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Topics: News, US News, Donald Trump
Keryn Donnelly
Topics: News, US News, Donald Trump
A grand jury in Georgia has indicted former US president Donald Trump for allegedly scheming to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state.
This is the fourth criminal case to be brought against Trump in the past five months and the second to allege that he tried to subvert the results of the election.
On Tuesday, officials with the Fulton County Court handed the indictment to Judge Robert McBurney.
Trump is among 19 people to be indicted on the charges. Other defendants include former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, and Trump administration Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark.
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“Trump and the other defendants charged in this indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and wilfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favour of Trump,” the indictment read.
It continued: “That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity in Fulton County, Georgia, elsewhere in the state of Georgia, and in other states.”
Trump has been charged with violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced And Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, as well as six conspiracy counts over alleged efforts to commit forgery, impersonate a public official and submit false statements and documents.
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The investigation stems from a 2 January 2021 phone call in which Trump allegedly urged Georgia's Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, to 'find 11,780 votes' to reverse his loss in the state.
Raffensperger refused to be involved, and, four days later, Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol.
Trump's team has released a statement, calling the Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis a 'rabid partisan'.
"Combined with the intentionally slow-walked investigations by the Biden-Smith goon squads and the false charges in New York, the timing of this latest coordinated strike by a biased prosecutor in an overwhelmingly Democrat jurisdiction not only betrays the trust of the American people, but also exposes true motivation driving their fabricated accusations," the statement read.
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Trump was also 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.
He pleaded not guilty in that case.
The two other indictments that have plagued Trump involve him allegedly taking classified documents from the White House after he's presidency had ended, and him being accused of paying off Stormy Daniels with hush money.