WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT TRUMP’S FOURTH INDICTMENT
Late on Monday, Donald Trump was charged for the fourth time, this time for allegedly attempting to tamper with the Georgia 2020 presidential election results.
According to the indictment, 18 former Trump employees, including the chief of staff Mark Meadows, lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Cheseboro, Jenna Ellis, and others, were also indicted.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, D-Ga., accused Trump and his former officials of using a “criminal enterprise” to win the 2020 election, charging them with violating Georgia’s RICO Act (Racketeer Influenced And Corruption Act).
Trump and the 18 defendants were charged with 41 felony counts, of which the indictment suggests they had “unlawfully conspired and endeavored to conduct and participate in a criminal enterprise in Fulton County, Georgia and elsewhere.”
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Per the indictment, Trump and the defendants were reportedly part of a “criminal organization” whose questioning of the 2020 election results equated to crimes such as making false statements, forgery, computer theft, perjury, conspiracy to defraud the state, and influencing witnesses amongst other charges.
It was an alleged crime, according to the indictment, for Trump and everyone involved to even question the legitimacy of the race, and their “false statements” made during election hearings were made in order to persuade Georgia legislators to “reject lawful electoral votes cast by the duly elected and qualified presidential electors in Georgia.”
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Of course, Trump has consistently questioned the accuracy of Georgia’s 2020 election results. After a number of hearings regarding election integrity that allegedly involved election fraud, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, swiftly declared Joe Biden the victor of Georgia’s 16 electoral votes.
Raffensperger and Trump
In order to “reexamine” the results of the state’s election and purportedly “discover” the 11,780 votes he needed to defeat Biden, Trump, who narrowly lost the state by 11,779 votes, called on Raffensperger. Raffensperger, however, made no attempt to challenge the outcomes.
Raffensperger began an investigation into an alleged illegal ballot harvesting plan in January 2022, which he said may have occurred in 2020. (which is illegal in Georgia). During the 2020 election, over 5,600 ballots were allegedly dropped, potentially impacting tens of thousands of votes, according to a claim made by the election integrity group True the Vote.
Raffensperger has since advocated to “ban the practice entirely” (even though it was already illegal in Georgia), although he has never changed his position on his certification of Joe Biden as the winner of Georgia in 2020.
Raffensperger was allegedly “solicited” by President Trump after receiving a phone call, according to Fain Willis’ indictment. Additionally, she charged that Trump had contacted Georgia’s Republican governor, Republican speaker of the house, Senate Pro Tempore, and ex-vice president Mike Pence.
Willis also claimed Trump and his campaign tried to “unlawfully appoint their own presidential electors for the purpose of casting electoral votes for Donald Trump.”
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In the 97-paged indictment, the Democrat Georgia district attorney also listed 160 “Acts” that Trump and the defendants allegedly took after the 2020 election, which she called a “furtherance of the conspiracy” to overturn the election.
For “Act 128,” a Trump tweet quoting the U.S. Constitution surrounding the vice president’s power to “reject fraudulently chosen electors” was cited by the district attorney as evidence of crimes committed by the 45th president.
Fani Willis also mentioned as an example of illegal action Trump’s tweets urging followers to watch TV networks covering hearings into election integrity.
Democrats have continually pushed for legal action against Trump in Georgia over his alleged phone call with the state’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, where the 45th president reportedly urged him to “find” enough votes to win the state that had narrowly been awarded to Joe Biden.
However, despite numerous reports of illegal ballot harvesting, Raffensperger certified the win for Biden by 11,779 votes.
A Democrat double standard
Many academics have called out Fani Willis’ hypocrisy for ignoring the historical history and precedent of Democrats trying to reverse election results, such as Al Gore in 2000, as she pursues what appears to be a political campaign against Trump.
Professor Alan Dershowitz, a former legal advisor to Al Gore, said on Fox News that while Trump’s 2020 campaign engaged in “the same thing” in their election challenge, Gore’s 2000 campaign did not experience any legal penalties.
“We challenged the election, and we did much of the things that are being done today and people praised us,” Harvard’s professor told Fox News. “Now they’re making it a crime.”
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Democrats have waged unending court fights against President Trump and Republicans for contesting the results of the 2020 election. Nonetheless, Democrats have a long history of protesting Republican victories in elections throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
Libs of TikTok produced a 24-minute video collection of Democrats criticizing Republican triumphs in 2000, 2004, 2016, and 2018 elections to X (formerly Twitter).
After George W. Bush was anticipated to win Florida by just a few hundred votes in 2000, the Gore campaign famously challenged the election results, particularly Florida’s. To the dismay of Democrats, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the case and gave Bush Florida’s 25 electoral votes.
During the official certification of the 2000 presidential election results, 16 House Democrats raised objections, yet none of them have been punished legally or been subjected to censorship.
Al Gore, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and many other prominent liberal figures declared Gore the victor of the 2000 presidential election, but none of them ever faced legal repercussions.
Hillary Clinton, who lost the 2016 presidential election to Trump, called the 45th president “illegitimate,” and claimed that the election was “stolen” from her, although she has never faced any legal repercussions for her words.
According to NBC News, House Democrats complained 11 times during the official certification of Trump’s victory in 2016, yet none of them faced any consequences.
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Republican Brian Kemp defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams in Georgia’s 2018 gubernatorial race. She asserted, however, that she “won” and that her rival “cheated.” Yet, Abrams has never encountered any legal issues in Georgia.
On the Democrats’ opposition to previous election disputes, Dershowitz argued that “you cannot start inventing crimes of things that the Democrats did.”
“These are political actions that the Constitution prefers us to take rather than going out on the streets and rioting. We’re supposed to go to court. We’re supposed to go to Congress. You can’t make those things crimes. And you can’t expand the RICO statute to now include political objections,” said Dershowitz.
Should Dershowitz’s prediction come to pass, Democrats may suffer as a result of the legal fallout because many of them are said to have behaved in a way similar to Trump, who is currently dealing with legal repercussions.
The deadline for Trump’s and the 18 defendants’ surrender is August 25. Willis stated that she wanted the trial to start within the following six months during a late-night press conference on Monday.