UPDATE, 11:10 p.m.: Read the indictment here:
Trump Criminal Indictment Fulton County, GA by PJ Media on Scribd
UPDATE, 10:59 p.m.: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein reports on some of the details of the indictments.
Former President Donald Trump and 18 allies were charged on Monday with conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.
In a sweeping 98-page indictment handed up by a Fulton County grand jury, Trump was charged with racketeering and a dozen other felonies, such as solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree, and false statements and writings. The indictment contained 41 criminal counts.
Bluestein also details who else is being charged:
The Georgia case is unique because in addition to Trump, it also charges a cast of supporting players— from former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer.
[…]
Also indicted Tuesday were Trump co-defendants: state Sen. Shawn Still; attorneys John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, Bob Cheeley, Ray Smith III and Kenneth Chesebro; former assistant U.S. attorney general Jeffrey Clark; GOP strategist Michael Roman; former Coffee County elections supervisor Misty Hampton; former Coffee County GOP chairwoman Cathy Latham; Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall; publicist Trevian Kutti; Illinois pastor Stephen Cliffguard Lee; and Harrison Floyd, who briefly ran for a suburban Atlanta U.S. House seat before serving as director of Black Voices for Trump.
We’re awaiting a press conference from Willis at 11:20 p.m.
UPDATE, 10:28 p.m.: The Trump campaign issued a statement, which read in part:
Like Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, Deranged Jack Smith, and New York AG Letitia James, Fulton County, GA’s radical Democrat District Attorney Fani Willis is a rabid partisan who is campaigning and fundraising on a platform of prosecuting President Trump through these bogus indictments. Ripping a page from Crooked Joe Biden’s playbook, Willis has strategically stalled her investigation to try and maximally interfere with the 2024 presidential race and damage the dominant Trump campaign. All of these corrupt Democrat attempts will fail.
Statement from the Trump Campaign pic.twitter.com/JoSr81LSRe
— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) August 15, 2023
UPDATE, 10:20 p.m.: WSB Radio legal analyst Phil Holloway told host Shelley Wynter that we don’t know for sure that all 10 indictments that Judge McBurney signed related to the Trump case.
UPDATE, 9:45 p.m.: Willis’ office has promised to hold a press conference once all the documents have been processed and uploaded:
DA’s office says it will be holding a press conference AFTER the indictments are processed by the clerk’s office… which could take 1-3 hours, I’m told
— Tamar Hallerman (@TamarHallerman) August 15, 2023
Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat announced that his department will “have mugshots ready” for Donald Trump:
TRUMP BOOKING PHOTO COMING: Fulton County Sheriff says ‘we’ll have mugshots ready for you’ when President Trump is arraigned in election conspiracy case pic.twitter.com/3reh0CSKPV
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) August 15, 2023
Original story:
Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis handed down ten indictments on Monday evening after a grand jury deliberated in the case of former president Donald Trump’s alleged interference in the 2020 presidential election.
Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney and Clerk of Court Ché Alexander reportedly signed off on the documents shortly after 9 p.m., although no details have been released at this time.
Trump will most likely appear in Atlanta for arraignment on or before Thursday because the extra security order for the Fulton County Courthouse expires on Thursday.
We may have gotten a glimpse of what the grand jury will charge Trump and potentially some of his associates with. PJ Media’s own Paula Bolyard reported on the alleged indictment documents that appeared on the Fulton County Superior Court website on Monday:
The document, whether it was leaked or some kind of fakery, lists serious charges against Trump, including racketeering, soliciting a public official to violate his oath, conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer, conspiracy to commit forgery, filing false documents, and making false statements.
An indictment against Trump by the Fulton County DA was expected to drop this week, but the leaked or faked document will certainly harm the credibility of the investigation, which was already mired in conflicting accounts and details.
The charges, if they do indeed come, have to do with Trump’s actions after the 2020 election, including a phone call he made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffesnperger pressing him to “find” 11,78 votes needed to flip the state from Joe Biden to Trump.
On Monday morning, Erick Erickson wrote about how Willis is likely using Georgia’s racketeering statute to target the former president:
Georgia’s [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO)] is one of the most expansive. Federal RICO identifies 27 federal offenses and eight state crimes as “racketeering activity.” Georgia’s RICO includes many additional offenses. It is one of the broadest in the nation, and out-of-state crimes can be tied to in-state crimes to show a broad criminal enterprise. But in Georgia, an overarching enterprise is not always necessary, and the elements necessary to prove a RICO violation are actually less burdensome for a prosecutor than at the federal level.
One of the elements of Georgia’s RICO statute is the improper use of state computers. Allegedly, the Trump team was able to access data from voting machines in Coffee County, Ga., in the southern part of the state. Trump’s team claims that it had permission from local election officials, but the state argues that those officials didn’t have the right to allow the team to access that data. That would constitute improper use of state property.
Erickson told his radio audience on Monday that he doesn’t foresee a jury convicting Trump, even in Fulton County.
“Here’s the problem for the state. And I don’t think that the Democrats who are so passionate about prosecuting Donald Trump are thinking clearly about this. I think it’s very emotional,” he said. “But I gotta think at the end of the day, a jury may say, ‘I’m willing to throw the lawyers in prison. But I’m not willing to throw a former president in prison.'”
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