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      Georgia report reveals jury called for criminal charges against Lindsey Graham and others

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      A special purpose grand jury in Georgia that investigated Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election for nearly two years recommended bringing criminal charges against several people who ultimately were not charged, including US senator Lindsey Graham, former senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, as well as the influential conservative figure Cleta Mitchell.Those recommendations were revealed Friday when the special purpose grand jury’s final report was unsealed. A regular grand jury indicted Trump and 18 others over their efforts to overturn the 2020 election last month. Those charged include Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell, and former Georgia Republican party chairman David Shafer.The special purpose grand jury recommended bringing charges against Graham, Perdue and Loefller “with respect to the national effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election with efforts focused on Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia”.Graham, a key Trump ally in the senate, called Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger after the election and inquired about tossing aside legally cast mail-in ballots. Perdue reportedly pushed Georgia governor Brian Kemp to call a special session of the Georgia legislature in order to overturn the election results. Loeffler initially said she would vote against certification of Biden’s win in the US Senate before reversing course after the January 6 riot and voting in favor of certification.Mitchell, who remains an influential figure on the right today, was on the infamous January 2021 phone call in which Trump asked Raffensperger to find votes in his favor. The special purpose grand jury unanimously recommended indicting her under several Georgia statutes.The special purpose grand jury also recommended indicting Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and Boris Epshteyn, who remains a top Trump aide.It also recommended charges against Burt Jones, who served as a fake elector and is now lieutenant governor of Georgia. A special prosecutor is handling an investigation of Jones after Willis was barred from investigating him after hosting a fundraiser for a political rival. More

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      Trump may seek to transfer Georgia 2020 election charges to federal court

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      Donald Trump’s lead defense lawyer notified a judge in Fulton county on Thursday that he could soon seek to remove to federal court the racketeering prosecution charging him with attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia.The unusual filing, submitted to the Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee, said only that the former president “may seek removal of his prosecution”, stopping short of submitting a formal motion to transfer the trial venue.Trump has been weighing for weeks whether to seek removal to federal court and, according to two people familiar with deliberations, is expected to make a decision based on whether his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is successful in his own effort.The idea with waiting on a decision in the Meadows case, the people said, is to use him as a test. If Meadows is successful in transferring to federal court, the Trump legal team is intending to repurpose the same arguments and follow a similar strategy.To have the case moved to the US district court for the northern district of Georgia, Trump would have to show that the criminal conduct alleged in the indictment involved his official duties as president – he was acting “under color of office” – and cannot be prosecuted at the state level.The rationale to seek removal to federal court is seen as twofold: the jury pool would expand beyond just the Atlanta area – which skews heavily Democratic – and a federal judge might be less deferential to local prosecutors compared with judges in the Fulton county superior court.There is no obligation for a defendant to inform a judge about a hypothetical motion and so, in that sense, Trump’s filing was aimed more at giving notice to the judge who is deliberating on whether all the defendants in the case should be tried at the same time.A spokesperson for Trump could not immediately be reached for comment.Last month, the Atlanta-area grand jury handed up a sprawling 41-count indictment against Trump and 18 others, alleging that the former president violated Georgia’s state Rico statute in pursuing a multi-pronged effort to throw out the results of a fair election.For the moment, two of the defendants, the former Trump election litigation lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, are scheduled for trial on 23 October after they both sought a speedy trial. But it remains unclear whether everyone else will also go to trial on that date.The removal question has major and complicated implications: if Trump or Meadows manages to transfer to federal court, that could upend any trial in Fulton county superior court that had started or finished because of potential jurisdictional issues.Trump can wait until 30 days after his arraignment – or in this case, his arraignment waiver and not-guilty plea filed on 31 August – to decide whether to seek removal to federal court.The Trump legal team is almost certain to wait until the last moment to file, the people said, given Trump’s overarching legal strategy with all of his criminal cases is to delay, potentially even beyond the 2024 election for which he is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. More

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      First hearing held in Georgia for 2020 election interference case

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      A Fulton county judge said that he hoped to decide on trial schedules in the Georgia election interference case next week, a case for which a joint trial will take approximately four months, according to state prosecutors.On Wednesday, the judge Scott McAfee held the first hearing in the Georgia election interference case involving 19 co-defendants including ex-president Donald Trump, who have been charged with interfering in the 2020 presidential elections.During the hearing, a prosecutor from the Fulton county district attorney’s office said that a joint trial involving all 19 defendants will take approximately four months.The prosecutor Nathan Wade also said that the trial will involve approximately 150 witnesses and that the timeline does not account for jury selection.McAfee also denied the request of Kenneth Chesebro to sever his case from his co-defendant Sidney Powell and ordered the two defendants to stand trial on 23 October together.McAfee disagreed with requests from Chesebro and Powell – both attorneys who worked alongside the Trump campaign in 2020 – who wanted their cases to be handled separately from other defendants. Both Chesebro and Powell have also filed motions for a speedy trial.Chesebro’s attorney Scott Grubman argued that while Chesebro’s case surrounds the fake electors scheme, Powell’s case revolves primarily around Coffee county’s voting systems breach.“You’re going to have two cases in one. You’re going to have days, if not weeks, God forbid months, of testimony just related to the Coffee county allegations,” Grubman argued.Manubir “Manny” Arora, another attorney of Chesebro’s, echoed similar sentiments, saying that Powell’s charges have “nothing to do with Mr Chesebro”.Meanwhile, state prosecutor Wade argued that even if Chesebro and Powell’s cases were severed, the Fulton county district attorney’s office would “absolutely” still require the same amount of time and witnesses to try the case.Nevertheless, McAfee disagreed, saying: “Based on what’s been presented today, I am not finding the severance from Mr Chesbro or Ms Powell is necessary to achieve a fair determination of the guilt or innocence for either defendant in this case.”McAfee, who decided to adhere to Chesebro and Powell’s request for a speedy trial, has yet to issue a final ruling on whether the remaining 17 co-defendants will also be tried in October.“It sounds like the state is still sticking to the position that all these defendants should remain and they want to address some of these removal issues,” McAfee said on Wednesday. “I’m willing to hear that. I remain very skeptical, but we can – I’m willing to hear what you have to say on it,” he added.McAfee gave prosecutors until Tuesday to submit a brief on whether the 23 October trial will include only Chesebro and Powell or all of the defendants. More

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      Former Proud Boys leader sentenced to 22 years over US Capitol attack

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      The former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison on Tuesday for his part in the failed plot to keep Donald Trump in power after the 2020 election.Prosecutors sought a 33-year term. The judge did not agree but nonetheless handed down the longest sentence yet in a case relating to 2020 and the January 6 Capitol attack. The longest sentence previously handed down was 18 years, to both Ethan Nordean, a member of the Proud Boys, and Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers militia.Tarrio was a top target in one of the most important cases prosecuted by the US justice department over the deadly attack on Congress on 6 January 2021.In May, Tarrio and three lieutenants were convicted of charges including seditious conspiracy, a civil-war-era offense previously rarely brought but now levied against members of far-right groups that took part in the January 6 attack.In remarks to the court in Washington, Tarrio said he was sorry for the events of January 6, and credited police officers for their bravery in resisting the attack.“What happened on January 6 was a national embarrassment,” Tarrio said, adding that he both now knew Trump lost to Joe Biden and blamed himself for actions that led to him losing his freedom.Becoming emotional, Tarrio said: “I do not think what happened that day was acceptable.”He pleaded with the judge, Timothy Kelly, for leniency. “Please show me mercy,” Tarrio said. “I ask you that you not take my 40s from me.”Kelly emphasised the damage done.“That day broke our previously unbroken tradition of peacefully transferring power,” he said. “That previously unbroken tradition is broken now, and it’s going to take time and effort to fix it.”Before handing down the sentence, the judge said he did not see any indication that Tarrio was remorseful for what he was convicted of, adding that there was a strong need to send a signal to others.“It can’t happen again,” Kelly said.The case was one of the most significant prosecutions in the federal investigation of the attack on Congress, which saw supporters of Trump shock the world with their attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.The Proud Boys are a so-called “western chauvinist” group, often involved in street fighting with leftwing activists. Tarrio was involved in the run-up to the January 6 insurrection but did not take part in the violence. Before members of the Proud Boys joined thousands in storming the Capitol as lawmakers met to certify Biden’s victory, Tarrio was arrested and ordered to leave Washington. But prosecutors showed he organised and led from afar.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Using his powerful platform, Tarrio has repeatedly and publicly indicated that he has no regrets about what he helped make happen on January 6,” prosecutors said.Tarrio’s lawyers denied the Proud Boys had any plan to attack the Capitol, arguing that prosecutors used Tarrio as a scapegoat for Trump, who spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House on January 6, urging supporters to “fight like hell”.The justice department has charged Trump with conspiring to subvert American democracy. But the Tarrio case and hundreds of others stand as vivid reminders of the chaos fueled by Trump’s lies, including the storming of the Capitol in an attempt to thwart the peaceful transfer of power, a riot now linked to nine deaths including suicides among law enforcement.Urging a lenient sentence, Tarrio’s lawyers noted that he has a history of cooperating with law enforcement. Court records uncovered in 2021 showed that Tarrio worked undercover and cooperated with investigators after he was accused of fraud in 2012.During the riot, however, Tarrio posted encouraging messages on social media, expressing pride and urging followers to stay at the Capitol. He posted a picture of rioters in the Senate chamber with the caption “1776”, the year of the Declaration of Independence.Several days before the riot, a girlfriend sent Tarrio a document entitled “1776 Returns”. It called for storming and occupying government buildings, “for the purpose of getting the government to overturn the election results”, prosecutors said.More than 1,100 people have been charged in relation to the Capitol attack. More than 600 have been sentenced, more than half receiving prison terms.The Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Mark Meadows pleads not guilty in Georgia 2020 election indictment

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      Mark Meadows, the former Trump White House chief of staff, has pleaded not guilty to charges accusing him of participating in an illegal scheme to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia and will not appear in court in Atlanta this week.Scott McAfee, the Fulton county superior court judge, had scheduled arraignment hearings for Wednesday for Meadows, Donald Trump and the other 17 people charged last month in a sprawling indictment. By midday Tuesday, all of the defendants had filed paperwork pleading not guilty in filings with the court and waived their rights to an arraignment hearing.During an arraignment hearing, defendants have the right to have the charges against them read and to enter a formal plea. Trump pleaded not guilty in a court filing Thursday and Rudy Giuliani entered his plea Friday, with the rest of the pleas trickling in over several days.While all of the defendants had filed the paperwork by Tuesday, some of them did not file 48 hours ahead of the scheduled arraignments as required by the judge. And, while the judge requires the waiver to be “personally signed by the defendant”, a lawyer for Misty Hampton, a former elections director in Coffee county, filed the waiver without getting Hampton to sign it herself. It was not immediately clear whether the judge would reject any of the waivers as a result.Meadows and four others are seeking to move the charges against them to federal court. But during a hearing last week called on Meadows’ request, US district judge Steve Jones made clear that if he had not ruled by the arraignment date or if the case was not moved to federal court, Meadows would not be excused from arraignment.Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, former Trump lawyers, each have filed demands for a speedy trial, meaning their trials would have to start by early November, and have asked to be tried alone. The judge scheduled a hearing on Wednesday about their motions to sever themselves from the others.After Chesebro filed his speedy trial demand, Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, asked McAfee to set a 23 October trial date for all defendants. The judge set a trial to begin that date for Chesebro alone.Trump’s lawyer has filed a motion asking that he be tried separately from any defendant who asks for a speedy trial.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDuring Wednesday’s hearing, McAfee wrote that he intends to ask prosecutors how long they expect it will take to present their case against all 19 defendants together or for any groupings of defendants, including the number of witnesses they plan to call and the number and size of exhibits they will likely introduce. More

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      Rudy Giuliani pleads not guilty to Georgia election racketeering charges

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      Rudy Giuliani on Friday pleaded not guilty to Georgia charges that accuse him of trying, along with former president Donald Trump and others, to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state.In filing his not guilty plea with the court, the former New York mayor and Trump attorney also waived his right to appear at an arraignment hearing set for 6 September. He joins the former president and at least 10 others in forgoing a trip to Atlanta to appear before a judge in a packed courtroom with a news camera rolling.Trump and Giuliani are among 19 people charged in a sprawling, 41-count indictment that details a wide-ranging conspiracy to thwart the will of Georgia’s voters who had selected Democratic nominee Joe Biden over the Republican incumbent.The charges against Giuliani, along with other legal woes, signal a remarkable fall for a man who was celebrated as “America’s mayor” in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack. He now faces 13 charges, including violation of Georgia’s anti-racketeering law, the federal version of which was one of his favorite tools as a prosecutor in the 1980s.Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, has said she wants to try all 19 defendants together. But the legal wrangling has already begun in a slew of court filings since the indictment was filed on 14 August.Several of those charged have filed motions to be tried alone or with a small group of other defendants, while others are trying to move their proceedings to federal court. Some are seeking to be tried quickly under a Georgia court rule that would have their trials start by early November, while others are already asking the court to extend deadlines.Due to “the complexity, breadth, and volume of the 98-page indictment”, Giuliani asked the judge in Friday’s filing to give him at least 30 days after he receives information about witnesses and evidence from prosecutors to file motions. Normally, pretrial motions are to be filed within 10 days after arraignment.Also Friday, Brian Kemp, the Georgia governor, appointed a three-person panel to consider whether Shawn Still should be suspended from his state senate post while his prosecution is ongoing. Under Georgia law, Kemp is supposed to appoint such a panel within 14 days of receiving a copy of the indictment. The panel, in turn, has 14 days to make a written recommendation to Kemp. The Republican governor named Chris Carr, the attorney general, as required by the law, as well as Republican state senate majority leader Steve Gooch and Republican state house majority leader Chuck Efstration.Still is a swimming pool contractor and former state Republican party finance chair. He was one of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate falsely stating that Trump had won the state, declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors. Still was one of only three members of that group who was indicted.Still was elected to the Georgia state senate in November 2022 and represents a district in Atlanta’s northern suburbs. It’s unclear whether the panel will find grounds to suspend Still, because the constitution specifies that officials should be suspended when a felony indictment “relates to the performance or activities of the office”. The three-person commission can have a hearing for Still including lawyers. More

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      Donald Trump pleads not guilty in Georgia election racketeering case

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      Donald Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges that he conspired and engaged in racketeering activity to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia, according to a court filing submitted by his lawyer in superior court in Atlanta.The former president also attested in the filing that he would waive his arraignment – the formal reading of the indictment handed up by a jury this month – meaning he will not need to appear for that proceeding next week.“As evidenced by my signature below,” said the two-page-filing submitted in Fulton county superior court by Trump’s lead lawyer, Steven Sadow, “I do hereby waive formal arraignment and enter my plea of NOT GUILTY to the Indictment in this case.”Trump’s Sharpie-written signature marks the fourth time in as many months that he has pleaded not guilty to criminal charges, after previously being indicted in a hush-money case in New York, in a classified documents case in Florida, and in a federal 2020 election subversion case in Washington.But it was no less momentous given the seriousness of the allegations in the sprawling 41-count Fulton county indictment, which alleges Trump and 18 co-defendants violated Georgia’s state Rico statute in pursuing a multi-pronged effort to undermine the results of a fair election.The conclusion of the plea and arraignment process starts the pre-trial phase of the case. No trial date has yet been set for Trump, though the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, asked to try all 19 defendants together starting on 23 October after two ex-Trump lawyers sought a speedy trial.On Thursday, lawyers for Donald Trump moved to sever his case from two defendants who have asked for their own trials to be speeded up.“We’re in a huge state of flux right now,” attorney Bob Rubin told Georgia’s WABE. “The case involving these 19 defendants seems to be going in a lot of different directions all at the same time.”Trump’s lawyers have also been weighing whether to seek to have the case moved to federal court, according to two people familiar with the matter, and are expected to make a decision based on whether Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows is successful in his effort.To have the case moved to the US district court for the northern district of Georgia, Trump would have to show that the criminal conduct alleged in the indictment involved his official duties as president – he was acting “under color of office” – and cannot be prosecuted at the state level.The reasons to seek removal to federal court are seen as twofold: the jury pool would expand beyond just the Atlanta area – which skews heavily Democratic – and a federal judge might be less deferential to local prosecutors compared with judges in the Fulton county superior court.Regardless of the final trial venue and jurisdiction, Trump’s overarching legal strategy has been to delay. Even with the Georgia case, if Trump were to win re-election, he could theoretically have the case frozen while he assumes the presidency, legal experts have said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLast week, Trump surrendered at the Fulton county jail, where he was processed as any other criminal defendant. He had his fingerprints taken, his height and weight recorded, and submitted himself to a mugshot that the Guardian previously reported he had desperately sought to avoid.The booking came during the primetime viewing hours for the cable news networks, a time slot that Trump is said to have insisted his lawyers negotiate with prosecutors in an apparent effort to discredit the charges and distract from the indignity of the surrender.The strategy to turn the surrender into a made-for-television circus has been an effort to discredit the indictments, a person familiar with the matter said, as well as to capitalize on the information void left by prosecutors after the events to foist his own spin on the charges.And in a sign of the deeply interwoven nature of the Trump 2024 campaign and the legal team, his top political advisers at the very least explored whether Trump should appear for the arraignment and hold a press conference afterwards for “optics” reasons, the person said.The bond for Trump was agreed at $200,000, the highest amount of any of his co-defendants, including his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who turned himself in for booking a day earlier after his bond was set at $150,000 after being charged with principally the same counts. More

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      What is Trump charged with in Georgia and what is the case about?

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      Donald Trump has been criminally charged by the Fulton county district attorney for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.Prosecutors brought numerous counts against Trump and his associates, including forgery and racketeering, and soliciting a public official to violate their oath of office, among other charges. Prosecutors charged 18 other people, including Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, and the lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman.The charges mark the second time Trump has been indicted in connection to his push to overturn the will of American voters after losing to Joe Biden in 2020.Unlike the federal charges filed by Jack Smith, the special counsel for the justice department, the Fulton county case will proceed in state court. That means that Trump would have less capacity to interfere with the case if he is elected president next year, and he could not pardon himself. Trump is essentially accused of leading an organized crime racket in Georgia via the varied efforts of a web of people collectively to achieve the overturning of his election loss there.In the indictment by the state of Georgia, the state wrote: “Trump and the other defendants charged in this indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump. That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity.”The group, the state charges, “constituted a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in various related criminal activities including, but not limited to, false statements and writings, impersonating a public officer, forgery, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, computer theft, computer trespass, computer invasion of privacy, conspiracy to defraud the state, acts involving theft, and perjury”.Trump waived his right to appear in court for a formal arraignment on the charges, pleading not guilty on 31 August.What is this case about?Donald Trump lost Georgia to Joe Biden in the November 2020 presidential election. After the election, Trump and his allies made an aggressive but unsuccessful push to invalidate the election results in Georgia as part of an effort to overturn his defeat nationally.On 2 January 2021, Trump called Brad Raffensperger, the Republican who serves as Georgia’s top election official, and asked him to overturn the election. “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state,” Trump said to Raffensperger on the call. Raffensperger refused.The call came as Trump and his allies, including Rudy Giuliani, were spreading outlandish lies about the election in Georgia in order to seed doubt about the results. Most notably, Giuliani and others amplified misleading surveillance video from State Farm Arena they claimed showed election workers taking ballots out from under a table and counting them after observers left for the evening. The claim was false – counting had not stopped for the evening when the ballots were tallied.Just as he did in other swing states, Trump convened a slate of fake electors in Georgia. The group of 16 people met discreetly in the Georgia capitol in December 2020 and signed a certificate affirming Trump’s purported victory that was sent to the National Archives. Some involved in the scheme have said they merely believed they were preserving Trump’s options amid pending litigation. The alternate slate of electors, both in Georgia and elsewhere, would later become a linchpin of Trump’s effort to overturn the election.One of those fake electors, Cathy Latham, also was involved in a separate incident in which Trump allies obtained unauthorized access to Dominion voting equipment. On 7 January 2021, Latham helped a firm hired by the Trump campaign get access to voting equipment in Coffee county, a rural county 200 miles south-east of Atlanta. The data was uploaded to a password-protected site, where other election deniers could download it as they sought to prove the baseless allegation that Dominion voting machines had been rigged and cost Trump the election.Why is this case taking place in Fulton county?Nearly all of the key events connected to Trump’s effort to overturn Georgia’s election results took place in Atlanta, the state capital, which is in Fulton county.Raffensperger was in Atlanta when he received the phone call from Trump urging him to overturn the election results. Trump and Giuliani targeted election workers in Atlanta and the fake electors convened at the state capitol in the city in December 2020.What is the Georgia Rico Act?Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (Rico) Act essentially allows prosecutors to link together different crimes committed by different people and bring criminal charges against a larger criminal enterprise. The law requires prosecutors to show the existence of a criminal enterprise that has committed at least two underlying crimes.Prosecutors have long used the federal Rico Act to go after the mafia. But Georgia’s version is even more expansive than the federal statute. It allows prosecutors in the state to bring racketeering charges if a defendant attempts or solicits a crime, even if they don’t bring charges for those crimes themselves.How is this case different from other criminal cases pending against Trump?This is the second case that has sought any kind of criminal accountability for Trump’s attempt to overturn the election. It is the fourth time the former president has been charged with a crime this year.Earlier in August, Smith filed four federal charges against Trump for trying to overturn the election. Trump has pleaded not guilty to those charges, and Smith has moved to set a trial date for 2 January. If Trump were elected president while the case was still pending, he would almost certainly move to fire Smith and get rid of the charges. He could also theoretically pardon himself if he has been convicted. The Georgia case is different because Trump cannot interfere in it, even if he is president, and cannot issue a pardon.In June, Smith charged Trump with illegally retaining national defense information under the Espionage Act and obstructing the government’s attempt to retrieve the documents. Trump pleaded not guilty.In March, Trump was charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in Manhattan. Those charges are connected to a $130,000 payment he made to Stormy Daniels, a porn star, with whom he is alleged to have had an extramarital affair. Michael Cohen, Trump’s attorney at the time, paid the money to Daniels through a shell company and Trump reimbursed him, cataloguing it as a legal expense. Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, said that amounted to falsifying business records. Trump has pleaded not guilty.Can Trump still run for president?Yes. The US constitution does not prohibit anyone charged with a crime, nor anyone convicted of one, from holding office.The 14th amendment, however, does bar anyone who has taken an oath to protect the United States and engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” from holding office. Relying on that provision, a slew of separate civil lawsuits in state courts are expected in the near future to try to bar Trump from holding office.Who is Fani Willis, the prosecutor bringing the charges in Fulton county?Willis, a Democrat, was elected Fulton county district attorney in 2020. She is the first Black woman to hold the office.She worked as the prosecutor in the Fulton county district attorney’s office from 2001 to 2018 and is no stranger to high-profile cases. In 2014, she led the prosecution against a dozen Atlanta educators who conspired to cheat on test scores in order to win funding. She is also prosecuting the rapper Young Thug as part of a broader indictment of the YSL gang. Willis relied on the Georgia Rico Act in both cases.How did the charges come about?In January of 2022, Willis requested that a Fulton county judge approve a special purpose grand jury to assist her investigation into Trump. A special purpose grand jury can issue subpoenas, hear testimony and ultimately issue a report recommending whether or not to charge someone. It cannot issue an indictment.A regular grand jury was convened in late July and ultimately voted to file criminal charges against Trump.Cast of charactersIn addition to Trump, Fani Willis has filed charges of violating the Georgia Rico Act and a variety of other laws against 18 co-defendants:Mark Meadows, former chief of staff heavily involved in efforts to keep Trump in office; Rudy Giuliani, an attorney to Trump who played a key role in national efforts to overturn the 2020 election results; John Eastman, an attorney to Trump and key to efforts to overturn the 2020 election result; Kenneth Chesebro, a legal adviser to the 2020 election campaign involved in the Georgia fake electors scheme; Jeffrey Clark, former justice department lawyer who became involved in efforts to overturn the Georgia result; Sidney Powell, a lawyer for Trump heavily involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 result; Jenna Ellis, an election campaign lawyer; Ray Smith, a Georgia lawyer implicated in the fake electors scheme; Robert Cheeley, a Georgia lawyer implicated in efforts to falsely show election fraud; Michael Roman, former aide in the Trump White House implicated in the fake electors scheme; David Shafer, former chairman of the Georgia Republican party who signed the fake official certificate to send to Congress declaring Trump won the state; Shawn Still, a senior Georgia Republican and state senator who also signed the fake certificate; Stephen Cliffgard Lee, a pastor accused of bullying election workers over fake fraud claims; Harrison William Prescott Floyd, director of Black Voices for Trump, accused of influencing witnesses; Trevian Kutti, a publicist accused of pressuring election workers; Cathy Latham, who as chair of Georgia’s Coffee county Republican party signed the false certificate claiming Trump won the state; Scott Hall, a bondsman accused with others of breaching voting machines in Georgia; Misty Hampton, accused of involvement in breaching voting machines while serving as Coffee county elections director. 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