Former US President Donald Trump has been indicted by a US Grand jury for attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state of Georgia.
The grand jury charged Trump alongside 18 others with 41 counts, with 13 charges against the former US president which include racketeering.
In February 2021, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis launched an investigation into allegations of election meddling against the former US president and his associates.
The former president is charged in the 98-page charge sheet with Violating Georgia’s racketeering act, solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer, Conspiracy to impersonate a public officer, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree, making false statements and writings, and filing false documents.
The charges against Trump and his associates refer to the defendants as a “criminal organization”, accusing them of other crimes including influencing witnesses, computer trespass, theft, and perjury. The most grievous charge, violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), is punishable by a maximum of 20 years in prison.
The alleged co-conspirators include former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and former White House lawyer John Eastman.
Others indicted include a former Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, and Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, two Trump lawyers who amplified unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud.
The indictment says the defendants “knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump”.
Denying all the charges against him, Trump, the current frontrunner in the Republican Party’s race to pick its next candidate for the White House, said the investigation by Ms. Willis, a Democrat, was politically motivated.
According to his campaign team, the US had become “a Marxist Third World dictatorship”. His campaign team, in a statement, described the district attorney as a “rabid partisan” who had filed “these bogus indictments” to interfere with the 2024 presidential race and “damage the dominant Trump campaign”.
According to the statement, “this latest coordinated strike by a biassed prosecutor in an overwhelmingly Democratic jurisdiction not only betrays the trust of the American people but also exposes the true motivation driving their fabricated accusations”.
This will be the fourth time he has been criminally charged this year. He is the first former president in US history to face criminal charges.
