Trump and 18 Allies Charged in Georgia with ‘Felony Enterprise’ to Overturn Election

By Kate Brumback and Eric Tucker

In a single notably brazen episode, it additionally outlines a plot involving one in every of his legal professionals to entry voting machines in a rural Georgia county and steal information from a voting machine firm.

Willis mentioned the defendants can be permitted to voluntarily give up by midday Aug. 25. She additionally mentioned she plans to hunt a trial date inside six months and that she intends to attempt the defendants collectively.

The indictment bookends a outstanding crush of legal circumstances — 4 in 5 months, every in a special metropolis — that might be daunting for anybody, by no means thoughts somebody like Trump who’s concurrently balancing the roles of legal defendant and presidential candidate.

The Georgia case covers a few of the similar floor as Trump’s current indictment in Washington, together with makes an attempt he and his allies made to disrupt the electoral vote depend on the Capitol. However in its sprawling internet of defendants — 19 in whole — the indictment stands aside from the extra tightly focused case introduced by particular counsel Jack Smith, which thus far solely names Trump as a defendant.

In charging shut Trump aides who have been referenced by Smith solely as unindicted co-conspirators, the Georgia indictment alleges a scale of legal conduct extending far past simply the ex-president.

A Willis spokesperson mentioned within the afternoon that it was “inaccurate” to say that an indictment had already been returned however declined to remark additional on a kerfuffle that the Trump authorized staff quickly jumped on to assault the integrity of the investigation.

Trump and his allies, who’ve characterised the investigation as politically motivated, instantly seized on the obvious error to assert that the method was rigged. Trump’s marketing campaign aimed to fundraise off it, sending out an e mail with the since-deleted doc embedded.

In a press release after the indictment was issued, Trump’s authorized staff mentioned “the occasions which have unfolded at the moment have been surprising and absurd, beginning with the leak of a presumed and untimely indictment earlier than the witnesses had testified or the grand jurors had deliberated and ending with the District Legal professional being unable to supply any rationalization.”

The legal professionals mentioned prosecutors presenting their case “relied on witnesses who harbor their very own private and political pursuits — a few of whom ran campaigns touting their efforts towards the accused.”

Giuliani, in the meantime, is charged with making false statements for allegedly mendacity to lawmakers by claiming that greater than 96,000 mail-in ballots have been counted in Georgia regardless of there being no document of them having been returned to a county elections workplace, and {that a} voting machine in Michigan wrongly recorded 6,000 votes for Biden that have been really forged for Trump.

In a press release, Giuliani didn’t reply on to any of the allegations however referred to as the indictment an “affront to American democracy” and “simply the subsequent chapter in a e book of lies.”

Additionally charged are people prosecutors say helped Trump and his allies on the bottom in Georgia affect and intimidate election staff.

One man, Stephen Cliffgard Lee, was charged by prosecutors for allegedly touring to Freeman’s house “with intent to affect her testimony.” Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss testified to Congress final yr about how Trump and his allies latched onto surveillance footage from November 2020 to accuse each girls of committing voter fraud — allegations that have been shortly debunked, but unfold broadly throughout conservative media.

Each girls, who’re Black, confronted dying threats for a number of months after the election.

The indictment additionally accuses Powell and a number of other co-defendants of tampering with voting machines in Espresso County, Georgia, and stealing information belonging to Dominion Voting Programs, a producer of tabulation machines that has lengthy been the main focus of conspiracy theories.

Based on proof made public by the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot, Trump allies focused Espresso County searching for proof to again their theories of widespread voter fraud, allegedly copying information and software program.

Republican allies as soon as once more shortly rallied to Trump’s protection. “People see by this determined sham,” Home Speaker Kevin McCarthy wrote on X, the platform previously often known as Twitter.

Related Press writers Jeffrey Martin, Brynn Anderson, Invoice 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.