August 14, 2023 - Trump indicted in Georgia 2020 election subversion probe

Former President Donald Trump claimed in an interview with Fox News Digital late Monday that the charges filed against him in Georgia are "politically inspired."

Georgia prosecutors say Trump and 18 others including his lawyers, John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, as well as former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows "joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome" of the 2020 election.

Trump said Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis "should focus on the people that rigged the 2020 presidential election, not those who demand an answer as to what happened." 

This is the fourth indictment Trump is facing. The former president, who is the current GOP 2024 frontrunner, has already been charged in three separate cases this year. He denies any wrongdoing in all the cases and says they are politically motivated.

Donald Trump for the second time this month has been indicted on charges related to 2020 election subversion, this time in the state of Georgia — a stunning fourth time this year that the former president has faced criminal charges.

But could the former president, who remains the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, assume the Oval Office again if convicted of the alleged crimes? In short, yes.

University of California, Los Angeles law professor Richard L. Hasen — one of the country’s leading experts on election law — said Trump still has a path to the presidency should he win reelection in 2024.

“The Constitution has very few requirements to serve as President, such as being at least 35 years of age. It does not bar anyone indicted, or convicted, or even serving jail time, from running as president and winning the presidency,” he said in an email to CNN earlier this month.

Legal experts have pointed to the 14th Amendment as a way to keep Trump from holding office if he is convicted, which includes a “disqualification clause” that bars anyone from holding public office if they “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

Read other questions.

The indictment charges former President Donald Trump with “unlawfully soliciting” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to violate his oath of office during their now-infamous January 2, 2021, call in which Trump asked Raffensperger to help him flip Georgia’s results in the 2020 election.

Trump and his then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows – who was also on the call and charged in the indictment – are accused of unlawfully soliciting, requesting and importuning Raffensperger in his capacity as a public officer, according to the indictment.

Trump is also charged with knowingly making false statements to Raffensperger during that call.

The indictment lists 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.”

The indictment echoes an accusation made by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith in his earlier federal indictment of Trump, in which Smith's office claimed Trump lied to Raffensperger during the call while trying to enlist the official's support.

The indictment also cites a letter Trump wrote to Raffensperger months after leaving office, dated September 17, 2021 -- in which Trump asked him to de-certify the 2020 election results -- as another example of a knowingly-false statement Trump made to Georgia’s chief election officer.

 Raffensperger testified before the special grand jury in Fulton County in June 2022.

Former President Donald Trump has been charged with 91 crimes in four criminal cases, in four different jurisdictions. 

The new indictment returned Monday by the Fulton County grand jury accuses Trump of 13 crimes. 

The Atlanta-based prosecution is one of four criminal cases Trump is facing – two federal, and two state cases. 

In the New York case brought by Manhattan prosecutors, Trump has been charged with 34 counts stemming from the alleged 2016 campaign hush money scheme.  

Trump faces 40 charges in special counsel Jack Smith’s Mar-a-Lago documents case, after a superseding indictment was unveiled last month. 

Smith’s separate federal election subversion case against Trump levied four criminal charges against the former president.

Overview of the cases

Fulton County prosecutors have built a key element of their racketeering conspiracy case on several defendants' alleged efforts to “intimidate’ and “harass” Ruby Freeman, the former Georgia election worker whose emotional congressional testimony formed the basis of one of the House January 6 investigating committee’s most memorable hearings last summer.

Several defendants charged in the indictment’s RICO conspiracy count “falsely accused Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman of committing election crimes in Fulton County, Georgia,” the indictment reads.

Additionally, one of the false statement charges brought against Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani stems from his December 2020 statement that Freeman, her daughter, fellow election worker Shaye Moss and another individual were “surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they're vials of heroin or cocaine” while at a Georgia election site.

Moss testified to US lawmakers last summer that she was not being passed a USB drive, but rather her mother was passing her a ginger mint.

Reactions from Democratic and Republican lawmakers have rolled in since former President Donald Trump and 18 other defendants were indicted in Fulton County, Georgia, on Monday.

Here's what some of the top lawmakers have had to say:

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both Democrats, said in a joint statement that the indictment "portrays a repeated pattern of criminal activity."

Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said President Joe Biden has "weaponized government” against Trump.

Republican Congressman Jim Jordan — the House Judiciary Committee chairman and a top Trump ally on Capitol Hill — defended Trump in a tweet Monday night.

House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik slammed the indictment moments after it was unsealed.

CNN's Lauren Fox, Alayna Treene and Morgan Rimmer contributed to this report.

Donald Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani is in the middle of many of the episodes that form the basis of the sweeping indictment against the former president and 18 other defendants unsealed on Monday.

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 the effort to put forward fake electors in Georgia.

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.

Among the calls cited were to Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a key witness in the January 6 hearings. 

Several of former President Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Fulton County indictment are facing charges in connection with the breach of a voting system in a rural Georgia county that took place after the 2020 election.  

CNN has previously reported that multiple of the newly-indicted co-defendants helped orchestrate and carry out the breach in Coffee County. 

 The indictment alleged that several Trump allies committed specific crimes related to their involvement in the Coffee County breach, as well as allegedly lying about their roles. Those charges include computer trespassing, perjury, conspiracy to commit election fraud and conspiracy to commit computer theft, the indictment states. 

The people charged in connection with the Coffee County breach are:

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 the proper authorization to do so.

Latham and Hampton both face charges for allegedly helping facilitate the breach, according to the indictment. Latham also faces perjury charges for lying about her involvement in the Coffee County breach during a deposition conducted as part of a long-running civil lawsuit related to election security in Georgia.

Hall’s role in the breach was similarly exposed during that civil lawsuit, initially by a phone recording where he acknowledges his involvement. 

The civil lawsuit, brought several years ago against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger by a coalition of election security advocates, is cited throughout the indictment as a key source of evidence prosecutors used to bring criminal charges against those Trump allies involved. 

CNN has previously reported that surveillance video, text messages and other communications unearthed during this civil case provided essential evidence for prosecutors investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. 

As recently as Sunday, CNN reported that Atlanta-area prosecutors investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia were in possession of text messages and emails directly connecting members of Trump’s legal team to the early January 2021 voting system breach in Coffee County.

Attorneys for former President Donald Trump released a statement calling the grand jury presentation “one sided” and Monday's events “shocking and absurd.”

“We look forward to a detailed review of this indictment which is undoubtedly just as flawed and unconstitutional as this entire process has been,” Trump attorneys Drew Findling, Jennifer Little and Marissa Goldberg wrote in the statement.

Full statement below: