Donald Trump and several allies have been indicted in Georgia, accused of scheming to illegally overturn his 2020 election loss in the state.
It is the fourth criminal case to be brought against the former US president and the second to allege that he tried to subvert the results of the vote.
The Fulton County grand jury indictment of Mr Trump on Monday follows a two-year investigation ignited by a January 2021 phone call in which the then-president suggested that Georgia’s Republican secretary of state could help him “find 11,780 votes” needed to reverse his narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Other defendants included former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Mr Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and a Trump administration Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, who advanced his efforts to undo his election loss in Georgia.
The indictment charges Mr Trump with making false statements and writings for a series of claims he made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and other state election officials on January 2, 2021, including that up to 300,000 ballots “were dropped mysteriously into the rolls” in the 2020 election, that more than 4,500 people voted who were not on registration lists and that a Fulton County election worker, Ruby Freeman, was a “professional vote scammer”.
Mr Trump was previously indicted in early August by a federal grand jury for conspiring to undermine the 2020 vote and prevent the peaceful transfer of power through a series of lies and unlawful actions taken after the general election and leading up to the violent riot by his supporters at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. He pleaded not guilty in that case.
As indictments mount, Mr Trump — the leading Republican candidate for president in 2024 — often invokes his distinction as the only former president to face criminal charges.
He is campaigning and fundraising around these themes, portraying himself as the victim of Democratic prosecutors out to get him.
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