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We Have Trump Criminal Indictment #4

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Here is the text of the newest indictment. And here are all of the people being charged in the Georgia indictment, courtesy of Atlanta News First:

  • former President Donald Trump
  • lawyer Rudy Guliani
  • lawyer John Eastman
  • former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows
  • lawyer Kenneth Chesebro
  • former Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division Jeffrey Clark
  • lawyer Jenna Ellis
  • lawyer Ray Smith III
  • lawyer Bob Cheeley
  • Trump campaign staffer Michael Roman
  • former Chair of the Georgia Republican Party David Shafer
  • Georgia State Senator Shawn Still
  • police chaplain Stephen Lee
  • Black Voices for Trump leader Harrison Floyd
  • lawyer Sidney Powell
  • publicist Trevian Kutti
  • poll watcher Scott Hall
  • former Coffee County elections official Misty Hampton
  • former chair of the Coffee County Republican Party Cathleen Latham

Newsweek provides a bit more detail about what these people are alleged to have done.

Aaron Blake at WaPo says that Trump is now looking at a total of 91 criminal charges. He also says that the Georgia indictments focus on false speech and oaths.

A core Trump defense in the federal Jan. 6 case is the idea that he was merely exercising free speech.

But that defense won’t work as easily in Georgia, which has a broad prohibition against making “a false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation … in any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of state government.”

From a couple of experts at the New York Times:

Georgia has one of the most capacious RICO statutes in the country. The state’s Legislature enacted it specifically to “apply to an interrelated pattern of criminal activity” and mandated courts to “liberally construe” it to protect the state and its citizens from harm. Under the law, prosecutors can charge a sprawling criminal enterprise that even includes individuals who may not have known “of the others’ existence,” as one court put it.

Here, the statute may be triggered by violations of an array of federal crimes as well as over 40 charges specific to Georgia, including forgery, false statements and influencing witnesses. …

…The overall charge includes four core schemes. The first was to pressure government officials to advance the objective of securing Georgia’s electoral votes for Mr. Trump, even though he lost. For the evidence here, in addition to Mr. Trump’s call to Mr. Raffensperger, Ms. Willis details other efforts by Mr. Trump and his co-defendants, ranging from Mr. Giuliani’s pressuring of state legislators to Mr. Meadows’s pressure on election authorities to the co-conspirators’ lies and intimidation targeting the ballot counters Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Moss, who goes by Shaye. This also includes efforts in Washington that impacted Georgia, such as the D.O.J. lawyer Jeffrey Clark’s preparation of an allegedly fraudulent draft letter targeting the state.

The second scheme was the organization of electors falsely proclaiming that Mr. Trump was the winner in Georgia. Here Ms. Willis alleges that Mr. Trump personally participated in this effort — for example, he called the Republican National Committee with Mr. Eastman from the White House to organize the fake slates of electors, including in Georgia. And she charges a great deal of other activity in and outside of Georgia.

The third scheme was the allegedly unlawful accessing of voting machines in Coffee County, a rural county southeast of Atlanta. The indictment asserts that, following a White House conversation about getting access to actual election machines to prove supposed vote theft, Sidney Powell, a lawyer tied to Mr. Trump, along with Trump campaign allies and computer consultants conspired to illegally access voting equipment in Coffee County. …

… The fourth and final scheme is what has become a trademark allegation against Mr. Trump and his circle — obstruction and cover-up. Ms. Willis alleges that members of the conspiracy filed false documents, made false statements to government investigators and committed perjury during the Fulton County judicial proceedings.

In addition to the RICO charges, every one of the 19 defendants is charged with at least one, and in many cases multiple, other offenses. Perhaps most telling among these is Ms. Willis indicting Mr. Trump and six others with felony solicitation of violation of oath by public officer. This fits Mr. Trump’s demand for those 11,780 votes like a glove.

I’m hearing that D.A. Willis wants to go to trial in six months, but there is much skepticism it will happen before the election. We’ll see.

Update: By popular demand …

27 thoughts on “We Have Trump Criminal Indictment #4”

  1. Stump's first motion will be to get this case to federal court. Georgia's Governor has no pardon power! Sorry sucker your in Georgia now!

    "Georgia is one of five states that doesn't grant pardon power to the governor. Instead, the state's constitution gives pardon power to the state's five-member Board of Paroles and Pardons"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY9RS1x8iHE

     

  2. It's likely the trial will be televised. Unfortunately experts are saying it certainly won't conclude before the election, and might not even get started by then.

    It's gratifying that many of the smaller fry were caught.

    Fani Willis for Person of the Year.

    I actually stayed up late, hitting refresh on the NYT & WaPo apps until the indictment details spilled out. Historic time we're in.

    2

    • It's gratifying that many of the smaller fry were caught.

       Yeah, isn't it! And seven lawyers among them. True MAGA

      2

    • I never watched The Apprentice but I will for certain tune in for this upcoming very real reality show, hope they get closeup shots showing sweat dripping and red rage glowing underneath the orange top-coating.  I've been saying privately for some time that he will eventually get the TV ratings gold of his dreams.

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  5. Trump is going to have a "report" with "evidence" that "proves" the evil Dems stole the election in Georgia. But wait – there's more! The report is reportedly so devastating that Fani Willis will have to withdraw all charges.

    My guess is that Trump will issue a regurgitation of the same lies that Kemp knew were untrue when Trump made the infamous phone call. Trump will demand Georgia retract charges. He'll file a lawsuit and try to appeal to the US Supreme Court. Which is ridiculous – any court will say, "If you have proof, submit it to a jury." That's how guilty/not guilty verdicts are reached. 

    My main question is when this might go to court. 

    2

      • What I'm hearing is that it's unlikely the Georgia case will be tried before the November 2024 election. The Jack Smith J6 case could probably be tried in the early months of 2024, especially if Trump keeps saying incendiary things about it. 

  6. I was concerned that the banana was sick… Glad to see s/he can still dance.

    I keep reading that garden variety Rs might start to wake up only when there's a conviction, and so from a pivot-the-current-situation standpoint I'm rooting for Indictment #3 – to begin to open their minds.

    Willis' indictment gives the full picture of how a big Federal crime particularly effects a state such as Georgia, and how Georgia's peculiar environment was ripe for Trump's manipulations, but its laws are among the best to trap lots of crime.

    Beau of the Fifth Column spoke about how Willis' indictment is the clearest enunciation in the official legal world of what Trump was trying to do: a self-coup.

    A coup – many people refuse to believe this could happen here. Getting Republicans to acknowledge this truth will be huge, but it's necessary  in order for some of the people in that party to begin to come clean. The rest are lost.

  7. Of the 18 (exclude TFG, who will be the first to get a contempt of court rap?  Odds are on Rudi in my book, though he has stayed away from microphones of late.  I miss his mindless babble in a way, but not in a really big 9-11 sort of a way.  

  8. Re Rudy – heard Weissman opine that Rudy might be in the most trouble of all of them, including financial – he's nearly broke after all the lawsuits and penalties so far.

    He's been ranting against Willis' use of RICO, leaning on his application of RICO, decades ago, fighting the mob in NYC, and that Willis is out of bounds to apply it against the Trump campaign. A Georgia attorney countered that Rudy is out of touch with how the use of RICO has evolved since its early days. He comes across as an out of touch old guy, whose demons are still in full control.

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    • “He’s been ranting against Willis’ use of RICO”

      I don't give two shits what Rudy ever did as Mayor or as a prosecutor. After 9-11 he cashed in big time. He started several sham companies aimed at bilking money from countries, private organizations, etc. He labeled his grift as "security" but it was nothing more than Islamaphobic militia training and illegal gun sales. He should have been charged back then but he was one of many "neo-cons" in on the same act. See Michael Chertoff. Rudy is a piece of shit today and was a piece of shit back then. He is unique in my opinion as he is even more vacant and corrupt then Stump. I hope he rots in jail!

      2

      • Yep…Chris Hayes did a good segment on his show tonight about Rudy's revolting activities in his past, including racist campaigns, allegations of elections 'stolen' by Dominican immigrants voting illegally (sound familiar?) and ending by say that it isn't a question of why he changed…he was always like this.

  9. I hereby propose (and claim as an original idea) that the eighteen co-defendants in Georgia be officially designated as the "flying monkeys."

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  10. So much to deal with.  I just want to share one of the hundreds of thoughts I've been having. 

    On cable today, I saw video of the famous dirty trickster dictating a memo after the 2020 voting but before the election was called. His memo was proposing that legislatures in R controlled swing states be pressured to change electors from D to R. This was before the election was called.

    What caught my attention was the young fellow sitting there dutifully typing the carefully dictated words into his laptop. I wondered if the trickster was doing it this way so that he could say, without technically lying, "I did not send that email."  Absurd because it was being filmed and not secretly. Clearly, if you dictate a communication to a hired or volunteer clerk and then order the clerk to hit send, you're still responsible for the communication.

    But the other piece is that apparently someone from Savannah GA had an opinion piece published in the BYT today about the genius of Fulton County DA using the GA RICO law… any action in furtherance of the organization's criminal goal is considered a criminal act.  Hence, dictating is no protection.

    Maybe I'm legally naive and this kind of thing is never a problem for prosecutors.  It just strikes me that this GA indictment is the strongest in many respects.

    • I watched (probably) the same video (presented by Ari Melber, who also interviewed the filmmaker who recorded it). My take is that it was just some older, powerful guy (Stone) getting an "intern" to do the grunt work of typing up his words. I didn't take it as a conscious effort by Stone to dodge culpability. I saw it as some old guy who isn't real comfortable around computers, and who is the "idea man", and can get willing kids to do the grunt work.

  11. Trump's plan for getting away is based on being elected. This is the FOUNDATION on which everything else rests. If you trust the wheels of justice to grind out an imperfect but more-or-less accurate verdict, the focus needs to be on the election.

    By my recollection, a small majority today have decided against Trump. That's today. Once trials start and evidence is presented, I expect Trump's numbers in a GENERAL election to continue to decrease. Why?

    Trump's lawyers in GA are not going to stick together. Who flips and what they can testify to isn't known, but the truth about the general conspiracy, who knew what, who did what, and how much Trump directed it will come out? Before the election?

    If they flip in GA, how much of that becomes available for Jack Smith and the DC J6 trial which WILL happen before the election? IDK. But the lawyers turning on each other will develop quickly because the ones who flip early will get the best deal. The guy who wants to flip late will find his testimony no longer has as much value. He (or she) is screwed. 

    The GA trial does not have to be complete to affect voters' opinions. The trial will almost certainly be televised and Willis can arrange the sequence of witnesses. So some explosive testimony in 12 or 13 months could motivate voters to turn out to ensure Trump does NOT get near the White House. 

    I do not think Trump will be able to handle the pressure over the next year. Whether the meltdown will be gradual or manifest in a single explosive direct call for armed revolution and murder, I don't know. If the trials (as I suspect) take a toll on Trump's General Election numbers and especially show Trump losing in GA, AZ, NV, and PA, Trump will see that he's going to be at the mercy of the judges he's insulting and may call on the mob to hang.

    It will be a year for the books.

  12. I've read the situation in Georgia is a "prosecutor's dream" – where they're likely to flip and turn on each other. 

    Have also read that not only is the trial likely to be televised, but every step of the way is going to be on camera, including booking the people charged. Watched a video of a jail official in Fulton County where the perps must appear. Someone said it reeks of "body odor and bologna", and that's putting it nicely. This particular jail has been under investigation for horrible, illegal conditions.

    What's really interesting is the Republican reaction in Georgia and other false elector states. Some of them are finding their backbone and refuting the stolen election BS. These states are ground zero for the revolt against Trump, like embers that need to catch fire and burn down the whole false edifice.

    Fani Willis seems determined to start the trial by March 2024, against a lot of peoples' forecasts for how it will actually play out. Hope she can pull it off.

  13. This is a wacko idea, but I'm wondering if Joe Manchin's distancing himself from the Democrats, is his way of positioning himself to take advantage of the coming chaos in the GOP presidential race, and maybe offer himself as a "unifying" candidate. Nuts I know, but Joe Manchin is a piece of work and anything's possible.

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