Politics

ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump and 18 allies were indicted in Georgia on Monday with scheming to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state, with prosecutors turning to a statute normally associated with mobsters to accuse the former president, lawyers and other top aides in a sweeping criminal conspiracy aimed at keeping him in power.

The 97-page indictment details dozens of acts by Trump and his allies to undo his defeat in the battleground state, including hectoring Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to find enough votes to keep him power, pestering officials with bogus claims of voter fraud and attempting to persuade Georgia lawmakers to ignore the will of voters and appoint a new slate of electoral college electors favorable to Trump. It also outlines a scheme to tampering with voting machines in one Georgia county and steal data.

“Trump and the other Defendants charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump,” says the indictment issued Monday night by the office of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

Other defendants included former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows; 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. Multiple other lawyers who devised legally dubious ideas aimed at overturning the results, including John Eastman, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, were also charged.