A grand jury in Georgia that has been investigating former President Donald Trump over his efforts to undo the 2020 election results in that state has returned an indictment, though it was not immediately clear against whom.
UPDATE: Link to the indictment which includes 19 total defendants charged under 41 counts.
One sort of low-key notable about this is that GA has a long history of being VERY aggressive with RICO rules. It tends to be unusually easy to get affiliated individuals all on the same charges by association in Georgia.
I wouldn’t place a bet one way or the other, but it would not surprise me if some or even all of the indictments are being applied to multiple conspiring defendants. And if that were the case, it would be odd for the organization’s executive to be walking away clean.
Yeah, I’ve read elsewhere that it’s much easier to prosecute this sort of thing under RICO in Georgia than with the equivalent federal law.
Between that and the fact that state charges are immune to presidential pardon, I think these could easily be some of the most consequential charges.
GA has a pretty fucking grim history of using these laws to rob people of civil liberties in pretty bad ways. They have used it to crush freedom of speech with musicians and educators, all kinds of minimally-affiliated “gang” activity, and other bullshit like that. As you’d expect from a state that is pretty firmly in the hand of the anti-civil-rights GOP and Brian “I also used the authority of my office to interfere with my own election to ensure my own victory” Kemp.
But at least in this case, the baddies are definitely baddies.
The Atlantic had some commentary about how broad the Georgia indictment is, compared to the Federal one for Jan 6. Basically, Jack Smith is looking at the political calendar, and wants to have very narrow charges that can go to trial quickly. A broader, comprehensive set of charges would result in a more complicated, slower trial, with the possibility that Trump might win in 2024 and then just terminate the whole thing. If Smith wins the earlier trial, he can still come back and bring wider charges, against, say, all the co-conspirators, but the first trial needs to happen early.
The Georgia one is less constrained by this political calendar, and the DA can bring the broadest range of charges into play, to show most of what Trump & Co were doing.
The drawback to what Georgia is doing is setting a precedent for local prosecutors to bring charges against former Presidents. You can imagine political revenge by some rinky dink GOP prosecutor in Oklahoma or something indicting Biden out of spite.
We very much want to set the precedent that Presidents are not above the law. Without that precedent the country will not remain a democracy.
They would have to have 12 random citizen jurors agree that the charges are serious. We have checks and balances for that.
They reported that it’s Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, and 16 other people too.
Ugh. Not that I don’t want to see all of them behind bars, but that many defendants means the trial is going to proceed really slowly. If this is true, I wouldn’t expect a verdict in this case before election day.
I would expect because this is a state criminal case, Georgia has to wait until the two federal cases are concluded before they get a shot at the big names, but I could be wrong. Usually with RICO cases, it’s said they hope most of those others cut plea deals and turn on the bigger names.