Former President Donald Trump and several members of his inner circle were indicted Monday as part of the sweeping Fulton County investigation into election interference in 2020.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis held a press conference behind schedule Monday night to briefly address the grand jury indictments of criminal conspiracy and organized crime against the 2024 Republican presidential candidate and other allies, including his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and former Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer.
Nineteen people were indicted on 41 counts after the grand jury voted to indict and Fulton Judge Robert McBurney vacated the indictment Monday evening.
“All elections in our country are run by the states, which have a responsibility to ensure a fair process and accurate vote count,” Willis said behind schedule Monday night. “This includes elections for presidential electors, elections for members of Congress and elections for local offices. The role of the states in this process is critical to the functioning of our democracy.”
“The indictment alleges that instead of following Georgia’s legal procedures for contesting elections, the defendants engaged in criminal schemes to overturn the results of the presidential election in Georgia,” Willis said.
It is the fourth time this year that the former president has been charged and the second indictment directly related to Trump’s attempts to cling to power after his re-election defeat.
The defendants have until noon Friday, August 25, to turn themselves in, Willis said.
Read the 98-page indictment Here.
“I remind everyone present that an indictment is merely a set of allegations based on a grand jury’s finding that there is a reasonable suspicion of a crime. It is now the duty of my office to prove those allegations in the indictment beyond a reasonable doubt in court,” Willis said.
Willis said she would push for a trial within the next six months, but acknowledged that that would be at the judge’s discretion.
In the trial, the preparation of which lasted more than a year, he was also charged with making false statements, forgery, organized crime, electoral fraud and poaching government employees.
The wide-ranging investigation focuses on Trump and some of his supporters who made unsubstantiated claims that widespread voter fraud cost him the 2020 election in Georgia by nearly 12,000 votes. In early 2022, Willis launched the investigation after a recording of a Phone call It was revealed to the public that Trump had asked Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes.
Trump and his lawyers accused Willis, a Democrat from Atlanta, of political bias, arguing that she has held fundraisers for her party’s candidates in the past.
And on Monday, Reuters reported that a document A statement detailing the charges against Trump briefly appeared on the Fulton County Court website. A Fulton County Court spokesperson issued a statement Monday in response to a “fictitious document that has been circulated online and reported on in various media outlets.”
Trump’s Georgia lawyers sharply criticized the brief appearance of the document in a statement, calling it part of a pattern that has “plagued this case from the beginning.”
“This was not a simple administrative error,” Drew Findling and Jennifer Little said in a joint statement. “An indictment should be in the hands of only the district attorney, but somehow it made its way to the clerk’s office and was assigned a case number and a judge before the grand jury had even deliberated.”
Trump also complained about the charges on his social media page Truth Social, calling Willis a “rabid partisan” and accusing her of timing the charges to “maximize interference in next year’s presidential campaign.” Willis brushed off the criticism when asked about the president’s comments.
“I make decisions in this office based on facts and law. The law is completely impartial,” Willis said.
The group of 16 fraudulent electors who met at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020 includes current and former state and local GOP officials, former Coffee County GOP Chair Cathy Latham, and newly elected state Senator Shawn Still.
Giuliani pushed Georgia Republicans to step in as surrogate electors to counter the state’s Democratic electors, who voted for Joe Biden after Republican election officials certified the current president as the winner of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. The plan initially called for the “fake electors” to act as placeholders in case the former president prevailed in court against the Georgia results. But when Trump’s court challenges were all either dismissed or withdrawn, the surrogate electors nonetheless signed papers swearing that they were legitimate delegates.
An eventful day
Even before the grand jury’s decision was expected on Monday, a crowd of national and local journalists had gathered outside the Fulton County Courthouse on Monday morning, attempting to intercept witnesses as they left the courthouse and question them about the proceedings.
The relative serene outside the courthouse was interrupted on Monday when opponents of a controversial public safety training center attempted to march through the area around the courthouse that was cordoned off for the arraignment. The group’s slogans included: “Donald Trump. Andre Dickens. I don’t know the damn difference.”
But at the courthouse, the grand jury proceedings moved faster than expected, and by behind schedule Monday afternoon an indictment seemed possible. At least two witnesses – former Republican lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan and Atlanta journalist George Chidi – who were originally scheduled to testify on Tuesday were moved up to Monday.
Duncan, who did not seek re-election last year, dodged specific questions Monday about his grand jury testimony but spoke generally about how he views his participation in the proceedings. And politically, he described the moment as a potential “turning point” for Republicans.
“I think it’s important to tell the truth,” Duncan told reporters afterward. “And to fulfill the constitutional duty to answer the questions of the grand jury. It’s important for us as a country to finally find out exactly what happened and let the American people decide. Instead of spreading misinformation and tweets, we should let America decide what’s next for us.”
Other witnesses include state Senator Jen Jordan and state Representative Bee Nguyen, two Democrats who attended the December 2020 legislative sessions where Rudy Giuliani spread a false narrative in hopes of getting the General Assembly to intervene.
Nguyen confirmed in a statement Monday that she testified before the grand jury.
“No one is above the law, and I will continue to fully cooperate with all legal processes that seek to establish the truth and protect our democracy,” Nguyen said. “I believe that every individual who wrongfully and illegally attempted to overturn our valid elections should be held accountable so that we can have, as John Adams said, ‘a government of laws, not of men.'”
Chidi, who testified before the special jury, said behind schedule Monday that he was released without testifying, calling it a victory for journalists.
The independent reporter from Atlanta entered the phony Electoral College at the state Capitol after noticing someone who likely would have served as a Republican elector if Trump had won Georgia. He said he was intrigued when the person acted strangely toward him, so he began live streaming on Facebook and followed the man into the chamber before being quickly escorted out.
When he asked what kind of meeting it was, a woman replied that it was an “educational meeting.”
“Obviously, this was not a briefing meeting. Until five minutes ago, the district attorney believed that this observation was relevant to this trial,” Chidi told a group of reporters who surrounded him as he left the courthouse. “And maybe it still is, but the jury could have enough information to make a decision without me.”
