Trump and associates charged in wide-ranging indictments by Georgia grand jury 52:40

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We have just had official word that the docket has been updated. That is the publicly facing portion of the official docket. The court, this is the court website. And I can tell you now officially that former President Donald J. Trump has been criminally indicted in the state of Georgia.

in a prosecution brought by the Fulton County District Attorney, Fannie Willis. In terms of the number of defendants here, we are still accessing this information. It has just been posted on the docket, but it is former President Donald Trump, along with several others who have been criminally indicted this evening. We are accessing the documents themselves right now as we can get our hands on them. I think printers are whirring.

And we expect to hear from District Attorney Fannie Willis essentially any moment now, now that those things have been released now. Wow. Okay. From the...

All right. So this is from the docket. The state of Georgia versus Donald John Trump, Rudolph William Louis Giuliani, John Charles Eastman, Mark Randall Meadows, Kenneth John Cheesebro, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, Jenna Lynn Ellis, Ray Stalling Smith III, Robert David Cheely, Michael A. Roman, David James Schaefer, Sheldon

Sean, Micah, Thresher, Still, Stephen, Cliffguard, Lee, Harrison, William, Prescott, Floyd, Trevion, Kuti, Sydney, Catherine, Powell,

Kathleen Alston Latham, Scott Graham Hall, Misty Hampton, a.k.a. Emily Misty Hayes. It is a 40 count felony indictment. Yeah. Rachel, we think Georgia should we touch on just some of the crimes listed? Yes. It begins with the RICO Act. That's the big one. And it is broad in the state of Georgia. So you have an alleged violation of the Georgia Racketeer Influencing Corrupt Practices Act.

You have something we just discussed moments ago, solicitation of violation of oath of office. That is, we believe, connected to Donald Trump's personal involvement in recorded calls to state officials. We have several false statement charges that echo something we've seen in other cases. We've seen a lot of evidence for that here coming out of Georgia. We have solicitation of violation of oath of a public officer again.

Those are the kind of state crimes that regard state officials. So this is related to Trump's wider efforts to overthrow a federal election. But the theory of the case here is a state crime committed. I see impersonating a public officer. That's interesting. I want to learn more about that.

and a conspiracy to the same effect. I see forgery and a conspiracy related to forgery, filing false documents, forgery in the first degree. So a lot of lying, those are basically laws about lying, state laws about lying, a criminal attempt to commit influencing of witnesses, something we've seen Donald Trump come very close to in other investigations, but this is now a state indictment on that count.

false statements and writings. I'll tell you, Rachel, as well, this is a lot of charges. This is a huge list of charges. So let me just say, I said this was a 40-count felony indictment. It is a 41-count felony indictment. Again, there are a number of defendants here charged alongside Donald Trump, but his name is first on the indictment. Now, correct me, you're reading along with me. I am. You're all reading along with me. We're all reading off a very tiny print while we're doing this. But let's just talk specifically about the counts facing...

Donald Trump, the former president of the United States. Count one, violation of the Georgia RICO Act. Count five, solicit, again, these are the charges that Trump is facing. Solicitation of violation of oath by public officer. Count nine, conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer. Number 11, count 11, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree.

Count 13, conspiracy to commit false statements and writings. Count 15, conspiracy to commit filing false documents. Count 17, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree. Again, these are all things, charges that Trump is facing. Charge 19, conspiracy to commit false statements and writings.

Twenty seven through twenty nine. That would be filing false documents, solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer and false statements and writings.

He's also facing counts 38 and 39. Those are solicitation of violation of oath by public officer and again, false statements and writings. And Rachel, we're looking at 90 plus pages in terms of all of it. So we're going to make our way through it. But I see Ruby Friedman cited here. We were just discussing that. I see a charge relating to some members of the alleged RICO conspiracy trying to corruptly influence the vice president of the United States.

It's very broad. When it starts with the enterprise at all times relevant to this court account of the indictment, the defendants and at least Trump and all 19. And it describes them as carrying out 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, something we've talked about in recent days, computer invasion of privacy, conspiracy to defraud the state, acts involving theft and perjury. And it talks about

criminal organization that constituted an enterprise. It's a question that's loomed over all of this, whether she would use the state's strong RICO laws to prosecute the crimes. That's actually, I think, the most important part of it is that after they list all these names, they constituted a criminal organization. The president of the United States.

His lawyer, his other lawyer, his chief of staff. I mean, Justice Department officials, other lawyers, a group of people constituted a criminal organization. I mean, that's harrowing. Full stop. This is a moment in American history. The president of the United States is effectively being called in an official court document the head of a criminal enterprise.

There had been a lot of speculation about the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who had not been previously indicted. And there was a lot of drama about his testimony to various investigatory bodies, bodies and grand juries. And I think a lot of people thought, oh, Mark Meadows isn't getting charged anymore because Mark Meadows is cooperating against the president. Mark Meadows is charged here.

as are a number of Trump lawyers. We saw Trump lawyers named or not named, but indicated as unindicted co-conspirators in the federal indictment, the most recent federal indictment about trying to overturn the election results. Questions as to them not being charged, but named as co-conspirators. Here they are. They are charged. Giuliani charged. Eastman charged. Cheesebro charged.

Bossert Clark, charged. Ellis, charged. Sidney Powell. Sidney Powell, charged. Rachel, can I say something? Our friend Andrew Weissman is bursting. Can we bring him in? Andrew Weissman, we are reading. No, we cannot bring you in yet. We'll be on in just a moment. If he bursts, I promise I'll help you clean it up. I had a direct eyeline, sightline to the burst. I think for some reason we literally cannot show him in just a moment. Because we don't have a camera there. Okay. Sorry.

As we are looking at this, I mean, the other the other names that we are looking at here, a lot of the names here. Thank you. This is it. A lot of the names that may not be familiar at the national level are Georgia state officials, former Georgia, former Georgia officials and some Trump campaign officials who are lower who are lower profile individuals.

The name Trevion Coote sticks out to me because that, of course, is the woman I was describing moments ago who somehow persuaded Ruby Freeman to meet with her at a police station in Georgia where she pressured Ruby Freeman that she must confess to voter fraud, trying to talk her into it as if she was a friend when she clearly was not.

We now have the indictment. It is a 41 count indictment. There are 19 defendants listed. Former President Donald Trump is one of them. The first charge listed, count one on this 41 count indictment, is...

the violation of the Georgia RICO Act, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, which is a resonant thing, but also a specific thing and also a thing with a minimum five-year prison term associated with it. Looks like the defendants charged under the RICO Act specifically

are all of them, all 19 of them charged as being part of that criminal organization. As we await comments from Fulton County District Attorney Fonny, go to our nearly burst friend, Andrew Weissman. Andrew, I think we can go to you now to get your first reaction to what you're seeing in this indictment.

Well, it does look like what we have is one indictment, not nine others to come, although we don't know for sure. But it looks like it's one huge indictment. But I think the main thing that if you are Donald Trump and his legal team right now, you have a cooperation problem.

And this really goes to a point, Rachel, you are making, which is there are so many people now who are charged who cannot be federally pardoned. They are facing state charges. There is no ability to federally pardon them. It is going to be so necessary for Donald Trump to throw sand in the gears here, whether it's trying to remove Fannie Willis, whether it's trying to remove the case to federal court, whether it's claiming presidential immunity.

The reason I think he's going to need to do that, even if it comes at the risk of seeming like he's firing Jim Comey again because he's trying to fire Fannie Willis, is he needs to keep these people in line because they are facing criminal charges that they cannot be pardoned for, even if he wins the presidency. And there are this slew of people. And these are these are so many of the names that we know.

understood were unindicted co-conspirators in the federal case that are now facing state charges. So this is a really good development if you're Fannie Willis, but also if you're Jack Smith, because this puts so much more pressure on those people to make a deal with the government. So that's to me the real sort of shot across the bow here, not just because you have these really serious charges against Donald Trump,

But you have so many levers to pull if you are at the state and federal level with respect to all of these other people. And Andrew, we we knew from open source reporting about how these investigations have gone forward, the kinds of the kinds of witnesses they had called the

kinds of subpoenas they had issued, that Jack Smith and Fannie Willis were covering some of the same ground. There was a long, detailed section in the federal indictment from special counsel Jack Smith that covered Trump's alleged actions in Georgia. As you've been pointing out, there was that list of unindicted co-conspirators which pointed at some of the names we're now seeing in this Georgia indictment, Trump lawyers who allegedly participated with him in those efforts.

We've also had Fannie Willis, though, say explicitly that she did not coordinate anything with Jack Smith's office, that she and the special counsel at the federal level have not been talking to each other, either in terms of their investigation or in terms of coordinating their actions and bringing public facing actions like these, filing this indictment. Is that still seem...

Both appropriate to you and does that will that now get complicated by the kind of crossover that you're describing in which some of these these lawyers charged at the state level may now want to cooperate with prosecutors? So to the extent that their charges are appropriate.

against people like Rudy Giuliani, who is alleged to be an unindicted co-conspirator. No, it's sort of, you know, he may face federal charges and state court charges, but they seem aligned. It's just more pressure. Where I see that there may be a real...

is Mark Meadows. If Mark Meadows is cooperating at the federal level, well, he was just charged at the state level. Or if he was given immunity at the federal level to give information, but he didn't admit

to what he has now been charged with at the state level, that is going to be some tension between these federal and state charges. There's also the possibility that he didn't fully come clean to the federal investigators, and this will be a useful wake-up call, as you might say, to him.

to him and to his lawyer as to needing to face the music. And Rachel, just to jump in on three new facts we've gleaned, Rachel, number one, this, we've heard a lot about unindicted co-conspirators in the Jack Smith case. This has a bunch of people charged. We read that off. This also has listed

unindicted co-conspirators. They're often under Georgia state law referred to as individual with a number or unindicted co-conspirator, comma, individual. And then it'll say that person's identity is known to the grand jury. So it'll be very interesting to build on what Andrew was saying about the process. It'll be very interesting to learn about a new crop of people who may have cooperated or at least under duress and legal obligations testified to the grand jury. A second fact we've just gleaned, there is multiple

acts in furtherance of the RICO conspiracy that relate to accessing voting data. We discussed this earlier tonight. Nicole was discussing it. Very, very striking because that gets you all beyond just lying to legislators. For example, I'm just reading here from Act 150. It says that an unindicted co-conspirator, quote, unlawfully accessed data copied from Dominion voting systems equipment in the Coffey County Board of Elections and Registration Office.

It goes on to name others who did that. It names an attorney associated with Sidney Powell. It says that happened in Georgia. And it also makes reference to getting data or trying to get data unlawfully from the state of Michigan. So that's interesting. And the third point I wanted to say, we talked about the intersection of this and other cases. While obviously she said she's moved independently, I see that this DA takes a broad view of her ability to prosecute acts in furtherance of the conspiracy that lie to other even sovereign investigations. So we see here

This new unsealed indictment accuses Sidney Powell, Trump lawyer, of lying to the January 6th committee congressional investigation. And that is an act also cited here as an action further to the conspiracy. So just very broad.

Well, and also to your I'm sorry, let Chris jump in. Yeah, I know it's a question for Andrew. I wanted to I'm going to ask the simple, the simplest, dumbest question. But just to go back to Andrew Weissman, like this is one indictment. I mean, what's so strange about this document? Just comparison to the other indictments we've seen because it is a racketeering indictment. That first page, I don't know if we can show it up. It's the state of Georgia verse and versus and then it is.

You know, the list of the 18 people, this is all one indictment. Like all of these counts, all of these people are one single racketeering indictment, right? Yeah. I just wanted to make sure that I understood that. So we don't we still don't know if the other nine have anything to do with us or like what could be outstanding. But we think this is the comprehensive universe of the charges. And they're all bound together as this collective enterprise under Georgia racketeering law.

Yes, it's certainly that this is one huge mega conspiracy under as a RICO. It is really not clear that the other nine are anything related to Donald Trump. Those could just be, as Rachel was saying, those could be just fraud cases and your normal run of the mill cases that grand jury hear, you know, day in and day out. There are some football feelings you can only get with BetMGM Sportsbook. That's right. Not just the highs. The O's. Ah!

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MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. When I was working in the Senate, I didn't realize that it's the perfect training for the job that I have now. Covering government, covering politics, the complexity of it all. Mastering the detail is crucial to being able to present anything.

that happens in Senate buildings or any other news centers that we have to focus on every day. The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, weeknights at 10 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC. Let me just read from the introduction to the indictment. Again, there's 19 defendants here, 41 felony counts listed. All of the defendants, including former President Donald Trump, are charged under count one, which is a violation of Georgia's RICO Act.

the Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations Act. The introduction to the indictment says, defendant Donald John Trump lost the United States presidential election held on November 3rd, 2020. One of the states he lost was Georgia. 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 in Fulton County, Georgia, elsewhere in the state of Georgia and in other states. And then it describes the enterprise as follows. At all times relevant to this count of the indictment, the defendants, as well as others not named as defendants, unlawfully conspired and endeavored to conduct

and participate in a criminal enterprise in Fulton County, Georgia and elsewhere. Defendants Donald John Trump, Rudolph Giuliani, and then the big long list. Unindicted co-conspirators individual one through individual 30 and others known and unknown to the grand jury 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. The criminal organization constituted an enterprise that is defined in Georgia Code. A group of individuals associated, in fact, the defendants and other members and associates of the enterprise had connections and relationships with one another and with the criminal enterprise. The enterprise constituted an ongoing organization whose members and associates functioned as a continuing unit for a common purpose of achieving the objectives of the enterprise and

The enterprise operated in Fulton County, Georgia, elsewhere in Georgia and in other states included, but not limited to Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and in the District of Columbia. If you're following along at home, yes, that's the list with all of the fake electors.

The enterprise operated for a period of time sufficient to permit its members and associates to pursue its objectives. Can I follow on that, Rachel? Because I made note of that, too, the similar schemes. And page 21, if you're following along, home to 23, there is a detail of all of

of the efforts that Trump and Meadows made in other states with fake electors, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan. And at the end of each one of these descriptions of the ways in which Trump and his team tried to tamper with what was happening in those states, the indictment says this meeting was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy. I think we still have you, Andrew Weissman. The idea that they're citing the actions of Trump and Giuliani is

and Meadows, as well as Jenna Ellis in, in states that are not Georgia as overt acts and furtherance of the conspiracy. What do you make of that in terms of casting as Ari points out such a broad net in terms of election interference and drawing it all back to the conspiracy in Georgia? You know, Fannie Willis, um, about a week ago said, um,

And she likes the RICO statute because it allows you to put before the jurors the whole story. I had the same reaction when I was a prosecutor doing organized crime cases, that it allows you to tell the whole story. And here, Alex, I picked up the exact same stuff because I was immediately looking for Mark Meadows.

And he is throughout this. And, you know, there's a separate count at 28, which is the Brad Raffensperger call where it's Donald Trump.

and Mark Meadows. But Mark Meadows has numerous acts in furtherance of that larger RICO conspiracy. And as she had told us, that she was going to be interested in what was happening across the country. And it makes sense. If you're a Georgia juror, you're going to be thinking, well, why would it just happen here? It doesn't make any sense. Why would you just do it here? So she wanted to tell the whole story

As she said, she thinks jurors have common sense. They want to hear it. And that's what she did. And in the design of the criminal conspiracy, it helps what they're trying to do in Georgia. If they can first do it in Arizona, if they can do it in another state. And there are several other states mentioned here. I was wondering the same thing, Alex, as soon as I saw it. It's in many different sections of the indictment that they're talking about things that these people are doing in relation to Nevada, for example, and Pennsylvania. Yeah.

But if they had succeeded in any of those things they were trying to do in the other states, that would help them succeed in the conspiracy that they were running full throttle in Georgia, which is described in, of course, the most detail here. There is the final charge in the indictment is a perjury charge.

It is the only one, as far as I can tell, it's a perjury charge against Robert David Cheely in testimony to the Fulton County Special Purpose Grand Jury. And he is charged with lying in effect about the fake elector scheme that he was apparently involved in. According to this indictment, that's the only perjury indictment filed.

that seems to have come out of the original grand jury in this case, the Fulton County special purpose grand jury. And also just to note, all of the charges against Donald Trump, every one of them mirror precisely that document that came out earlier in the day today with an in the exact order and the exact title of those that document that became public and then disappeared. One of the

One of the things that is detailed in here that we haven't heard that much about in the other probes into this period of time in the state is the unlawful breach of election equipment in Georgia. And then, interestingly, it says, and elsewhere.

And the indictment says this on page 18. Members of the enterprise, including several of the defendants, corruptly conspired in Fulton County, Georgia and elsewhere to unlawfully access secure voting equipment and voter data. In Georgia, members of the enterprise stole data, including ballot images, voting equipment software and personal voter information. The stolen data was then distributed to other members of the enterprise, including members in other states. I don't know that we've heard much about a multi-state

spreading of stolen data. And when Chris Krebs talked about the most secure election in American history, it certainly didn't include what his old boss, Donald Trump, would go on to do after that. What we believe had happened there was that Sidney Powell engaged this firm to go take the elections equipment in Coffey County because Coffey County...

County is someplace that Trump won like 70 percent of the vote or something. There was no question. But the election officials there were willing to let the Trump folks take them. So as to prove in concept, right, the idea that these things could be somehow manipulated and that would be the basis for claiming fraud. But then as per in public reporting, what's been described is that Powell essentially engaged that same firm to do something similar both in Pennsylvania and in Nevada.

And so the question is whether or not the acts committed Sidney Powell's direction on behalf of Trump in Coffey County mirrored acts that were committed in those other states. And we know that what happened to the Coffey County data is they put it up on a password protected website, but then they gave everybody the password and people are able to get it from all over the country. So we did see a

allegedly criminal conspiracy about multiple states. The question is whether or not that public reporting is the sum total of what they've got here or whether this goes further. Well, and then we also know, and this is a data point that maybe this case ties together, Trump drafts an executive order to seize voting machines. Yeah. Ostensibly predicated on this. Stolen data from inside the machine distributed to other states. Yeah. And so, I mean, go ahead, Chris. Sorry.

Oh, I just wanted to say that one of the things I think is sort of, as you read through the indictment, is kind of satisfying at a basic intuitive and conceptual level about the RICO framework for it. Is that once you say, look, there's a bunch of people who have a goal, which is fundamentally a criminal, corrupt and unlawful goal, which is overturning the election, which, OK, fine.

we've all watched this and reporting on it, then each act in furtherance, right, doesn't have to be discreetly a criminal act, right? So like Act 27 is he just causes them to tweet that the people in Georgia got caught cold bringing in massive numbers of ballots, putting them in voting machines. Great job, Brian Kemp. Like, is that tweet discreetly unlawful? No. But

the entire enterprise they were engaged in, from the breaking into the machines to the tweeting to the lobbying of the state legislators, it was all for a corrupt purpose, for a criminal purpose in the wording of the indictment. It does kind of, to Andrew's point, it does allow them to tell the whole story in a way that's pretty bracing as you go through it. Yeah. The final charge against Donald Trump, which is on page 95.

turns out to have been a public letter to the Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger. Donald Trump did not know that his phone call was going to become public. There was going to be an audio recording of that become public. But he did know that this letter, which is now declared criminal by the district attorney, was public. And

in today's document that was up for a bit that we got to look at a possible list of charges, this was listed as something that happened on September 17th, 2021. So you go to September 17th, 2021, and you find a press release by Donald Trump of this letter to Raffensperger. And I underlined

if this was the crime, what I thought might be the crime in this press release. And it turns out those words are exactly identified as crimes here. Donald Trump sent this letter and made it public saying, Dear Secretary Raffensperger, a large-scale voter fraud continues to be reported in Georgia. And then he gets down to this.

And he asks, he says, and he commits his crime respectfully. He says, I would respectfully request. And then what follows that, this attorney Willis says, is a crime. What he respectfully requests on...

September 17th of 2021, 10 months after the election, is decertifying the election or whatever the correct legal remedy is and announce the true winner. Fannie Willis is saying that was the crime.

of solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer. And then on the next page of the indictment, on page 96, you see another sentence in that same press release letter is also criminal. And that is the crime of false statements and writings. And the false statement that is being called criminal in that letter is Donald Trump saying

As stated to you previously, the number of false and or irregular votes is far greater than needed to change the Georgia election result. Now, Donald Trump would say that.

into every microphone he possibly could. And that is his First Amendment right. He was allowed to do that. But when he put it in writing to the Georgia Secretary of State and was asking the Georgia Secretary of State to take an action that would violate his oath because of that law,

That lie becomes criminal and it is co-joined by another lie that is criminal in the same very short little composition here that Donald Trump thought he was so smart to make public and let his people see. And he's the worst. He's the worst lawyered man in the history of people who can afford lawyers because of people who can afford lawyers. If you write something like this, they look at it and go, oh, no, no, not that. You can't you can't put.

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This is a 98-page indictment. It is 41 counts. It has 19 defendants, including former President Donald Trump. Is Gwen Keyes Fleming with us? Are we able to tap her expertise while we're waiting for Fannie Willis to speak? Gwen, thank you very much for sticking with us. I would love to get your overall impression of what we're looking at here, but I have one question for you to start, and that is on count one, which is the RICO charge. The way the indictment is laid out, there are 161 different acts.

71 pages, 161 separate acts, all described as the constituent elements of that RICO charge. Is that overkill or is that what a RICO charge looks like? That's generally what it looks like. And forgive me, Rachel, because I have it on my phone. So I'm scrolling, trying to get information just like many of you here. So if I lose eye contact, it's simply because I'm trying to find references.

But yes, we have said from the very beginning that one of the things about the Georgia RICO statute that is beneficial to prosecutors is that it allows you to tell the whole story. And so I think what you're seeing in this document is really the expertise of John Floyd, a member of Fannie's team, along with all of her investigators and obviously herself. They have broken this down into, as you said, 161 different acts.

as well as additional or 40 or so different counts. So the document is organized very well. While it may take us a while to read through it, we can see how each little brick

plays into building that bigger story. And again, those of us that have prosecuted in front of juries, you know you have a theme and every piece of evidence relates to that theme in some way, shape or form. And so each of these acts will have behind it various pieces of evidence that the DA and her team will be putting forth at some point in the future to be able to convince a jury

that these folks should be held accountable for these crimes. I think the other thing to point out about RICO statutes is, as lengthy and as broad as this document is,

Any prosecutor only needs to establish two predicate acts. She does not have to prove all 161. That pattern of racketeering activity is established by meeting the elements of two of the underlying predicate crimes. So, again—

These cases are very complex. The evidence seems to be complex. It's laid out very well. But when it comes down to what it would take to be successful in this prosecution, the law is very clear.

The law is also clear that even though she is the Fulton County District Attorney, she is able to reach what happened in Coffey County, something that would appear to be outside of her jurisdiction. She's able to reach what's happened on the federal level. Again, that is all permissible within the law. So as we continue to do the diagnostics and understand what's included here, those are some things that I think is important for people to consider.

The other thing, if I may, is you also see in here

of the election code. We were wondering the extent to which the Title 16 traditional crimes of false statements, forgery, RICO would be combined with some of the Title 21 election codes. And so as my read, there are at least two counts that reference conspiracy to commit election fraud. So again, these are just some initial thoughts as I peruse the document. But

But I'm very interested to see what the D.A. may have to say later on tonight. Yeah, counts 32 and 33 conspiracy to commit election fraud just above conspiracy to commit computer theft, conspiracy to commit computer trespass, conspiracy to commit computer invasion of privacy, all of which may relate to the messing with the voting machines. Our colleague Stephanie Rule has been reading this

indictment along with us as we've just obtained this while we're waiting for Fannie Willis to give her remarks. Steph, your impressions? I keep going to point seven that you referenced earlier where the last line written, the stolen data was then distributed to other members of the enterprise, including members in other states. Other states sticks out to me because remember-

Even if Donald Trump got his alleged wish, Georgia wouldn't have changed the outcome of the election. Right. The state has only 16 electoral votes. He lost by 70. So the follow on question is going to be what other states he would have needed several other swing states. And this lays out, as you pointed before, like there are others mirroring this. And when you read that line, other states, it begs the question.

Let's go to our friend Neil Katyal, who's been looking at this indictment along with us. We just had access to it for a few moments. We're waiting for District Attorney Fannie Willis to give live remarks from Fulton County, Georgia. You see the podium set up there in front of the drape where we're expecting to hear from her any moment. Neil Katyal, as you are looking at this indictment, what speaks to you about it?

So two things, Rachel. Number one, there are many different defendants, as you pointed out. But this entire indictment is really focused on one person, Donald Trump. His name is mentioned 193 times in this indictment. And the charges go out of their way to single out Trump's personal involvement in the conspiracy. It starts with like Act 8, saying that Trump

called, this is a quote, Trump joined the meeting by telephone with Philadelphia, with Pennsylvania officials, made false statements concerning fraud in the November presidential election, and solicited, requested, and opportuned the Pennsylvania legislatures to unlawfully appoint presidential electors. And it goes state after state in describing that conduct and all tying it directly to Trump. So this is not an indictment in which it's

Trump ordered other people to do stuff. There's lots of hands-on stuff about Donald Trump himself. The second thing that I point to is Act 90, which is really interesting. Act 90 says that Donald Trump met with Giuliani, Sidney Powell,

unindicted co-conspirator individual 20, whose identity is known to the grand jury and others at the White House. So this is a meeting, this is describing a meeting at the White House in which Donald Trump is involved, in which illegal activity was discussed.

And one of those individuals, Rachel, has not been indicted. Most common reason in a RICO charge why someone's not indicted is because they flipped, because they are cooperating with the prosecution. There can be other possibilities here, but it sure looks like that right now, my reading of it, and again, we've only seen this for a few minutes, is that the district attorney has flipped someone who was in an Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump on December 18th.

If that's right, that is obviously incredibly bad news for Donald Trump. I don't know who that might be. It might possibly be Lin Wood. I don't know if he's been mentioned in this indictment. I haven't seen it. I don't know who else might have been in that meeting, but I would encourage everyone to think about Act 90 in the indictment. And I suspect Trump's lawyers are worrying about that right at this moment.

For all the high profile Trump associates and lawyers who are involved here, you're right. We're not seeing the name Lin Wood. We're not seeing, for example, also the name Mike Flynn, who had been one of the people who was considered to be potentially in the crosshairs here. Neil, while we still have you, let me just ask you about one one thing. There is a charge that stands out to me just because as a non lawyer, it's the sort of thing that I intuitively understand in layman's terms, which is forgery.

Just from my quick reading of this, it looks to me like there are two of the defendants who are charged with forgery. And they appear to be David Schaefer, who's the former chairman of the Georgia State Republican Party and a former Georgia state senator. He was a fake elector. And then Sean Still, who currently serves as a Republican member of the Georgia State Senate.

And is a was finance chairman of the Georgia Republican Party. And he was also one of the fake electors. There are some other fake electors who have been charged in this indictment, but they are not charged with forgery. As far as I can tell. And again, this is first glance. We're all reading this live on television, which is dangerous. But I wonder about that relationship.

whether forgery is an intrinsic risk to anybody who participated in the fake electors scheme, or if there's some other element of that scheme that exposes you to that kind of a specific charge. - It absolutely is, Rachel. I mean, there is no such thing as Trump used to say, alternate electors. I mean, we have a process in place for deciding who is part of the electoral college. And that process manifestly does not include, you know, just having a presidential candidate

or his party just swap in and put their own names that they like. Obviously, that would not be a democracy. That's something more Soviet in nature. Trump had a legal theory that he could do that because if the state legislatures supported him, he had a bizarre reading of the Constitution which said that would work. The Supreme Court resoundedly rejected that in Moore v. Harper, a case I just argued in the Supreme Court. But that argument was going nowhere.

and it was ridiculous. And so anyone involved with that could have been charged. I haven't, I guess you're a faster reader than I. I haven't gotten to the forgery part yet, Rachel. But the fact that only two people were charged, if that is what the indictment says, only two, doesn't mean that others weren't involved or could have been charged. It might mean that they're

cooperating. It might mean that they just didn't have enough of a role in it. They didn't have the requisite criminal intent. They were just following orders or something like that. Who knows? But, you know, it is significant to me that these forgery charges are brought because they're kind of ones that are just classic. Like, how could you be in the government and be accused of forgery of all things? I mean, you have to be doing something really untoward at that moment. Neil, let me take you back to

Act 90 that you identified for us, because what's so interesting about it is it describes a meeting and item and conspiratorial ideas that were discussed.

But we're not acted on. It says that Donald Trump, Giuliani, Powell, unindicted co-conspirator, individual 20, discussed certain strategies and theories, including seizing voting equipment and appointing Powell as special counsel.

Now, they didn't do either one of those things. And yet it appears as part of the of one of the acts of the criminal conspiracy. Does that mean that when you're engaged in a broad RICO conspiracy like this, that when you get together in the conspiracy chamber and you're just spitballing and the ideas get rejected, that is as criminal sitting there thinking, well, should we kill him? Now, maybe not.

and then they don't kill them. Is that conversation criminal, even though they don't act on the ideas that were discussed? Well, the answer is Lawrence, it depends. The conspiracy doctrine does allow and this is one of the reasons it's used here for the charge of what we call inchoate crimes, which means you don't have to complete the conspiracy. So you and I agree to rob a bank. We've committed a crime right then, even if we don't go and rob the bank, it punishes the unlawful agreement.

If, however, we're just kind of hypothetically talking, well, wouldn't it be nice to rob a bank? And then you say, sometimes, but probably not. That itself is not an agreement and you can't charge that itself is the criminal act. The way in which this indictment is read, and again, we're all reading it very quickly, is not to charge anybody.

the December 18th meeting as itself illegal, itself the place in which the unlawful agreement occurred. The unlawful agreement occurred well before and was to basically interfere with the election. And what Act 90 says is that that meeting was an act of furtherance of a conspiracy.

So you can have discussions that are in furtherance of the conspiracy. You don't need to have them result in a completed act. But the bigger picture here, and I think all of our viewers are wondering, you know, how can you charge Donald Trump with something in which he wasn't successful?

You know, he didn't actually launch. He didn't actually succeed in the coup. He was a failed coup. Is that a crime? And the answer to that is, yes, it's criminal every day of every week because the law would never want you to be able to, like, attempt to do something or agree to do something and then say, oh, well, no harm, no foul. That just isn't the way the law works and hasn't worked for all of America's history.

Neal, we're going to jump in here because here, presumably along with her team, is District Attorney Fannie Willis about to make live remarks from Fulton County, Georgia. Let's listen in. Thank you for joining us. I'm here with the prosecutors and investigators who have worked diligently on the investigation of criminal attempts to interfere in the administration of Georgia's 2020 presidential election.

Today, based on information developed by that investigation, a Fulton County grand jury returned a true bill of indictment, charging 19 individuals with violations of Georgia law arising from a criminal conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in this state.

The indictment includes 41 felony counts and is 97 pages long. Please remember that everyone charged in this bill of indictment is presumed innocent. Specifically, the indictment brings felony charges against Donald John Trump, Rudolph William Louis Giuliani, John Charles Eastman, Mark Randall Meadows,

John Cheeseboro Jeffrey Clark Jenna Lynn Ellis Ray Stallings Smith III Robert David Cheely Michael A. Roman David James Schaefer Sean Micah Tresher Steele Steven Cliffguard Lee

Harrison William Prescott Floyd, Travion C. Cootey, Sydney Catherine Powell, Kathleen Austin Latham, Scott Graham Hall, and Misty Hampton, also known as Emily Misty Hayes.

Every individual charged in the indictment is charged with one count of violating Georgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act through participation in a criminal enterprise in Fulton County, Georgia and elsewhere to accomplish the illegal goal of allowing Donald J. Trump to

to seize the presidential term of office beginning on January 20th, 21. Specifically, the participants in association took various actions in Georgia and elsewhere to block the counting of the votes of the presidential electors who were certified as the winners of Georgia's 2020 general election.

As you examine the indictment, you will see acts that are identified as overt acts and those that are identified as predicate acts, sometimes called acts of racketeering activity. Overt acts are not necessarily crimes under Georgia law in isolation, but are alleged to be acts taken in furtherance of the conspiracy. Many occurred in Georgia,

and some occurred in other jurisdictions and are included because the grand jury believes they were part of the illegal effort to overturn the results of Georgia's 2020 presidential election. The acts identified as predicate acts or acts of racketeering activity are crimes that are alleged to have been committed in furtherance of the criminal enterprise.

Acts of racketeering activity are also charged as separate counts in the indictment against those who are alleged to have committed them. All elections in our nation are administered by these states, which are given the responsibility of ensuring a fair process and an accurate counting of the votes.

That includes elections for presidential electors, Congress, state officials, and local offices. The state's role in this process is essential to the functioning of our democracy. Georgia, like every state, has laws that allow those who believe that results of an election are wrong, whether because of intentional wrongdoing,

unintentional error to challenge those results in our state courts. The indictment alleges that rather than abide by Georgia's legal process for election challenges, the defendants engaged in a criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia's presidential election result.

Subsequent to the indictment, as is the normal process in Georgia law, the grand jury issued arrest warrants for those who are charged. I am giving the defendants the opportunity to voluntarily surrender no later than noon on Friday, the 25th day of August 2023.

I remind everyone here that an indictment is only a series of allegations based on a grand jury's determination of probable cause to support the charges. It is now the duty of my office to prove these charges in the indictment beyond a reasonable doubt at trial.

I would like to take a moment to thank the Superior Court Clerk, Shea Alexander, and her staff for staying late and making sure that this indictment was processed. I would also like to thank the men and women of Sheriff Labatt's office for keeping the courthouse open, but most importantly for keeping us safe over the weeks and months that have led up to this indictment and for what I know they will continue to do to keep us safe.

We also want to thank the Atlanta Police Department and other law enforcement partners who have worked with the sheriff to keep us safe. I will now take a very limited number of questions prior to going to sleep.

Madam District Attorney. Can you clarify in Georgia the mandatory minimum when it comes to RICO charges, whether it's servable by probation or how that might play out? The RICO charges has time that you have to serve. So it is not a probated sentence. Madam District Attorney, what's the timetable for your trial?

What is the timetable for the trial? As you know, in this jurisdiction, trials are set by the judges. And so it will be the judge that sets the date of the trial. This office will be submitting a proposed scheduling order within this week. However, that will totally be at the discretion of the judge. You're the fourth person in the jurisdiction now to indict Donald Trump. Do you believe you need to be the fourth one to try him or could you move it up? Do you want to be the first to try him?

I don't have any desire to be first or last. I want to try him and be respectful for our sovereign states. We do want to move this case along, and so we will be asking for a proposed order that occurs a trial date within the next six months.

Do you have any contact? Earlier today, there was a fictitious document, according to the Fulton County Clerk's Office, that was circulated online with charges against former President Donald Trump. That fictitious document matched exactly the charges that we now see in this indictment. Can you tell us more about that document leak?

Because now you have the former president's lawyers who are saying this is emblematic of a serious problem with your office. No, I can't tell you anything about what you refer to. What I can tell you is that we had a grand jury here in Fulton County. They deliberated till almost eight o'clock, if not right after eight o'clock. An indictment was returned. It was true build. And you now have an indictment. I am not an expert on clerks.

duties or even administrative duties I wouldn't know how to work that system and so I'm not going to speculate. Next question. Have you had contact with the special counsel about overlap between these cases and do you intend to try all of these defendants together?

Do I intend to try the 19 defendants in this indictment together? Yes. Have you had any contact with the special counsel about the overlap between this indictment and the federal indictment? I'm not going to discuss our investigation at this time. What do you think of the arguments made by former President Trump that this is a politically motivated indictment?

I make decisions in this office based on the facts and the law. The law is completely nonpartisan. That's how decisions are made in every case. To date, this office has indicted, since I've been sitting as a district attorney, over 12,000 cases. This is the 11th RICO indictment. We followed the same process. We look at the facts, we look at the law, and we bring charges. How many conversations about the terms of surrender?

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