“All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.” Donald Trump said that to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a secretly recorded call in early January 2021. On Monday, an Atlanta-based grand jury made the call a centerpiece of a 41-count indictment against him and 18 others.
It is Trump’s fourth indictment in as many months. He is the first former U.S. president to be charged with a crime.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis brought the case under Georgia’s racketeering law. Trump is charged with, among other things, solicitation of a violation of an oath by a public officer. The charges across the indictment range from forgery to filing false documents to conspiracy to commit election fraud.
Who is charged
The 19 defendants include onetime Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark. A number of fake electors are on the list, among them former Georgia Republican Party Chair David Shafer. So are attorney Robert Cheeley, former Trump campaign staffer Michael Roman, state Sen. Shawn Still, Stephen Lee, Trevian Kutti and Harrison William Floyd.
All are accused of violating the state’s RICO Act. Prosecutors say copying election data from a rural county office, and hearings meant to persuade lawmakers to throw out certified results, belonged to the same criminal enterprise. The charging documents list 161 predicate acts, inside Georgia and across the country.
The Raffensperger call is not the only episode. Weeks earlier, Trump allies appeared at an unofficial state Senate hearing to argue that lawmakers could pick different presidential electors than the certified results. Ray Smith, a Georgia attorney, led part of that hearing, which laid out false claims about thousands of illegal votes. Eastman claimed lawmakers could disregard election results under the Constitution.
Giuliani faces the most explosive charges from that hearing. He also faces potential disbarment and a defamation lawsuit over claims about Fulton County election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. He accused the women of passing around USB ports “as if they are vials of heroin, of cocaine,” which Moss said were ginger mints.
Powell allegedly worked with Cathy Latham, the former Coffee County Republican Party chair, to send a team that unlawfully copied data from the county’s election equipment. Latham is also one of 16 Republicans who met at the state Capitol and signed documents falsely claiming to be Georgia’s official electors. The fake electors have argued they acted in case Trump’s lawsuit challenging the results succeeded.
The responses
Trump has called the investigations politically motivated “witch hunts.” His campaign described Willis as “a rabid partisan who is campaigning and fundraising on a platform of prosecuting President Trump through these bogus indictments.” Willis told a news conference that “the law is nonpartisan.”
At a CNN town hall in May, Trump defended the Raffensperger call. “This was a call that was made to question the results of the election,” he said.
What comes next
Willis is giving the defendants until Aug. 25 at noon ET to surrender voluntarily. Booking photos and fingerprinting are likely. “It doesn’t matter your status. We have a mugshot ready for you,” Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat told reporters last week.
Willis said she wants a trial date within six months. That may be optimistic. With so many defendants and a complicated case, the wait could be long, and her office’s RICO prosecution of rapper Young Thug and others has seen jury selection drag on for seven months with little progress.
One point separates this case from Trump’s others. These are state crimes, so a pardon would have to go through Georgia’s independent Board of Pardons and Paroles and could not come until any sentences were served.
