenging the results proving a failure, Trump picked up the phone on January 2, 2021, and instructed Raffensperger to "find" 11,780 votes, "which is one more than we have. Because we won the state." This direct involvement of the defeated president is arguably the most blatant example of his attempt to manipulate the election.
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