Donald Trump was indicted for the fourth time on Monday night after a Georgia grand jury examined his and his allies’ efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. But the former president isn’t the only one to face charges in the probe.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis also brought charges against 18 others, including Trump’s former attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and Sidney Powell, and his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell help conduct a press briefing on Nov. 19, 2020, regarding the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty
The indictment was unsealed late Monday night, following some 10 hours of grand jury testimony. The former president himself was charged with more than a dozen felonies, including filing false documents, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree and false statements and writings.
Others charged in the indictment, per The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, include Georgia state Sen. Shawn Still; attorneys John Eastman, Bob Cheeley, Ray Smith III and Kenneth Chesebro; former assistant U.S. attorney general Jeffrey Clark; GOP strategist Michael Roman; former Coffee County elections supervisor Misty Hampton; former Coffee County GOP chairwoman Cathy Latham; Atlanta bail bondsman Scott Hall; publicist Trevian Kutti; Illinois pastor Stephen Cliffguard Lee; and Harrison Floyd, who served as director of Black Voices for Trump.
Meadows was charged with two counts, including racketeering — a serious charge that carries a minimum prison sentence of five years — and solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer.
Giuliani was charged with 13 counts, including racketeering and false statements and writings.
Rudy Giuliani Now Admits He Made False Statements About Georgia Poll Workers After 2020 Election
Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, was one of Trump’s most visible lawyers and spent months hosting press conferences and appearing on television and in courtrooms to contest the results of the election.
A subpoena issued to Giuliani earlier in the investigation noted that he appeared before the Georgia state Senate in December 2020 and made “statements, both to the public and in subsequent legislative hearings, claiming widespread voter fraud in Georgia … using the now-debunked State Farm Video in support of those statements.”
That video — which was also cited by Trump — purports to show election workers bringing suitcases of false ballots for Biden into the State Farm Arena, and then running them through the machines multiple times. But state investigators who reviewed the tapes said there was nothing nefarious going on and that the election officials were undertaking “normal ballot processing.”
Ga. Poll Workers Testify at Jan. 6 Capitol Riot Hearing About Living in Fear Since 2020 Election
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Shaye Moss, a Fulton County, Ga., elections worker, is comforted by her mother, Ruby Freeman, while testifying before the Jan. 6 House committee on June 21, 2022. Their family received threats after being falsely accused of tampering with ballots.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty
One of those workers, Ruby Freeman, has since testified that the use of that video, which spread widely on social media, had a negative impact on her life, leading to death threats.
“I’ve lost my name, I’ve lost my reputation, I’ve lost my sense of security, all because a group of people, starting with 45 and his ally Rudy Giuliani, deciding to scapegoat me and my daughter, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen,” Freeman said.
Giuliani has since admitted that he made false statements about the women.
Trump’s Legal Team Drops Attorney Who Spread Bizarre Conspiracy Theories of How He Lost to Biden
Also indicted on Monday was former Trump attorney Powell, who faces seven charges, including racketeering.
Powell was well-known for the bizarre conspiracy theories she publicly espoused about how Trump lost to Biden. On both television interviews and in press conferences, Powell detailed an alleged scheme of thousands of co-conspirators, involving the major political parties and lasting decades, in which voting systems in the U.S. actually had ties to the late Venezuelan autocrat Hugo Chavez and were in fact secretly capable of switching, creating and destroying massive amounts of votes.
She also mused about the possible role of the Department of Justice and the CIA before being dropped by the Trump team shortly after his electoral loss. Even as she appeared on television and in court on behalf of the campaign, however, Powell was reportedly deemed “crazy” by many in Trump’s orbit, including the former president himself.
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Sidney Powell, a former member of Donald Trump’s legal team.
Mat Hayward/Getty
Giuliani and Powell are also thought to be two of the unnamed co-conspirators in a separate indictment of Trump, this one brought by the Department of Justice and also centering on efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Chesebro, Eastman, and Clark — all indicted Monday — are believed to be among the remaining co-conspirators mentioned in the Justice Department’s latest Trump indictment.
Giuliani is also defending himself against disbarment proceedings in Washington, D.C. and New York, both in direct response to his false election claims.
Others indicted Monday include Ellis, another lawyer who unsuccessfully pushed Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud and became a lightning rod for controversy as Trump legal team racked up a string of failures in the court.
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Source: HIS Education