Trump, advisers charged in Georgia for 2020 election overthrow scheme

Former US President Donald Trump was hit with a fourth set of criminal charges when a Georgia grand jury issued a sweeping indictment accusing him of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

The charges, brought late on Monday by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, add to the legal woes facing Trump, the front-runner in the race for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.

The sprawling 98-page indictment listed 19 defendants and 41 criminal counts in all. All of the defendants were charged with racketeering, which is used to target members of organized crime groups and carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.

Mark Meadows, Trump's former White House chief of staff, and lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman were among those charged.

"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," Willis said at a press conference.

Trump and the other defendants have until noon EDT (1600 GMT) on Friday, August 25, to surrender voluntarily, rather than face arrest, Willis said. She said she intends to try all 19 defendants together.

The 13 felony charges against Trump matched those listed on a document that was briefly posted on the court website earlier in the day and reported by Reuters before it disappeared.

Lawyers for those named either declined to comment or did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a January 2, 2021, phone call, Trump urged Georgia's top election official, Brad Raffensperger, to "find" enough votes to reverse his narrow loss in the state. Raffensperger declined to do so.

Trump's supporters stormed the US Capitol four days later in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent lawmakers from certifying Biden's victory.

The indictment cites a number of crimes that Trump or his associates allegedly committed from before the November 3, 2020, election until September 2022, including falsely testifying to lawmakers that election fraud had occurred and urging state officials to alter the results.

It says the defendants tried to subvert the US electoral process by submitting false slates of electors, people who make up the Electoral College that elects the president and vice president.

BREACHING VOTING MACHINES, HARASSING ELECTION WORKERS

It alleges that defendants breached voting equipment in a rural Georgia county, including personal voter information and images of ballots.

Prosecutors also said the defendants harassed an election worker who became the focus of conspiracy theories.

The indictment reaches across state lines, saying that Giuliani, Meadows and others called officials in Arizona, Pennsylvania and elsewhere to urge them to change the outcome in those states.

The indictment mentions 30 other co-conspirators, though they were not named or charged.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing. In a statement before the indictment was released, his campaign accused Willis, an elected Democrat, of being a "rabid partisan" who was trying to undermine his reelection bid.

"It is a dangerous effort by the ruling class to suppress the choice of the people," the statement said.

Trump has already pleaded not guilty in three criminal cases.

He faces a New York state trial in March 2024 involving a hush money payment to a porn star, and a federal trial beginning in May in Florida for allegedly mishandling federal classified documents. In both cases, Trump pleaded not guilty.

A third indictment, in Washington federal court, accuses him of illegally seeking to overturn his 2020 election defeat. Trump denies wrongdoing in this case as well, and a trial date has yet to be set.

Georgia, once reliably Republican, has emerged as one of a handful of politically competitive states that can determine the outcome of presidential elections.

Trump persists in falsely claiming he won the November 2020 election although dozens of court cases and state probes have found no evidence to support his claim.