Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
A call led to the investigation for which former US President Donald Trump was charged in Georgia. The fourth criminal accusation in his career, for which he will appear this Thursday to be booked, equates him to the boss of a mafia created to reverse the results of the 2020 elections.
In that telephone conversation on January 2, 2021, he asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find him 11,780 votes, one more than Democrat Joe Biden had obtained.
It was just one example of the maneuvers that Trump and the 18 people charged with him carried out in that failed plan to stay in power, despite the fact that, as the prosecution’s indictment makes clear in its 98-page report, they knew that they had lost those elections. These are the keys to the case:
13 charges against Trump
The main one, the violation of the state law of the racketeering association (RICO, for its acronym in English), known to be used against members of the mob and used to ensure that the leaders of a criminal association, and not only their subordinates, they are accountable to the courts.
Trump is also accused of soliciting a public official to violate his oath of office. and for illegally conspiring to falsely present themselves as presidential electors with the intent to deceive the President of the US Senate and the Archivist, among others, during the certification of votes.
The former president is also accused of conspiring to falsify the certificate of the 2020 votes in Georgia and the notification of the occupation of the electoral college vacancy in that state, where it was stated that two of the defendants were members of that college.
The Prosecutor’s Office sees it also proven that he maneuvered to make deliberate use of these false documents and that in December 2020 he filed a lawsuit against the results there knowing that they contained false allegations, such as that minors voted, people who were deceased or who were not registered in that state.
Having asked Raffensperger to alter the result of the elections in Georgia and thus violate his position is another of the crimes charged, as well as having lied to him or to the Georgia Undersecretary of State, Jordan Fuchs, among others, by telling them, for example that thousands of people were denied a vote by being led to believe that one had already been cast in their name.
18 Trump allies indicted in Georgia
Trump is seen as the ringleader of that plot, but he did not act alone, according to the Prosecutor’s Office. Among the other defendants are two of his former lawyers – John Eastman and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani – and Mark Meadows, his former White House chief of staff.
Two of his former campaign attorneys (Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell), publicist Trevian Kutti, fake presidential voters Shawn Still and Cathy Latham, and Ray Smith, a member of his legal team in Georgia, join his future benchmates. .
41 charges in total and 161 criminal acts
The total number of charges against the different defendants rises to 41, and to 161 the alleged acts that the Prosecutor’s Office attributes to them to try to reverse, without success, Trump’s electoral defeat in 2020.
Not all are confined to Georgia: “The organization operated in other states, such as Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia,” says the court brief, which begins its review on November 4, one day after the elections, and it ends on September 15, 2022, the day on which another defendant, the lawyer Robert Cheeley, is accused of having committed perjury.
Up to 76.5 years in jail
If convicted of all charges, the former Republican president could be sentenced to up to 76.5 years in prison: 20 of them for violation of the RICO law, 10 for presenting false documents or five for conspiring to present them, among others. .
Georgia, a key state in the 2020 elections
Georgia was the state where Biden’s closest victory over Trump was recorded in the 2020 presidential elections, of just two tenths (49.5%). The margin was so narrow that a complete manual recount was carried out to dispel doubts about possible fraud, a procedure whose result continued without convincing the then-outgoing president.
With information from Efe.
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