Donald Trump indicted: Georgia grand jury charges ex-president, 18 others in sweeping RICO case

WHO IS FANI WILLIS, THE GEORGIA PROSECUTOR FACING THE BIGGEST CASE OF HER LIFE

The 18 others charged were:

• Rudy Giuliani, former New York City mayor and attorney
• John Eastman, attorney
• Mark Meadows, former Trump chief of staff
• Ken Chesebro, attorney
• Jeffrey Clark, former Justice Department official
• Jenna Ellis, attorney
• Ray Smith III, attorney
• Robert Cheeley, attorney
• Mike Roman, Trump campaign official
• David Shafer, former Georgia GOP chairman
• Sidney Powell, attorney
• Misty Hayes, Coffee County elections supervisor
• Shawn Still, illegitimate elector
• Stephen Lee, pastor
• Harrison Floyd, former executive director of Black Voices for Trump
• Trevian Kutti, Kanye West publicist
• Cathleen Latham, illegitimate elector
• Scott Hall, poll watcher

Willis began investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election in January 2021, and she convened a grand jury in May 2022, according to portions of the grand jury’s final report released this year.

The report, made public in February, stated the grand jury investigation involved 75 witnesses, including election workers, technical experts, employees of the state of Georgia, and those who claimed fraud had occurred in the 2020 election.

The end result was a wide-ranging indictment that implicated 19 defendants in a total of 41 crimes. The charges included, in addition to racketeering, solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer, false statements, impersonating a public officer, first-degree forgery, and several conspiracy charges.

Trump was indicted on 13 counts.

The indictment also mentioned roughly 30 unnamed alleged co-conspirators and included allegations of harassment and intimidation of Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman and an unlawful breach of election equipment in Coffee County.

The grand jury process has been plagued by controversy this year, beginning in February with forewoman Emily Kohrs embarking on a controversial media tour during which she previewed to several outlets that Willis was expected to bring charges against a long list of people. She did not name anyone specifically at the time, but her comments forced the judge overseeing the grand jury to issue a clarification that Georgia jurors were permitted to speak about their final report but not deliberations.

On Monday, another debacle occurred when Reuters published a document that showed numerous felonies leveled against Trump, reporting that the document had been posted on Fulton County’s website and then quickly removed.

Fulton County called the document “fictitious” in a statement and said the office would notify the media of any legitimate filings in real time.

The document was labeled with a case number and showed 13 felonies against Trump, which aligned with the charges in the official indictment, indicating the document was, in fact, accurate.

Trump attorneys Drew Findling and Jennifer Little released a statement shortly after Fulton County disassociated with the document, suggesting the fact that it had been published before the grand jury voted indicated a lack of due process in the case.

They said, “This is emblematic of the pervasive and glaring constitutional violations which have plagued this case from its very inception.”

Chaos continued into Monday evening when the Fulton County grand jury initially delivered 10 indictments, spurring questions about whether they were related to Trump.

County officials took about two hours to publish the indictment involving Trump and the 18 others.

During that time frame, the case number on the document published by Reuters reappeared in the Fulton County system as a sex offender case in an unrelated matter. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) released a statement at about 9:30 p.m. EDT condemning the “new charges” against Trump despite the contents of the indictments being entirely unknown at that time, and one eagle-eyed photographer shared a picture of one of the indictments that appeared to involve a non-Trump aggravated assault case.

Once the Trump-related indictment was made public, Willis appeared for a press conference shortly before midnight, alleging that “rather than abide by Georgia’s legal process for election challenges, the defendants engaged in a criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia’s presidential election result.”

She said the grand jury had issued arrest warrants for all of those charged but that she was giving them until noon on Aug. 25 to surrender themselves in court.

Trump, for his part, issued a scathing rebuke of Willis on Monday night in a press release titled “The Truth About Fani Willis.”

He called the indictment “bogus” and accused Willis, whom he described as a “radical Democrat,” of being “compromised” by unethical conduct and using the indictment to fundraise.

The prosecution against Trump in Georgia is the fifth indictment across four grand jury cases against the former president this year.

Special counsel Jack Smith has charged Trump in two federal cases, one in Florida over allegations he illegally held classified documents after he left office and one in Washington, D.C., over allegations he conspired to overturn the 2020 election.

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Smith later filed a superseding indictment in Florida against Trump, tacking on additional felonies related to classified documents.

In the third case, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought charges against Trump in New York concerning a 2016 hush money scheme involving porn star Stormy Daniels.