Former President Donald Trump’s fourth indictment, annotated
A grand jury in Georgia has indicted former President Donald Trump and 18 allies on state charges stemming from his efforts to overturn his 2020 electoral defeat in the Peach State.
The 41-count indictment was unsealed Monday and is the fourth criminal case that Trump is facing.
The indictment returned by the Fulton County grand jury includes 13 charges against Trump. He now faces a total of 91 charges in four criminal cases, in four different jurisdictions — two federal and two state cases.
An annotated version of the indictment is below. The 98-page document is also available without annotations.
Trump was indicted on 13 charges by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, including a racketeering charge for allegedly attempting to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in Georgia in 2020.
The list of 13 charges the Atlanta-based grand jury approved also includes conspiring with several others around his campaign for the use of fake electors in Georgia. Trump was also charged with several counts of soliciting a public official to violate their oath.
The former president denies wrongdoing.
CNN’s Jeremy Herb notes Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani is charged with 13 counts in the indictment, more than any other defendant other than Trump, who also faces 13 charges. Giuliani is charged with a RICO violation — the racketeering conspiracy that formed the basis of the indictment — as well as several additional felonies, including soliciting Georgia state lawmakers, making false statements to the Georgia House and Senate and working to put forward fake electors in Georgia.
Including Trump, the indictment lists 19 people charged in the Georgia case. In response to a question from CNN’s Sara Murray, Willis said she will try all 19 defendants together.
The grand jury approved charges against Trump for a violation of Georgia’s RICO law — or Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization — which accuses Trump of being part of a broad conspiracy to attempt to overturn the election result.
As CNN’s Devan Cole notes, all 19 defendants in the Georgia 2020 election subversion case are facing racketeering charges.
Prosecutors allege there was a conspiracy to change the election outcome “in favor of” Trump.
“Trump and the other Defendants charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump,” they write.
The 41-count indictment accuses that Trump and the other 18 defendants “unlawfully conspired and endeavored to conduct and participate in a criminal enterprise” after Trump lost the election in Georgia.
CNN’s Jeremy Herb notes the indictment also includes 30 unindicted co-conspirators, in addition to Trump and the 18 other charged defendants.
Prosecutors highlight alleged efforts to “intimidate” and “harass” Ruby Freeman, the Georgia election worker whose emotional congressional testimony formed the basis of one of the January 6 Committee’s most memorable hearings last summer.
The indictment alleges that several defendants charged “falsely accused Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman of committing election crimes in Fulton County, Georgia.”
The prosecution lists 161 separate racketeering acts — spanning from page 20 through 71 of the indictment — considered under the indictment’s first count: Violation of the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
"Meaning 161 different illegal acts that were done in furtherance of that enterprise. I've done more RICO charges that I can remember, I haven't seen anywhere near that number,” Elie Honig, CNN senior legal analyst and former assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said on CNN Monday night.
"Here you have essentially a list of isolated acts that qualify as predicate acts under the RICO statute. So they can be as simple as left a voicemail message, had a phone call, made a statement at a press conference or a meeting of the state legislature. So, they all kind of stand independent of each other and provide ample opportunity for prosecutors to prove this case,” Andrew McCabe, former deputy director of the FBI, said on CNN.
Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani is in the middle of many of the episodes that form the basis of the indictment, CNN’s Jeremy Herb notes.
Giuliani was also listed as a co-conspirator in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal indictment of Trump for efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The Fulton County indictment points to Giuliani’s testimony in Georgia after the 2020 election, in which he made false claims about election fraud in Georgia. Prosecutors also list Giuliani’s outreach to officials in other states, including lawmakers in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona, where they allege he made more false claims of election fraud and tried to solicit them to appoint fake electors.
The indictment mentions the phrase, “overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy” more than 140 times throughout the 98-page document.
“That’s the key phrase throughout the whole thing. This was not just something that happened by coincidence,” said Gloria Borger, CNN senior political analyst, on CNN Monday night.
Several of Trump’s co-defendants in the indictment are facing charges in connection with the breach of a voting system in a rural Georgia county after the 2020 election.
CNN’s Zachary Cohen notes CNN has previously reported that prosecutors have text messages and emails showing that multiple of the newly-indicted co-defendants are connected to the breach in Coffee County.
The people charged in connection with the Coffee County breach are: Sidney Powell, a former Trump attorney; Misty Hampton, a former elections supervisor for Coffee County; Cathy Latham, a former local GOP official in Coffee County; and Scott Hall, a pro-Trump poll watcher and bail bondsman in Georgia.
Beyond Trump himself, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is the highest-ranking White House official to be charged in the Georgia indictment, CNN’s Jeremy Herb notes.
Meadows was notably absent among Trump’s six co-conspirators in the special counsel’s January 6 indictment.
The indictment describes Meadows’ attempt to enter into the space in Cobb County, Georgia, where 2020 election signatures were being audited, and a text message Meadows sent to the Georgia secretary of state’s chief investigator that stated, "Is there a way to speed up Fulton county signature verification in order to have results before Jan 6 if the trump campaign assist financially."
In addition, the indictment notes Meadows’ role with Trump’s meetings with state officials in Michigan, the White House meeting with Pennsylvania state lawmakers where they discussed a special session of the Pennsylvania assembly and efforts inside the White House to delay the January 6, 2021, joint session of Congress.
Prosecutors allege those acts were all furthering the conspiracy to try to overturn the 2020 election. CNN has reached out to an attorney for Meadows for comment.
The indictment charges Trump with “unlawfully soliciting” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to violate his oath-of-office during their now infamous January 2, 2021, call where Trump asked Raffensperger to help him flip Georgia’s results in the 2020 election.
The indictment said Trump and Meadows, who was also on the call, unlawfully solicited, requested and importuned Raffensperger, who serves as public officer.
Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, also charged Trump for knowingly making false statements to Raffensperger during that same call.
Willis listed 13 false statements Trump “knowingly, willfully and unlawfully” made on the January 2 call including “that close to 5,000 dead people voted in the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Georgia.”
CNN’s Annie Grayer notes this is similar to what Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith accused Trump of doing in his federal indictment related to the 2020 election subversion. Smith also claimed Trump lied to Raffensperger during the call while trying to enlist his support.
CNN’s Zachary Cohen notes Latham and Hampton both face charges for allegedly helping facilitate the Coffee County breach, according to the indictment.
Latham also faces perjury charges for lying about her involvement in the breach during a deposition conducted as part of a long-running civil lawsuit related to election security in Georgia.
“By the time that call is made, the former president and his allies know full well that they have no support for their fraud claims. As a matter of fact, they’re exchanging emails and there is a lot of things that she cites here, the DA cites in here, that shows that they were fully aware that there was no fraud, or at least not enough fraud to support this,” said Evan Perez, CNN’s senior justice correspondent, of Trump’s call to Raffensperger.
CNN’s Zachary Cohen notes the indictment echoes previous CNN reporting about Powell’s alleged role in the breach, including that she contracted a cyber forensics firm to examine and copy voting systems in Coffee County without proper authorization to do so.
