Former President Donald Trump has been indicted in Georgia, accused of attempting to overturn the 2020 election, marking the fourth time that prosecutors have laid criminal charges against him in the last four months and putting him up against his toughest prosecutor yet.
A grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, indicted Trump on racketeering and conspiracy charges, District Attorney Fani Willis announced on Monday night. Willis’ office has spent more than two years investigating whether the former president and his allies illegally interfered with the 2020 election in Georgia, where Trump narrowly lost to President Joe Biden.
The Fulton County indictment is Trump’s fourth. In April, a Manhattan grand jury charged Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to the hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. In June, the Department of Justice unsealed an initial 37-count indictment against Trump over his mishandling of classified documents. The total number of charges was brought up to 40 by a superseding indictment. Earlier this month, federal prosecutors issued another indictment, charging Trump with three counts of conspiracy and one count of obstruction for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. Trump has denied all wrongdoings.
Trump is the first former president to be indicted on federal charges in U.S. history.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty
Of the three prosecutors Trump is up against, “Willis may be the most aggressive in pushing the envelope,” former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told Newsweek.
Rahmani pointed out that, for Willis, the pressure of being the first to indict a former president is “long gone.” He also described her as an “aggressive prosecutor” who is bringing the most serious charges against Trump.
“The allegations in Georgia related to overthrowing the election and defrauding the United States are also the most serious, compared to financial fraud or mishandling classified documents,” he said.
Willis’ announcement was largely expected to come in August. The forewoman of the special grand jury that heard evidence in the case strongly hinted in February that Trump was one of more than a dozen people recommended for indictment by jurors.
When Willis announced in May that her staff would work remotely for the first three weeks of August, many predicted that indictments would be unsealed within that timeframe.
“This indictment is far larger than the Manhattan case or the federal Mar-a-Lago documents one,” Norman Eisen, lawyer and House Judiciary Committee co-counsel in Trump’s first impeachment trial, told Newsweek.
Rahmani said the Georgia charges were not only more serious but had a slim chance of being tossed out—unlike the ones in Manhattan, which could be reduced to misdemeanors if District Attorney Alvin Bragg cannot find proof that Trump falsified business records to cover up another crime.
Under New York law, the falsification of business records is typically a misdemeanor, but the charge can be upgraded to a low-level felony if the prosecution can show that the offense was committed with the intention to commit or conceal another crime.
Eisen, who is also a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institute, said the Manhattan case involving “hush money payments to protect Trump from losing the 2016 election” is really the “gateway drug to the 2020 election interference” probed by the Georgia investigation.
“It’s a drama in three acts,” Eisen said. “Act one, Trump tried a vast amount of failed schemes to interfere with the election and was left with phony electoral certificates. Act two, he tried to use those to get [former Vice President Mike] Pence to do the wrong thing and when Pence refused, act three. Trump turned to inciting and aiding insurrection.”
“A [Fulton County] indictment will mean that Trump has to fight legal battles on three fronts in three different jurisdictions, all while campaigning,” Rahmani added. “It won’t be easy and, for legal and political reasons, Trump and his lawyers will try to delay the cases until after the November 2024 general election.”
Polls consistently show Trump as the Republican frontrunner in the 2024 presidential race. Although Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has mounted a challenge to Trump’s third White House bid, he continues to trail the former president by double digits.
The indictment in Georgia could also bring some good news to Trump’s campaign managers, who saw a slight increase in support in the wake of his first and second indictments.
Political scientist John Pitney told Newsweek that a third indictment was unlikely to make a difference among Republican primary voters, two-thirds of whom still believe Biden won through voter fraud, according to a recent Monmouth poll.
But Trump’s general election problem could get bigger.
“Non-Republicans think that indictments are not a sign of trustworthiness,” Pitney said. “[Trump’s] mounting legal problems will probably take a toll on his electability.”
“But for the time being, ‘electability’ is not a big concern for GOP voters. For them, ‘electability’ means ‘this candidate appeals to people who aren’t like me,'” Pitney added.