(ConservativeSense.com) – A Fulton County grand jury in Georgia handed former President Donald Trump his fourth indictment on Monday, along with multiple associates, on charges of election fraud and attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Not only is Trump the first former president to face criminal charges in U.S. history, but he’s dealing with four separate cases against him at once.
Trump and 18 others face multiple charges, including Trump’s former lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Guliani. At a news conference announcing the indictment on Monday night, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Wallis said, “The defendants engaged in a criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia’s presidential election result.” She told the defendants that “arrest warrants have been issued” for each of them and that they have until August 25 at noon to turn themselves in.
Willis said that each state has an essential role in assuring “the functioning” of democracy and that “like every state,” Georgia “has laws” allowing anyone who contests election results, whether it’s due to “intentional wrongdoing or unintentional error,” to raise such challenges in a state court. According to Willis, the defendants did not abide by Georgia’s legal process to challenge the 2020 election and instead engaged in racketeering.
The indictment lists 13 counts against Trump and 41 in total for all 19 defendants. The filing also states that 30 co-conspirators haven’t been indicted. Among the charges faced by the defendants is violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (or “RICO”) Act. The defendants and co-conspirators are described in the indictment as “a criminal organization” with “members and associates” who engaged in a long list of “criminal activities” to “unlawfully change” the election outcome.
The prompting of the investigation came from a call Trump made to the Georgia Secretary of State on Jan. 2, 2021, claiming he wanted to “find 11,780 votes” and that Trump knows “we won the state,” possibly by “400,000 votes.” Those claims, which prosecutors claim are false, will now be tested in court.
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