A Fulton County grand jury in the United States has indicted former President Donald Trump of orchestrating a sweeping criminal enterprise and committing more than a dozen felonies.
The jury said the former US republican president perpetrated these as he tried and failed to overturn his defeat in Georgia’s 2020 election.
The indictment, on Monday, also lodged charges against 18 of Trump’s allies, who helped him spread false conspiracy theories and twist the arms of top state officials as he scrambled to cling to power.
The 41-count, 98-page indictment said Trump and his co-defendants refused to accept the fact that Trump lost in Georgia.
“They knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump. That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose,” the jury ruled.
READ ALSO: Nigeria Now Ranks 3rd Best English-Speaking African Nation
This marks the fourth time that Trump has been criminally charged and the second time this August that the former president has been indicted for interfering in the 2020 election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
The Georgia case is far different because it also charges a large cast of alleged accomplices – from former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former state Republican Party chairman David Shafer.
Also charged along Trump are 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; former Coffee County GOP chairwoman Cathy Latham and Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall.
Others are former Coffee County elections director Misty Hampton; GOP strategist Michael Roman; 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.
The charges are the culmination of a 2 1/2-year criminal investigation launched by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis shortly after Trump’s leaked Jan. 2, 2021, phone call with Brad Raffensperger, during which he asked the Georgia secretary of state to “find” him 11,780 votes.
