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<http://apnews.com>
Trump and 18 allies charged in Georgia election meddling | AP News
KATE BRUMBACK, ERIC TUCKER

ATLANTA (AP) - Donald Trump and 18 allies were indicted in Georgia on
Monday over their efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state,
with prosecutors using a statute normally associated with mobsters to
accuse the former president, lawyers and other aides of a "criminal
enterprise" to keep him in power.

The nearly 100-page indictment details dozens of acts by Trump or his
allies to undo his defeat, including beseeching Georgia's Republican
secretary of state to find enough votes for him to win the battleground
state; harassing an election worker who faced false claims of fraud; and attempting to persuade Georgia lawmakers to ignore the will of voters and appoint a new slate of electoral college electors favorable to Trump.

In one particularly brazen episode, it also outlines a plot involving one
of his lawyers to access voting machines in a rural Georgia county and
steal data from a voting machine company.

"The indictment alleges that 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," Fulton
County District Attorney Fani Willis, whose office brought the case, said
at a late-night news conference.

Other defendants include former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows;
Trump attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani; and a Trump administration Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, who aided the then-president's efforts to undo his election loss in Georgia. Other
lawyers who advanced legally dubious ideas to overturn the results,
including John Eastman, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, were also
charged.

Willis said the defendants would be permitted to voluntarily surrender by
noon Aug. 25. She also said she plans to seek a trial date within six
months and that she intends to try the defendants collectively.

The indictment bookends a remarkable crush of criminal cases - four in
five months, each in a different city - that would be daunting for anyone, never mind someone like Trump who is simultaneously balancing the roles of criminal defendant and presidential candidate.

It comes just two weeks after the Justice Department special counsel
charged him in a vast conspiracy to overturn the election, underscoring
how prosecutors after lengthy investigations that followed the Jan. 6,
2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol have now, two-and-a-half years later, taken
steps to hold Trump to account for an assault on the underpinnings of
American democracy.

The Georgia case covers some of the same ground as Trump's recent
indictment in Washington, including attempts he and his allies made to
disrupt the electoral vote count at the Capitol. But in its sprawling web
of defendants - 19 in total - the indictment stands apart from the more
tightly targeted case brought by special counsel Jack Smith, which so far
only names Trump as a defendant.

In charging close Trump aides who were referenced by Smith only as
unindicted co-conspirators, the Georgia indictment alleges a scale of
criminal conduct extending far beyond just the ex-president.

The indictment, with charges under the state's racketeering law and
language conjuring the seedy underworld of mob bosses and gang leaders,
accuses the former president, his former chief of staff, Trump's attorneys
and the ex-New York mayor of being members of a "criminal organization"
and "enterprise" that operated in Georgia and other states.

The indictment capped a chaotic day at the courthouse caused by the brief
but mysterious posting on a county website of a list of criminal charges
that were to be brought against the former president. Reuters, which
published a copy of the document, said the filing was taken down quickly.

A Willis spokesperson said in the afternoon that it was "inaccurate" to
say that an indictment had already been returned but declined to comment further on a kerfuffle that the Trump legal team jumped on to attack the investigation's integrity.

Trump and his allies, who have characterized the investigation as
politically motivated, immediately seized on the apparent error to claim
that the process was rigged. Trump's campaign aimed to fund raise off it, sending out an email with the since-deleted document embedded.

In a statement after the indictment was issued, Trump's legal team said
"the events that have unfolded today have been shocking and absurd,
starting with the leak of a presumed and premature indictment before the witnesses had testified or the grand jurors had deliberated and ending
with the District Attorney being unable to offer any explanation."

The lawyers said prosecutors presenting their case "relied on witnesses
who harbor their own personal and political interests - some of whom ran campaigns touting their efforts against the accused."

Trump responded to the indictment Tuesday by announcing a news conference
for next week to present yet another "almost complete" report on the
alleged fraud he has yet to prove nearly three years after the 2020
election.

Many of the 161 acts by Trump and his associates outlined in the Georgia indictment have already received widespread attention. That includes a
Jan. 2, 2021, call in which Trump urged Secretary of State Brad
Raffensperger to "find" the 11,780 votes needed to overturn his election
loss. That call, prosecutors said, violated a Georgia law against
soliciting a public official to violate their oath.

It also accuses Trump of making false statements and writings for a series
of claims he made to Raffensperger and other state election officials, including that up to 300,000 ballots "were dropped mysteriously into the
rolls" in the 2020 election, that more than 4,500 people voted who weren't
on registration lists and that a Fulton County election worker, Ruby
Freeman, was a "professional vote scammer."

Giuliani, meanwhile, is accused of making false statements for allegedly
lying to lawmakers by claiming that more than 96,000 mail-in ballots were counted in Georgia despite there being no record of them having been
returned to a county elections office, and that a voting machine in
Michigan wrongly recorded 6,000 votes for Biden that were actually cast
for Trump.

In a statement, Giuliani did not respond directly to the allegations but
called the indictment an "affront to American democracy" and "just the
next chapter in a book of lies."

Also charged are individuals prosecutors say helped Trump and his allies
on the ground in Georgia influence and intimidate election workers.

One man, Stephen Cliffgard Lee, was charged for allegedly traveling to Freeman's home "with intent to influence her testimony." Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss testified to Congress last year about how Trump and
his allies latched onto surveillance footage from November 2020 to accuse
both women of committing voter fraud - allegations that were quickly
debunked, yet spread widely across conservative media.

Both women, who are Black, faced death threats after the election.

The indictment also accuses Powell and several co-defendants of tampering
with voting machines in Coffee County, Georgia, and stealing data
belonging to Dominion Voting Systems, a producer of tabulation machines
that has long been the focus of conspiracy theories. An attorney for
Powell declined to comment.

According to evidence made public by the congressional committee
investigating the Jan. 6 riot, Trump allies targeted Coffee County in
search of evidence to back their theories of widespread voter fraud,
allegedly copying data and software.

Besides the two election-related cases, Trump faces a separate federal indictment accusing him of illegally hoarding classified documents as well
as a New York state case charging him with falsifying business records.

As indictments mount, Trump - the leading Republican candidate for
president in 2024 - often invokes his distinction as the only former
president to face criminal charges. He is campaigning and fundraising
around these themes, portraying himself as the victim of Democratic
prosecutors out to get him.

Republican allies once again quickly rallied to Trump's defense.
"Americans see through this desperate sham," House Speaker Kevin McCarthy
wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

_

Associated Press writers Jeffrey Martin, Brynn Anderson, Bill Barrow, Jeff
Amy in Atlanta; Jill Colvin and Michael R. Sisak in New York; Russ Bynum
in Savannah, Georgia; Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston; Farnoush Amiri in Washington; Christine Fernando in Chicago; Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho; Denise Lavoie in Richmond, Virginia; and Lea Skene in Baltimore
contributed to this report.




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