Tuesday brought a new round of criminal allegations against Donald Trump as a Georgia grand jury accused him of attempting to rig the 2020 election using a law designed to target organised crime gangs.
The accusations, filed late on Monday by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, accuse Donald Trump, the leading candidate for the Republican nominee in 2024, and his 18 allies of participating in a plot to overturn Trump’s defeat to Democrat Joe Biden.
The lengthy 98-page indictment named 19 individuals and included a total of 41 criminal offences. All of the defendants were accused of racketeering, a crime that carries a minimum 5-year jail sentence and is used to punish members of organised crime organisations.
At a press conference late on Tuesday night, Willis said,”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.”
Georgia state courts, in contrast to the federal courts where Trump is also awaiting trial, permit television cameras, so as his campaign for a return to the White House heats up, the public could experience the unusual spectacle of seeing a former president’s trial on live TV.
In a social media post, Trump labelled the indictment a political “witch hunt” and accused Willis, an elected Democrat, of trying to ruin his bid for the presidency, echoing his criticism of the several other probes he is subject to.
He declared that he would exonerate himself in a report on “Presidential Election Fraud” that will be released on Monday. “They never went after those that Rigged the Election. They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!,” he exclaimed.
Trump has often asserted falsely that extensive election fraud occurred since his defeat in 2020. Numerous courts, state reviews, and officials of his own administration have all rejected those assertions.
Using racketeering laws to bring down New York mobsters in the 1980s, Giuliani shot to national fame. He said that in this case, the prosecutors were “the real criminals.”
The 13 felonies levelled against Trump matched those mentioned in a document that was momentarily uploaded earlier on Monday on the court website and reported by Reuters before it was taken down.
In a phone call on January 2, 2021, Trump ordered Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s top election officer, to “find” the number of votes to turn his slight loss into victory, but Raffensperger declined.
The indictment depicts a large-scale conspiracy that allegedly began before the election on November 3, 2020 and continued until September 2022, during which time one of the conspirators allegedly lied to a grand jury.
It claims individuals responsible for the scheme deceitfully told lawmakers there had been electoral fraud and pressured state officials to change the outcomes.
