How the Georgia indictment against Donald Trump may be the biggest yet and other case takeaways
The fourth indictment of former President Donald Trump may be the most sweeping yet.
The sprawling, 98-page case unveiled Monday opens up fresh legal ground and exposes more than a dozen of Trump’s allies to new jeopardy.
But it also raises familiar legal issues of whether the First Amendment allows a politician to try to overturn an election. Already, Trump and his supporters are alleging the indictment is the product of a politicized, corrupt process to hobble him as he competes for the GOP nomination to face President Joe Biden next year.
Here are some takeaways from Monday’s indictment:
THE BIG ONE
This may be the last of the Trump indictments, but it was the big one. The indictment lists 18 defendants in addition to Trump, all joined together by Georgia’s unusual anti-racketeering, or RICO, law.
Many of the defendants aren’t even based in Georgia. The better-known defendants include former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and attorney Sidney Powell, who appeared in numerous hearings and on television spreading false claims about unfounded incidents of purported election fraud. Giuliani and Powell were among the unnamed co-conspirators in the federal indictment against Trump for his push to overturn the election that was released earlier this month.
Others, however, had to date escaped mention in charging documents, like Trump’s then-chief of staff Mark Meadows, who was on the call during which Trump urged Georgia election officials to “find” him the votes he needed to be declared winner of the state.
Other defendants include Mike Roman, a Trump campaign official who the indictment alleges helped arrange slates of fake Trump electors whose votes Congress could count rather than those of the actual appointed ones for the winner of the election, President Joe Biden. Another person charged is Jenna Ellis, who has become a prominent conservative legal personality after working on the Trump campaign and helping spread Trump’s false allegations of widespread fraud.
The charges also fall upon several Georgia players, including Ray Smith and Robert Cheeley, lawyers working for Trump in Georgia, and David Shafer, then the state GOP chairman, for serving as a fake Trump elector along with fellow co-defendants Shawn Still, then the state GOP finance chairman, and Cathleen Alston Latham.
A WIDER APPROACH
Critics may argue this is an overreach for a local prosecutor’s office. But the Georgia RICO statute gives Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office the ability to construct a wide-ranging narrative by citing and charging other players in the alleged wrongdoing, even those out of state.
Some legal analysts think that Jack Smith, the federal prosecutor who filed the earlier charges against Trump for trying to overturn the election, didn’t charge people identified as co-conspirators in his case, like Giuliani, because he is aiming for a trial as quickly – and with as much time as possible before the 2024 presidential election — as feasible.
Willis on Monday night said she hoped for a trial date in six months. But her office is taking a notably different, more sweeping approach from the more streamlined federal indictment. She vowed that she would seek to try all 19 defendants together.
THE FIRST AMENDMENT ARGUMENT
Trump is expected to employ a similar defense in both the earlier federal indictment and the Fulton County case. He and his supporters contend he’s being charged simply for speaking up against what he saw as an unfair election and practicing politics as usual.
But it’s not clear that defense will work.
Indeed, some of the 161 acts that prosecutors contend were part of the conspiracy to overturn may sound like protected political machinations in isolation – emails and texts about meetings of people contending to be Trump electors, tweets about alleged voter fraud, even the filing of a lawsuit in Georgia challenging the election outcome.
But the indictment argues they were all steps in what it calls “a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.” For example, it alleges that those fake elector meetings were part of an attempt to convince Georgia state lawmakers to “unlawfully” appoint the phony Trump electors, rather than the Biden ones they were bound to by law.
The indictment contends the tweets about phony voter fraud and even the lawsuit were part of a similar scheme. And, finally, it says some of the lies trying to persuade Georgia’s top election official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and Gov. Brian Kemp to declare Trump the victor could be considered another crime under state law, solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer.
DOCUMENT DRAMA
A document briefly posted to the Fulton County Clerk’s Office website earlier Monday snagged the day’s proceedings and gave Trump a window to further disparage the case against him.
People were still waiting to testify before the grand jury when Reuters reported on a document listing criminal charges to be brought against Trump, including state racketeering counts, conspiracy to commit false statements and solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer.
Reuters, which later published a copy of the document, said the filing was taken down quickly. A spokesperson for Willis said the report of charges being filed was “inaccurate,” but declined to comment further. A statement subsequently released by the Fulton County courts clerk called the posted document “fictitious,” but failed to explain how it got on the court’s website.
Trump and his allies immediately seized on the apparent error to claim that the process was rigged. Trump’s campaign aimed to fundraise off it, sending out an email with the since-deleted document embedded.
“The Grand Jury testimony has not even FINISHED — but it’s clear the District Attorney has already decided how this case will end,” Trump wrote in the email, which included links to give money to his campaign. “This is an absolute DISGRACE.”
Trump’s legal team said it was not a “simple administrative mistake.” Rather, it was “emblematic of the pervasive and glaring constitutional violations which have plagued this case from its very inception,” said lawyers Drew Findling, Jennifer Little, and Marissa Goldberg.
TRUMP’S MOUNTING LEGAL BILLS
The sheer number of investigations, criminal cases, and lawsuits brought against Trump is unprecedented for a former president. The same could be said for the tens of millions of dollars in legal fees paid out to attorneys representing him and his allies, straining the finances of his campaign.
An Associated Press analysis of recent fundraising disclosures shows Trump’s political committees have paid out at least $59.2 million to more than 100 lawyers and law firms since January 2021.
The threat posed by this colossal drain of resources has led Trump’s allies to establish a new legal defense fund, the Patriot Legal Defense Fund.
The world's third-largest economy expanded 1.5 percent quarter-on-quarter in the three months to June, preliminary government data showed, the fastest rate since the fourth quarter of 2020.This was almost double the average economist forecast of 0.8 percent, according to Bloomberg News, and followed revised growth of 0.9 percent in the previous quarter.
On an annualized basis, growth was 6.0 percent, more than double the market expectation of 2.9 percent and giving Japan three-straight quarters of growth.
"Japan's exports have recovered as the supplies crisis eased for the auto sector while the yen's depreciation provided support," Ryutaro Kono, chief economist at BNP Paribas, wrote in a note issued before the data.
Hiroyuki Ueno, at SuMi TRUST, also said pent-up demand from the pandemic and an increase in capital investment was boosting the economy.
"The hospitality sector is expected to remain a driver of economic growth due to the increase in inbound tourism, as the pandemic is now in the rearview mirror," Ueno wrote ahead of the release.
"Although the number of inbound visitors to Japan has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels, the per capita consumption of tourists during their stay in Japan has increased, partly due to the weak yen," he wrote.
Domestic doldrums
The chief economist of the International Monetary Fund said last month that Japan was "one of the few advanced economies that is doing better in 2023 than in 2022."
The Bank of Japan forecasts growth of 1.3 percent in the current fiscal year, which runs until March 31.
The strong reading for Japan follows well-received data for several other major economies including the United States, although China remains a worry.
However, economists said that the data also underscored the continued weakness of domestic demand as Japanese families struggle with rising prices.
Marcel Thieliant at Capital Economics said that real household disposable income plunged by 4.5 percent year-on-year in the quarter and that it would continue to fall until the second half of next year.
Exports grew 3.2 percent compared with the previous quarter, mostly due to a "huge" 14 percent jump in car shipments as supply shortages eased.
"But with car exports now at record-high and Japanese carmakers having fallen back in the electric vehicle race, that's unlikely to be sustained," Thieliant said, forecasting a "renewed slowdown across the second half of the year."
The charges, brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, add to the legal woes facing Trump, the front-runner in the race for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.
The sprawling 98-page indictment listed 19 defendants and 41 criminal counts in all. All of the defendants were charged with racketeering, which is used to target members of organized crime groups and carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.
Among the other defendants were Mark Meadows, Trump's former White House chief of staff, and lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman.
"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," the indictment said.
Lawyers for those named either declined to comment or did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The case stems from a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call in which Trump urged Georgia's top election official, Brad Raffensperger, to "find" enough votes to reverse his narrow loss in the state.
Raffensperger declined to do so.
Trump's supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol four days later in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent lawmakers from certifying Biden's victory.
The indictment cites a number of crimes that Trump or his associates allegedly committed, including falsely testifying to lawmakers that election fraud had occurred and urging state officials to violate their oaths of office by altering the election results.
Prosecutors also cited the breach of a voting system in a rural Georgia county and the harassment of an election worker who became the focus of conspiracy theories.
It also mentions an alleged scheme to subvert the U.S. electoral process by submitting false slates of electors, people who make up the Electoral College that elects the president and vice president.
The indictment reaches across state lines, saying that Trump advisers, including Giuliani and Meadows, advanced the conspiracy by calling officials in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere seeking to change the outcome in those states.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing, and accuses Willis, an elected Democrat, of being politically motivated.
Trump has already pleaded not guilty in three criminal cases.
He faces a New York state trial beginning on March 25, 2024, involving a hush money payment to a porn star, and a Florida trial beginning on May 20 in a federal classified documents case. In both cases, Trump pleaded not guilty.
A third indictment, in Washington federal court, accuses him of illegally seeking to overturn his 2020 election defeat. Trump denies wrongdoing in this case as well, and a trial date has yet to be set.
Georgia, once reliably Republican, has emerged as one of a handful of politically competitive states that can determine the outcome of presidential elections.
Trump persists in falsely claiming he won the November 2020 election although dozens of court cases and state probes have found no evidence to support his claim.
Not hurting his campaign
Strategists said that while the indictments could bolster Republican support for Trump, they may hurt him in next year's general election when he will have to win over more independent-minded voters.
His lead over Republican presidential rivals has widened since the New York charges were filed in April, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.
But in a July Reuters/Ipsos poll, 37% of independents said the criminal cases made them less likely to vote for him, compared to 8% who said they were more likely to do so.
Willis's investigation drew on testimony from Trump advisers including Giuliani, who urged state lawmakers in December 2020 not to certify the election, and Republican state officials like Raffensperger and Governor Brian Kemp, who refused to echo Trump's false election claims.
While many Republican officials have echoed Trump's false election claims, Kemp and Raffensperger have refused to do so.
Raffensperger has said there was no factual basis for Trump's objections, while Kemp certified the election results despite pressure from within his party.
Trump has been mired in legal trouble since leaving office.
Apart from the criminal cases, a New York jury in May found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million in a civil case. A trial is scheduled for Jan. 15 on a second defamation lawsuit seeking $10 million in damages. Trump denies wrongdoing.
Trump is due to face trial in October in a civil case in New York that accuses him and his family business of fraud to obtain better terms from lenders and insurers.
Trump's company was fined $1.6 million after being convicted of tax fraud in a New York court in December.