Donald Trump’s list of legal troubles is starting to get very long. Georgia justice indicted Monday in Atlanta the former president of the United States and 18 other people for their suspected attempts to obtain the reversal of the result of the 2020 election in this key state.
This is the fourth criminal indictment in less than six months for Donald Trump, campaigning for the Republican primary to win back the White House in 2024. Fulton County Prosecutor Fani Willis resorted to an existing law in Georgia on delinquency in organized gangs, used in particular against gangs and providing for sentences of five to twenty years in prison.
A survey launched in 2021
Despite the incumbent’s defeat in Georgia in 2020, “Trump and the other defendants refused to acknowledge that he had lost and knowingly and deliberately participated in a conspiracy to illegally change the outcome of the election in his favor. “, according to the indictment.
A grand jury meeting in the capital of this state in the south-east of the country approved this indictment after a day of testimony by witnesses called by the prosecution. This panel of citizens invested with investigative powers was set up by Fani Willis, who has been investigating this case since 2021, in order to determine whether there were enough elements to indict Donald Trump, in particular for acts of fraud and election interference.
The former tenant of the White House again attacked the prosecutor, in a press release from his campaign Monday evening, calling her a “rabid partisan” serving the interests of Democratic President Joe Biden. “Willis has strategically slowed down his investigation to interfere as much as possible with the 2024 presidential race and harm the dominant Trump campaign” in the polls, according to this text, without explicit confirmation of his indictment.
A telephone conversation at the heart of suspicion
The investigation was triggered by a phone call in January 2021 from Donald Trump – the recording of which has been made public – in which he asked a senior local official to “find” the approximately 12,000 ballots in his name that he lacked to win this state.
Even if he wins in 2024, if he is convicted, he will not be able to pardon himself or have the charges dropped by the prosecutor’s office, since this is a court-level case. state of Georgia over which the federal state has no authority. These proceedings relate to part of the facts covered by the indictment on August 1 of Donald Trump in federal court in Washington for his alleged illegal maneuvers during the 2020 election in seven crucial states, including Georgia. The trial date has not yet been set.