Former President Donald Trump and 18 others, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and attorneys John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, were named as part of a sprawling indictment by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
The 41-count indictment unsealed Monday in Georgia accused Trump and 18 other defendants of unlawfully conspiring, saying they “endeavored to conduct and participate in a criminal enterprise” after Trump lost the election in Georgia.
WHO IS FANI WILLIS, THE GEORGIA PROSECUTOR FACING THE BIGGEST CASE OF HER LIFE
Trump is facing his fifth indictment among four cases in less than five months. He has been charged with allegedly making false statements and soliciting the Georgia speaker and the Georgia secretary of state to violate their oaths of office from December 2020 to January 2021. Willis began her investigation after Trump urged the secretary of state to “find” a specific number of votes to offset President Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
The former president also faces six counts for conspiring with several others around his campaign to use fake electors in Georgia and another charge stemming from alleged filings of false documents in a federal court case in Georgia involving Eastman that alleged thousands of people voted illegally.
Charges for the other defendants include but aren’t limited to false statements and solicitation of state legislators, high-ranking state officials, as well as the creation and distribution of false Electoral College documents, the harassment of election workers, the solicitation of Justice Department officials, the solicitation of then-Vice President Mike Pence, the unlawful breach of election equipment, and acts of obstruction.
“Trump and the other Defendants charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump,” the indictment reads. “That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity in Fulton County, Georgia, elsewhere in the State of Georgia, and in other states.”
Willis said during a press conference that she would like to see a trial date within the next six months, though the timetables will ultimately be set by a judge. Willis also said she intends to try all 19 defendants together, giving all of them until noon on Aug. 25 to surrender voluntarily.
The indictment also includes an additional 30 unindicted co-conspirators in addition to the charged defendants. It lists Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee as the jurist who will preside over the case.
Prosecutors in Willis’s office claim the group “engaged in various related criminal activities including, but not limited to, false statements and writings, impersonating a public officer, forgery, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, computer theft, computer trespass, computer invasion of privacy, conspiracy to defraud the state, acts involving theft, and perjury.”
Mark Meadows, White House chief of staff
Meadows faces two charges, including solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer and racketeering, a charge typically intended for organized crime. Trump, Meadows, and the other 17 people who were indicted face racketeering charges under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
Last year, a judge ordered Meadows to speak before the Georgia special grand jury.
Following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Meadows went quiet about the events concerning the investigation.
Jeffrey Clark, former Justice Department official
Jeffrey Clark is a former senior DOJ official who raised concerns among his colleagues of alleged election fraud concerns in the 2020 election and sought to intervene in the presidential election in Georgia, according to the indictment.
Clark made a “false statement that the United States Department of Justice had ‘identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.'”
The indictment also claims Clark sent an email to acting U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen for authorization to send the “false writing and document” to Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) and other state lawmakers, noting, “This was an act of racketeering activity.”
Rudy Giuliani, former Trump lawyer
The indictment claims Giuliani, Trump’s former attorney, engaged in efforts to urge Georgia state officials to appoint presidential electors from the state illegally in violation of the terms of their oath of office. He is also accused of making false statements and claiming that at least 96,000 mail-in ballots were counted in the 2020 presidential election despite no records of those ballots being returned to the county elections office.
It also noted Giuliani’s claims that Dominion Voting Systems equipment mistakenly recorded 6,000 votes for then-candidate Joe Biden rather than Trump.
John Eastman, lawyer
John Eastman, a former University of Colorado visiting professor, is accused of aiding in the design of a legal strategy targeted at keeping Trump in power after his 2020 election loss. He is also allegedly one of the central figures in using claims of made-up electors in swing states won by Biden.
Eastman is presently facing disbarment proceedings in California, which he has requested to be placed on hold over the potential for criminal charges in a separate federal investigation.
Sidney Powell, former Trump legal team member
Other attorneys named include Sidney Powell, one of the most prominent lawyers who pushed claims of voter fraud and one who advised Trump to fight his election loss. She is notable for her vows to “release the Kraken” over the voter fraud claims in the 2020 election.
Powell appeared at a press conference on behalf of Trump and made “false statements concerning fraud in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia and elsewhere. These were overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy,” according to the indictment.
Jenna Ellis, former Trump legal team member
Attorney Jenna Ellis, a former senior legal adviser to Trump who is now a prominent supporter of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-FL) 2024 election bid, is also named alongside Powell for having made “false statements” concerning fraud in the Georgia general election and elsewhere.
Ellis allegedly “made false statements concerning fraud in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Pennsylvania and solicited, requested, and importuned the Pennsylvania legislators present at the meeting to unlawfully appoint presidential electors from Pennsylvania.”
Kenneth Chesebro, former Trump campaign attorney
Like Eastman, Chesebro is known to have allegedly played a key role in formulating the notion of having Trump supporters pose as electors from states that Biden won.
He is named in the indictment for allegedly outlining a “strategy for disrupting and delaying the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021, the day prescribed by law for counting votes cast by the duly elected and qualified presidential electors from Georgia and the other states” and is facing up to seven counts on various charges.
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Others named as defendants include Robert Cheely, an Atlanta lawyer; Stephen Lee, an Illinois police chaplain; Harrison Floyd, an executive director of Black Voices for Trump; Scott Hall, a 2020 Fulton County GOP poll watcher; Ray Smith III, a lawyer who represented Trump’s election challenges in Georgia; former Trump staffer Michael Roman; Shawn Still, a fraudulent elector and current Georgia Senate member; David Shafer, a fraudulent elector and the former chairman of Georgia’s GOP; Trevian Kutti, a Chicago-based publicist who represents Kanye West; Cathy Latham, a fraudulent elector and the chairwoman of Coffee County’s GOP in Georgia; and Misty Hampton, a former Coffee County elections director.
Read the full indictment below:
