On Monday night, Fulton County District Attorney Fawnie Willis indicted Donald Trump and eighteen others for their efforts to overturn Trump's twenty twenty election loss in Georgia.
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.
It's the fourth time Trump has been criminally charged since he left office. But Bloomberg, Zoe Tillman, and Eric Larsen report that the sweeping racketeering charges in Georgia pose legal perils for Trump that are different from the other cases brought against him in New York, Florida and Washington, d C. And they carry potentially harsher penalties for Trump if he's convicted. I'm Wescasova today on the big take what Donald Trump is up against in Georgia. Eric, Zoe, good to see you.
Again, Thanks for having us.
Good to see you, Eric.
So we have our fourth indictment. It was widely expected, and you right though, that unlike the other three, this one is different. Why is this case in Georgia different than the others.
Well, there's a couple of reasons why this case is so different. I'd say that the biggest one is that it is such a big case. It's against Trump and eighteen alleged co conspirators, you know, including some of his top former officials and aides, like his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, one of his lawyers, Rody Giuliani. So it's a vast case that is also a racketeering case.
So it's essentially alleging an organized crime. So it's a complex set of charges that the DA says, all combined and taken together, we're part of a big criminal conspiracy. So that's the biggest takeaway from how big this case is.
And we'll really get into why this being a racketeering case, a rico case is so significant in a bit. But Zoe, there's some other things that also make this case different from the others.
That's right, you know, at a really bird's eye view level of major difference is this is a state case. It's not a federal case, and there are certain implications that come with that, one being that if he's convicted of state crimes and ends up winning the White House in twenty twenty four, he can't pardon himself, or at least there is debate over whether he could pardon himself for federal crimes, but it would not be even on
the table for state crimes. And now there are two criminal indictments in state courts in New York and in Georgia. It's both more focused than some of the other cases. It really is centered on what happened in Georgia, which, you know, of the seven battleground states, became I think even more so of a focus for the Trump campaign after the twenty twenty election. It does also reference other battleground states, which is part of what makes it so
sweeping and broad. But unlike the federal case, it doesn't really purport to be sort of a national indictment, so, you know, I think at the at a top line level, those are also two major differences.
Eric. This being a state case is also important, you right, because it comes with penalties built in.
Yeah, a lot of these charges in Georgia have required penalties. I believe that the Rico case carries a minimum of five years and a maximum of twenty. Of course, like in a lot of sentencings, after a conviction, it doesn't always end up being as close to the maximum, but still can be significant penalties. And as Zoe said, you know, there's no chance of him being able to pardon himself, so if he is convicted and sentenced, he really does have to serve time behind bars based on what he's
being accused of. Here, it's also worth noting, you know that while he wouldn't be able to pardon himself, or another Republican president wouldn't be able to pardon him, it's also true that in Georgia, the governor can't automatically pardon Trump. I'd say the governor, Brian Kemp, isn't necessarily a big fan of Trump, but theoretically people might think that he would pardon a fellow Republican, but it doesn't. It's not that simple.
In Georgia.
They have a board setup that would have to make decisions on this, and some of the sentence has to be served, So big risk here for Trump if he is convicted.
And Zoe still one more difference too is there's a lot of discussion about the New York case, but whether the public would be able to see that case, and they won't. But in Georgia, it will be televised, that's right.
You know. One of the benefits for us in the media and also for the public in general, in state corp it is that there is a long history of cameras in the courtroom, whereas in federal courts they have been vehemently opposed to putting cameras in for a long time. So for the federal cases in Florida and DC, we've even had to fight for us to just bring in phones to text our editors what's happening live in the courtroom. There is no way, let alone, you know, to have
public eyes on what's happening. But here in Georgia, you know, we would expect to have live feeds anyone could tune
into watch. Judges have gone back and forth about the pros and cons of that, you know, does it encourage grandstanding or performing for the cameras, But you know, there's such a long history of doing it now in state courts, and I think the consensus seems to be that if the goal is to advocate for your clients, that's sort of the restriction on how much you can really perform for the cameras, and that the benefit of sunshine of daylight on the public seeing how not just the lawyers,
that the judges run their court room, how they administer justice, that the benefits of that are vast.
I would add one thing to that that would be so interesting about seeing a case like this televised if it went to trial, is that there's always been such a difference between what Trump and his lawyers say out in public on social media, on the street about these allegations against them versus what they say when their lawyers are actually in court. They're a lot more reserved. They don't necessarily make all of the same statements because you might have to back them up a little bit more.
And election fraud was really one of those things that they would say. Trump and his supporters would allege, well.
The two greatest scams in American history, the Russian hopes and now they are trying to steal an election from us. We won not by a little bit, We won in numbers like nobody's seen before.
But then when it came to their court cases and they were in court, they didn't really allege the fraud like that because there frankly wasn't any evidence.
That's such a good point and I'm so glad that you brought that up, because I was so struck in DC when Trump showed up for the arraignment. You know, I was in the media room watching a live video feed of him in the courtroom, and the difference between what he was like in that courtroom versus the sort of bomb, bass and big personality on the campaign trail was so striking. And I think you're right that watching that over the course of an entire trial and having
the public see that would be just astonishing. As he is then, you know, going back out to rallies and being his normal sort of big personality.
Self, Zoe. At the heart of this case, as we mentioned before, is this racketeering statue. Rico, can you tell us about this law and why it's so important here?
Right? So, the sort of parent of the law that Trump and the other defendants have been charged under in Georgia, which is the Federal Racketeering Law, was passed in nineteen seventy and it was designed to address problems that federal prosecutors were having going after the mafia, an organized crime where you know, to someone at the top would be you know, using coded language to explain what they wanted, and then it was lower level folks who were carrying out,
you know, the indictable crimes on the ground, and how do you get at the entire enterprise? And so the idea was, if you make it so that you know, each person they have to prove only committed you know, a handful of individual offenses, but that they were part of the broader enterprise, that that was a way to take down the entire organization. And over time courts held that it didn't just have to be applied to the mob and to organized crime, that a criminal enterprise could
encompass any number of things. And Georgia passed its version of the statute about a decade later, and there were actually a series of decisions on point to what we're talking about now, saying it can explicitly apply to a public official seeking to stay in office, and you know, early defendants saying I'm not a mob boss, this law is not meant for me, and the court saying, you know, it's racketeering activity aimed at holding on to this enterprise,
to this office. So you know, there's a long history here, and there's a long history specifically in Georgia and Eric.
I guess the key in this is that they don't necessarily have to have Trump himself ordering something that's illegal in order to prove a criminal conspiracy.
Yes, that's right. The Rico law here will allow the state to go after any criminal enterprise. In this case, the enterprise was to keep Donald Trump in office even though he had lost the election. That was the goal of this alleged scheme, this alleged enterprise. And so to use the mafia, you know, example, Trump would be sort
of like the mob boss. Even though he's not specifically carrying out all of these crimes down the line, he's letting them know what he wants, what he expects, what he wants them to get done, and they're all working to make it happen, you know. And according to this indictment, some of these alleged crimes fluted things like presenting knowingly false evidence of voter fraud to state lawmakers in Georgia to try to get them to undermine Joe Biden's victory
through the electoral College. Trump's own phone call with the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Rafensberger, pressuring him to find just enough votes to overturn his loss in the states.
I want to do is this. I just want to find eleven seven hundred and eighty votes, which is one more that we have because we won the state. And flipping the state is a great testament to our country because.
Even though they'd already conducted a recount and all of the Republican election officials in Georgia were telling him that there was no massive fraud. According to this indictment, there were one hundred and sixty one acts that were carried out by these nineteen defendants allegedly to carry out this alleged scheme to keep Trump in.
Office after the break. The specific of the charges against Trump and the other defendants Zoe. Among the charges against Trump are some really specific things like conspiracy to commit forgery.
Right, so you know, the task for prosecutors is to take you alleged criminal conduct that might not fit neatly into a particular bucket and find the matching state offense that goes with that. So there are a number of counts that relate to this broader scheme to line up so called fake electors in battleground states, including Georgia, to sign certifications that were then submitted to the National Archives saying, hey, actually Trump won Georgia, and Trump won Pennsylvania and Wisconsin,
in Arizona and New Mexico and Nevada. So you know, forgery goes into this idea that there were false sign certifications submitted to an official body, the National Archives, that then feed into the other alleged conspiracies.
Eric Along with Donald Trump, there are also eighteen others of his associates who are also charged with a number of crimes. Who are they and what are they charged with?
Well Mark Meadows, Trump's former chief of staff, really stands out. He was at Trump's side during the entire effort to try to overturn the result of the twenty twenty election, and according to the indictment, was really helping Trump all along the way with communicating what he wanted to the other alleged co conspirators. Rudy Giuliani obviously a very outspoken
lawyer for Trump throughout this whole time. He was obviously on the national level, he was making the case for vast election fraud all along, but in Georgia specifically, he participated in presenting this fake in information about voter fraud to state lawmakers here to try to get them to overturn Joe Biden's vote, you know, for example, saying that ten thousand you know, dead people had voted, even though
everyone had debunked that. In Georgia, the Republican election officials who ran the election in the state confirmed that that just wasn't true. John Eastman is someone whose name has come up a lot ever since the election because he came up with this plan to keep Trump in office and this whole scheme to allegedly get Mike Pence, the former vice president, to ultimately overturn the election on January sixth.
Yeah, and you know, I think Eric is right. Those are certainly the boldface names that would be most recognizable in this indictment. But there are other, you know, sort of categories of defendants that are really notable as well.
You've got through the other the lawyers. They're Sidney Powell, who was bringing these so called you know, release the krack in lawsuits and battleground states, and she's also connected with several defendants who are charged with trying to access voter data in Coffee County, Georgia, and that sort of a separate bucket of folks. There are a few individuals who signed that false certification that we talked about that
was submitted to the National Archives. They've got all these different spheres of actors.
So as we can see, this is a huge, sprawling case and took a long time to come together. How did they know where to start?
It's worth noting that Fannie Willis, who's a Democrat. She was elected and took office just a few days before the January sixth attack on the US Capitol, So she came into the job already knowing that Georgia had been sort of at the center of this election fight that
culminated in this attack on the Capitol. And also there was a shocking piece of evidence that was really focusing a lot of attention around the election scandal on Georgia, that infamous phone call that we mentioned earlier, the recorded phone call in which Trump was pressuring George's Secretary of State, the man who runs the elections, to find eleven, seven hundred and eighty votes. So in the phone call, Trump was allegedly violating Georgia law by pressuring an elected official
to violate his oath of office. And there were some suggestions that you know, he was even potentially threatening that it might be criminal for Raffensberger to not follow Trump's orders. So this call, the recording of this call came out. That's really what Fannie Willis came into when she took office, and the next month, in February twenty twenty one, she started her criminal investigation, and she already, i think it's safe to say, had quite a bit of evidence to start on there.
And what's interesting about that timeline is that her investigation and her focus on then outgoing President Trump and these high level actors really was far ahead of the other
investigations that would come. You know, after January sixth, the Justice Department was extremely focused on prosecuting the attack on the Capitol itself, and although at the time they had said, you know, we're open, we're looking at everyone responsible, the focus on Trump and the others who you know are indicted in Georgia now and who we've identified as the unindicted co conspirators in the federal indictment that really came a lot later on the federal side.
You've reported before that several of the accused false electors have been cooperating with the prosecutors. How much of a role have they played in bringing the charges in this case.
Well, I think it remains to be seen how big their role will be, but clearly it would have been helpful to the district attorney and her investigators to have this kind of inside look at what was going on behind the scenes, because we've heard from a lot of reports a lot of these you know, fake electors from Georgia and other swing states. They're sort of a similar story that was happening is that they were being told some of them at least say that they were being
told that what they were doing was perfectly legal. They were just putting themselvesselves up as alternate electors in case Trump were to win some lawsuit and suddenly become president.
They're saying that they needed to have these alternate slates of electors set aside, just in case that started in Wisconsin when there was actually still a live legal challenge that Trump theoretically could have won when they created an alternate slate of electors there, But then they were allegedly like, well, let's just do this in all the swing states, even though there's no chance of Trump winning any lawsuits there, and having those individuals, those Republicans Trump supporters who put
themselves on these lists and participated in this effort. Having them be able to explain to investigators why they did that, what they were told, what guarantees they were given, would all help the DA build the case against the people at the top.
Zoe, this is a state case, and yet the prosecutor, Funny will Is, didn't limit the scope of her investigation to Fulton County, Georgia, but in fact started to look beyond the state of Georgia to other states like Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada. How does that work?
Well, you know, when any prosecutor is investigating a case, if they come across other crimes that you know, they're able to fit into a prosecution that they have jurisdiction to bring under state law, they're not barred from looking outside the borders of wherever they are. If she had just gone in saying I'm going to conduct a national investigation into Trump's activities, that would really be far outside her mandate and she can't just bring a federal case
which would take that broader national scope. But you know, when you're charging a conspiracy or racketeering criminal enterprise, by
nature of that offense, it's broad, it's sweeping. And so if the conversations that Donald Trump and Rudy Giliani and Don Eastman, et cetera and others are left having where they're not just saying the word Georgia, but Georgia is on a list of things that they're discussing or emails listing a number of states, there is certainly room for her to put that into the indictment.
Eric, what has Donald Trump said about the charges?
You know, long before these charges were even brought, Donald Trump has denied any wrongdoing in Georgia and in the related Washington case for that matter. He claims that these cases are all part of a political witch hunt, you know, where we've heard many times from him, but he claims that these prosecutors are bringing these coordinated attacks in order to undermine his campaign for office next year.
And Zoe, what have the others who've been charged in the case said so far about the charges as of now?
You know, they've either denied wrongdoing or have been mum. Since the indictment came down, Rudy Giuliani came out swinging, as he has repeatedly, calling this, you know, an attack on the justice system and part ofenship and denying any wrongdoing.
You know, a few other players here in the past have talked about, you know, also not thinking, not believing that they committed any crimes in the course of what they were doing, and that they legitimately believed that there was fraud and they were pursuing that protected opinion in trying to uncover facts about what had happened. But for the most part, the majority of defendants so far have not commented on the indictment itself.
When we come back the potential downsides of bringing such a big, sprawling case, Eric Fannie Willis has cast a very broad net with this RICO case, and you're right that she's had a lot of experience bringing these complicated, sprawling cases before.
So, yeah, Fani Willis has a lot of experience with Georgia's RICO laws. Prior to her election as Fulton County District Attorney, she was the lead prosecutor on a sprawling RICO case that was brought against some Georgia teachers, accusing them of cheating on standardized tests, you know, helping their students look better than they actually were in order to help themselves and their funding for their schools. That ended
up being a huge criminal trial for Georgia. She was the lead prosecutor and she won eleven racketeering convictions in that case. She also decided to pursue a racketeering and drug case against rapper Young thug in more than two dozen others. So this is clearly a law that she has a lot of interest in being able to apply to what they allege our vast criminal schemes and Zoe.
That is one of the strengths of bringing a Rico case. But it comes with some downsides too, doesn't it.
That's right.
You know, complexity cuts both ways. It gives you room to bring in a lot of people and you know, weave together a story where with just one person that might be harder to make that case to a jury.
But when you're putting nineteen people and forty one counts in a courtroom, you know before a single jury, you're going to have to prove all of those elements all at once against all of those people, and you know, make sure the jury is following along with you and making those same connections when they haven't been steeped in it for two years. Each defendant has a right to obviously defend themselves and raise all sorts of pre trial challenges to the indictment that might be specific to them
or in conjunction with some of their co defendants. And then that gets into the other risk of bringing a sprawling racketeering case, which is time. It takes a long time to prosecute a case of this size and complexity, and when one of your defendants is the former president of the United States, there are additional you know, legal questions and challenges that he might pursue that are novel, untested, and you know, perhaps higher courts may want to dig
in and resolve them. But well ahead of this getting to trial, I was talking with one expert who said that Trump may try to move this case out of state court into federal court, saying, I was, you know, the sitting president at the time, I was a federal official. This is properly in federal court. That is a fight that Fannie Willis is going to have to decide whether to pursue, and whoever loses could take that to the federal appeals court, and whoever loses there could ask the
Supreme Court to weigh in. And all of that is just time. And when you're talking about Donald Trump and his modus operandi in court, it's delay, it's create time.
And that really stands out from the case that Special Counsel Jack Smith brought against Trump and Washington, accusing him of trying to steal the twenty twenty election. He kept the case pretty simple. I don't think that he has necessarily publicly explained why, but certainly a lot of experts have said that this is the simplest way to bring a case against a former president who is also running to be president again.
And you know what's interesting, the difference between the approach by Jack Smith and Fannie Willis is sort of two sides of the same coin when it comes to leverage and trying to convince possibly key witnesses to turn on
other people, including Donald Trump and cooperate. So, you know, there's one approach that says, you know, don't charge them all right away, let them know that this is what you've got and that this is what's in store for them if they don't cooperate, and try to get that cooperation locked down before indicting them and sort of putting
them on the defense and putting them on the attack. So, you know, the Jack Smith DC indictment has co conspirators who are quite easy to identify for the most part, so they know they're on notice that this is what DJ has against them, and this is what an indictment could look like. But the other approach, you know, when it comes to leverage, is to indict them and to really put them on the spot and say, this is
real stakes for you right now. You know, we're making you show up to court to answer to these charges, and you know, isn't that really scary? And wouldn't you rather avoid all of this? So you know, the different approaches also set up different opportunities for the Special Council Office versus the DA's office to try and secure deals ahead of getting to trial.
So, Zoe, where do things go from here? What can we expect in the kind of days and weeks ahead.
Fannie Willis has said that all of the defendants need to turn themselves in and surrender by August twenty fifth, or potentially face you know, warrants going out for their arrests to come in. We don't really have reason to think at this point that anyone's going to try to flee or evade that, so we would expect sort of a normal course of arranging logistics for everyone to show
up at the courthouse to be arraigned. As of now, we expect everyone to plead not guilty, at least initially, and then the next step, which has already been quite fraught in all the other criminal cases against Donald Trump, has been scheduling normally a very mundane thing that has
become tied up in politics and partisanship. And you know, with Trump saying basically, I shouldn't be going before a jury and you shouldn't be trying to pick a jury until after the twenty twenty four election, and you know, you may try to make that case again in Fulton County. Whether the judge there will be open to that suggestion remains to be seen. So far, judges have not been open to that suggestion and have said, this is my courtroom.
I believe an efficiency, and we're going to set a schedule and if we need to adjust it later, you know we can, but we're not going to put this off. Definitely, needs of the court do not seed to the needs of politics, essentially.
Zoe Eric always great talking to you, Thanks for taking the time.
Thanks for having us, thanks.
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