Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis laid out a sprawling, 41-count indictment against former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants at a late-night press conference Monday night. Willis alleges the 19 defendants engaged in a criminal enterprise to overturn Trump’s defeat in Georgia in the 2020 election.
Summary
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis laid out a sprawling, 41-count indictment against former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants at a late-night press conference Monday night. Willis alleges the 19 defendants engaged in a criminal enterprise to overturn Trump’s defeat in Georgia in the 2020 election.
All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty and the actions described below are allegations sourced from Willis’ indictment. Trump’s co-defendants can be roughly separated into 5 buckets:
Trump’s Attorneys
- Rudy Giuliani (13 counts): The former New York City Mayor was prominently featured in the 98-page indictment for his efforts to lobby state legislatures to reverse Trump’s defeat with unfounded claims of ballot fraud. Giuliani is also described as “Co-conspirator 1” in the federal election conspiracy indictment brought against Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith.
- John Eastman (9 counts): The architect of the crackpot legal theory who directly pressured Vice President Mike Pence to try and overturn Trump’s defeat during the formal counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6. Eastman is “Co-conspirator 2” in the special counsel’s federal indictment. A federal judge ruled in 2022 that Eastman likely committed crimes during his attempt to overturn the election.
- Kenneth Chesebro (7 counts): The lawyer who devised the scheme to have “contingent” electors (often described in the media as “fake” electors) in the swing states where Trump lost to Biden and also tried to pressure Pence to block certification of President Joe Biden’s victory. Chesebro is described as “Co-conspirator 5” in Smith’s federal indictment.
- Jenna Ellis (2 counts): A member of Trump’s legal team who worked with Giuliani to pressure the states and supported the efforts to pressure Pence into not certifying Biden’s victory.
- Ray Stallings Smith III (12 counts): A Georgia attorney who worked on Trump’s post-election lawsuits.
Trump Administration and Campaign Officials:
- Mark Meadows (2 counts): Trump’s final White House Chief of Staff. Meadows joined the infamous phone call Trump placed to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger where the then-president urged Raffensperger to “find” the votes he needed to win and threatened Georgia’s top election official with criminal prosecution if he did not.
- Jeffrey Clark (2 counts): The once-obscure Justice Department official who tried to leverage the post-election chaos to get Trump to appoint him acting attorney general after the resignation of Bill Barr. Clark drafted a letter that would’ve been sent on DOJ letterhead to pressure state legislatures to reconvene and appoint Trump electors against the will of the voters in their states. He is “Co-conspirator 4” in the federal indictment.
- Michael Roman (7 counts): A Trump 2020 campaign staffer who worked with Chesebro to assemble false slates of electors in the swing states that Trump lost.
The False Elector Scheme
- David Shafer (8 counts): The chairman of the Georgia Republican Party and one of Trump’s false electors in the state.
- Shawn Still (7 counts): A sitting Georgia state senator who served as a false elector. Still told the House Jan. 6 committee that the electors were merely meant to be “contingent” in the event Trump was able to overturn his defeat throubh litigation.
- Robert Cheeley (10 counts): Worked to connect Eastman with Georgia state officials to throw out the Peach State’s electoral results and advance the fake electors scheme. He also presented video clips to Georgia lawmakers that he claimed showed Atlanta election workers double-counting votes.
The Ruby Freeman Witness Tampering Plot
- Stephen C. Lee (5 counts), Harrison Floyd (3 counts), and Trevian C. Kutti (3 counts) allegedly attempted to pressure Freeman, an election worker in Fulton County, to change her testimony before the special grand jury.
- Floyd once led Black Voices for Trump, Lee is an Illinois-based pastor while Kutti is a publicist who previously worked for Kanye West.
The Coffee County voting equipment breach
- Sidney Powell (7 counts): Powell worked as a lawyer for the Trump campaign and promoted some of the most outlandish voter fraud claims and pledged to “unleash the kraken,” a metaphor for revealing evidence of ballot fraud.
- Powell later admitted in a court filing that “no reasonable person would conclude that [her] statements were truly statements of fact.”
- Powell hired a data firm to run assessments on voting equipment, a step that lead to the unlawful breach of voting equipment in Coffee County, a small county that Trump won handily.
- Cathleen Alston Latham (11 counts): Latham served as a false elector and alleged participated in the scheme to unlawfully grant Trump supporters access to Coffee County voting machines.
- Scott Graham Hall (7 counts): A Georgia bail bondsman who tried to breach the Coffee County election equipment.
- Misty Hampton (7 counts): A Coffee County Republican who allegedly tampered with ballot markers and voting tabulation machines.
Willis’ decision to indict 19 people using the Georgia RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act creates logistical challenges in terms of each defendants’ pre-trial issues, the complexity of the charges laid out against them and even the need for a courtroom big enough to fit 19 defendants.
The scale of the indictment will likely push the trial start date beyond Willis’ six-month timeline and possibly past the 2024 general election.
- The New York Times’ Michelle Cottle and David French predicted the Georgia co-defendants are heading for “a world of hurt.”
- USA Today’s Susan Page wrote Willis’ decision to charge 19 co-defendants as “a daunting task, even an impossible one. Still, in the past 2 ½ years, Willis has gained a reputation as a hard-charging prosecutor. She sought the death penalty for a serial murderer and sent public school teachers to jail in a cheating scandal. She used the racketeering statute against them too.”
- NBC News reported Trump and his co-defendants will likely be booked at the Fulton County jail, according to the county sheriff. “At this point, based on guidance received from the District Attorney’s office and presiding judge, it is expected that all 19 defendants named in the indictment will be booked at the Rice Street Jail,” the sheriff’s spokesperson said.
- Fox News reported Meadows has petitioned the District Court for the Northern District of Georgia to remove his trial from Fulton County to the federal court system. Meadows’ attorneys argue the charges stem from his role as Trump’s chief of staff. Trump and Clark were also federal officers at the time so they could also seek to move their trials to a federal court.
- Breitbart noted that Trump would not be able to easily obtain a pardon if he’s convicted in the Georgia case. Presidents cannot issue pardons for state crimes, and the Governor of Georgia does not have pardon power. Instead, pardons are issued by the state Board of Pardons and Paroles.
- Dan McLaughlin made a fairly obvious point in any other context in the New York Post: “criminal defendants make terrible candidates.” “Some of these charges are bogus…Others are excessive and overzealous. Many, if not all, are driven by partisan politics and animus towards Trump,” McLaughlin writes. “But when Republican primary voters are deciding whom they should nominate to run for president against Joe Biden, the only proper response to complaints about the fairness of indicting Trump should be: So what? Nominating Trump again would be a disaster for Republicans. The criminal charges are one of the biggest reasons why. Even if you think that’s unfair, it’s reality… People lose elections for unfair reasons all the time.”
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© Dominic Moore, 2023
