The Fulton County Indictment: An Initial Examination

The indictment handed up on Monday by a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, is a document of extraordinary ambition. Before we dive in, let us begin with a confession: We won’t know until District Attorney Fani Willis tries to take her case to trial whether it is a document touched by prosecutorial genius or a massive overreach. What we can say is that the indictment is unlike anything else pending against Trump in the scope of its allegations of criminality. 

It reaches beyond Donald Trump to 18 co-defendants. It reaches beyond Fulton County, indeed, beyond the state of Georgia—charging a pattern of activity that took place in other counties in Georgia and in numerous other states across the country. It mingles hyper-local activity like terrorizing, lying about, and seeking to influence Fulton County election workers with the highest of high politics elsewhere—at the Justice Department and in the White House, for example. Unlike Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 indictment, it is not spare. It is sprawling.

It is also hard to read. As with many state criminal cases, the indictment is not crafted to tell a story so much as to put the defendants on notice of the allegations against them. As such, much of it reads like a relatively undifferentiated string of acts committed as part of the grand criminal enterprise it alleges. This is not a criticism, just an observation that this indictment—like the New York state criminal case against Trump—is tricky to assess on first read. Unlike the New York case, which focuses on a narrow range of activity, this one is broad. The indictment is almost 100 pages long, is dense with alleged facts, bounces between activity in different states, and relates to different threads of conduct.

It is, in many ways, the indictment that Trump’s most fervent opponents have dreamed of, one that endeavors to tell the whole story of the former president’s postelection misconduct in all of its undemocratic tawdriness. But its very ambition carries risks, and its failure could cast doubt upon the larger enterprise of post-Jan. 6 accountability through the criminal process.

With this document, Willis has declared that she has a monster of a hand. But she now has to play it.

Dramatis Personae 

Trump is indicted alongside 18 co-defendants, all of whom are accused of being part of a single criminal conspiracy (among other offenses). The indictment names at least 30 unindicted co-conspirators, identified only by number. The names of some of Trump’s co-defendants will be familiar: Mark Meadows was Trump’s chief of staff in the White House; Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, and Jeffrey Clark are all attorneys who worked for Trump, his administration, or his campaign in various capacities. And though unnamed in the actual federal indictment, these lawyers are reported to be five of the six unindicted co-conspirators in Special Counsel Smith’s Jan. 6 case in Washington, D.C. 

Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis and campaign operative Michael Roman, also named in the indictment, are other Trump usuals, and they appear in Willis’s indictment primarily for their alleged coordination efforts among various actors in Georgia and other states to effectuate the electors plan.

Two Georgia lawyers, Ray Smith III and Robert Cheeley, are also indicted. Among other things, they are alleged to have made false claims about the vote count in Georgia to members of the Georgia state senate and to have conspired to put forth fake electors. Cheeley is also alleged to have committed perjury when he testified before the Fulton County Special Purpose Grand Jury.

There is also Misty Hampton, an election official in Coffee County, who is indicted for her alleged role in tampering with voting machines, including conspiring to remove voter data from Dominion election machines. Scott Hall, described in the indictment as a Georgia bond bailsman, is alleged to have tampered with voting machines in Coffee County, including by accessing electronic ballots and agreeing to steal voter data. (More about that story here.)

Three individuals are indicted for various acts in furtherance of the fake electors scheme: Cathleen Latham, David Shafer, and Shawn Still. All three served as Republican Party officials at the time (the first for the Coffee County Republican Party, and the latter two for the Georgia Republican Party).

Three individuals who tried to pressure Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman to testify falsely that she had committed election fraud are indicted as well: Stephen Lee, whom outside reporting has identified as a pastor who was caught on police body camera footage outside Freeman’s home; Trevian Kutti, who allegedly traveled from Chicago to Georgia at Lee’s request; and Harrison Floyd, who was allegedly associated with the organization Black Voices for Trump. 

The Allegations

Normally, we summarize the factual information in indictments in the rough sequence in which it appears in the document itself. In this case, however, to simplify matters for the reader, we have endeavored to break out the specific narrative threads that run through the document, rather than leave them all tangled together. The threads all operate in support of the following broad allegation, which serves, in part, as the introduction to the indictment:

Defendant Donald John Trump lost the United States presidential election held on November 3, 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.

So far, the document appears similar to the federal Jan. 6 indictment. But things shift dramatically in the next sentence. “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.” According to the indictment, the 19 defendants, along with 30 unindicted co-conspirators, “constituted a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in various related criminal activities.” These allegedly included “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 indictment claims that this group “constituted an ongoing organization whose members and associates functioned as a continuing unit for a common purpose of achieving the objectives of the enterprise.”

The indictment sets out the “manner and methods”—eight methods, to be precise—by which the organization allegedly pursued its criminal objectives:

1. Making false statements to state legislators about the outcome of the election and soliciting those officials to reject the lawful electoral votes and unlawfully appoint their own electors; 
2. Making similar false statements to state leaders, including the Georgia governor, secretary of state, and speaker of the House of Representatives, and soliciting them to violate their oaths to the Georgia Constitution and to the United States Constitution by unlawfully changing the outcome of the presidential election; 
3. Creating and distributing false electoral college documents to president of the United States Senate, the archivist of the United States, the Georgia Secretary of State, and the chief judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia; 
4. Harassing and intimidating Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman; 
5. Soliciting high ranking Justice Department officials to make false statements to government officials in Georgia, including the governor, the speaker of the state House of Representatives, and the president pro tempore of the state Senate; 
6. Soliciting Vice President Mike Pence to violate the U.S. Constitution and federal law by unlawfully rejecting Electoral College votes cast in Fulton County and those cast from several other states; 
7. Unlawfully accessing secure voting equipment in Georgia, stealing their voter data, and distributing that data to other members of the enterprise; and finally, 
8. Covering up their conspiracy by filing false documents, making false statements to government investigators, and committing perjury in judicial proceedings in Fulton County. 
   

The indictment then proceeds to list 161 acts that it terms “Acts of racketeering activity and overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy.” These are technically presented as elements in support of the first count in the indictment, a violation of Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law (Ga. Code. § 16-14). But the list of acts also provides the factual narrative backing up the entirety of the indictment. It describes several different patterns of conduct, much of which overlaps with the conduct described in the federal Jan. 6 indictment. But a substantial portion of the alleged conduct is unique to the Georgia allegations.

The bulk of the action in the indictment, unsurprisingly, takes place in Georgia, and consists of a number of distinct threads of activity. 

The Pressure Campaign Against State Officials

The first of these involves the pressuring of state officials to either falsify the results of the election or to reverse them legislatively. According to the indictment, the Trump team’s widespread pressure campaign began on or between Dec. 3 and Dec. 26, 2020. During this time, Giuliani allegedly called Cecil Terrell “Butch” Miller, the president pro tempore of the Georgia Senate, and made false claims of fraud in the 2020 election. On Dec. 5, Trump allegedly called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to ask him to call a special session of the Georgia General Assembly to appoint electors to aid in his attempt to overturn the results of the election. Kemp didn’t bite, and the next day, Trump criticized Kemp for refusing to hold the special session, writing on Twitter, “Has anyone informed the so-called (says he has no power to do anything!) Governor @BrianKempGA … that [he] could easily solve this mess, & WIN …. So easy!”

The following day, Dec. 7, Giuliani retweeted a tweet from “co-conspirator Individual 8” encouraging “Georgia [p]atriot[s]” to call their state representatives and ask them to sign a petition for a special session to appoint electors for Trump. That same day, Trump allegedly requested that a Trump campaign associate living in Georgia give him the contact information for the Georgia Senate majority leader and president pro tempore. That Trump associate then sent the contact information to Giuliani and others. 

Also on Dec. 7, Giuliani and Trump allegedly reached out to Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives David Ralston. According to the indictment, Trump encouraged Ralston to call a special session to unlawfully appoint electors to support him. The next day, Trump called Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, asking that he not dissuade other attorneys general from joining Texas v. Pennsylvania, the lawsuit filed by Texas challenging the administration of the general election in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. 

The next day, Dec. 8, Roman sent a text to “co-conspirator Individual 4” asking that person to “get” Coffee County elections supervisor Hampton to attend the Georgia House of Representatives Governmental Affairs Committee on Dec. 10, 2020. It was at this hearing that Giuliani continued to make claims of fraud and played an edited snippet of CCTV footage from State Farm Arena on Election Day—featuring video of Ruby Freeman—which Giuliani claimed was proof of election workers committing fraud. Giuliani and Trump lawyer Smith also encouraged state representatives on the committee to unlawfully appoint Trump electors from Georgia, the indictment states.

Despite Trump’s and others’ efforts, the Georgia General Assembly did not hold a special session to appoint unlawful electors on Dec. 14. That day, Trump published a tweet calling Kemp a “fool” and encouraged Georgians to pressure their lawmakers to support holding the session.

The next week, law enforcement officers performed an audit of absentee ballots at Georgia’s Cobb County Civic Center. Meadows allegedly traveled to the civic center to attempt to observe the audit, which was not open to the public, and was prevented from entering by Georgia officials—including Frances Watson, a chief investigator at the Office of the Georgia Secretary of State. The following day, the indictment states, Trump called Watson, insisted that he had won the presidential election in Georgia and told Watson that “when the right answer comes out you’ll be praised.” Several days later, Meadows texted Watson to ask if there was a way to “speed up Fulton county signature verification in order to have results before Jan. 6 if the [T]rump campaign can assist financially.” 

Trump continued to tweet his frustration, posting on Dec. 30 that Kemp “should resign from office” and that he is “an obstructionist who refuses to admit that we won Georgia, BIG!” Soon after that tweet, then-Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark allegedly tried to get the Justice Department involved. Between Dec. 28 and Jan. 2, the indictment says, Clark repeatedly asked Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue to sign a document that falsely stated that the Justice Department had identified “significant concerns” that could impact the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia and multiple other states. Clark then asked Rosen and Donoghue to send the document to Kemp, Ralston, and the president pro tempore of the Georgia Senate. 

Also on Jan. 2, Trump and Meadows allegedly tried to convince Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to aid in overturning the results of the presidential election in Georgia. (The indictment’s description of this conversation matches the notorious phone call during which Trump told Raffensperger that he “just want[ed] to find 11,780 votes.”) The next day, Trump tweeted that Raffensperger was “unwilling, or unable to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under the table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters,’ dead voters, and more,” and that “he has no clue!”

(The pressure campaign against Raffensperger wouldn’t even end with Trump’s presidency, according to the indictment. On Sept. 17, 2021—over six months after he left office—Trump sent a letter again making false claims of election fraud in Georgia and pressuring Raffensperger to decertify the results of the election “or whatever the correct legal remedy is, and announce the true winner.”)

The indictment alleges that the Trump team attempted similar pressure campaigns in other states. In Michigan on Nov. 20, 2020, for example, Trump, Mark Meadows, and Giuliani held a meeting in the Oval Office with Michigan Senate Majority Leader Michael Shirkey, Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield, and other Michigan legislators in which Trump made false claims of election fraud in Michigan. Almost two weeks later, on Dec. 2, Giuliani and Ellis gave a presentation to the Michigan House Oversight Committee. Giuliani propagated election fraud claims in Michigan, according to the indictment, and he and Ellis asked the Michigan legislators to unlawfully appoint electors from Michigan.

The next day, Nov. 21, Meadows texted Rep. Scott Perry (R-Penn.) to ask for the phone number for the speaker and leader of the Pennsylvania state’s legislature, mentioning that “POTUS wants to chat with them.” According to the indictment, Giuliani and Ellis would soon meet with Pennsylvania legislators to encourage them to appoint a slate of Trump electors—a meeting that Trump joined by phone. After the meeting, according to prosecutors, a group of the legislators joined Trump, Meadows, Giuliani, and two unindicted co-conspirators for a meeting at the White House to discuss plans to hold a special session of the Pennsylvania legislature. Over the next several days, Giuliani and Ellis—and, in one instance, Trump—allegedly placed several calls to members of the Pennsylvania legislature urging them to move forward with the plan to hold a special session. 

A similar story took place in Arizona. On Nov. 22, 2020, Trump and Giuliani called Russell “Rusty” Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives and—according to the indictment—made false statements regarding fraudulent votes being cast in Arizona in an attempt to convince Bowers to unlawfully appoint electors in Arizona. Bowers refused and told Trump that he would not break his oath, according to his later testimony before the Jan. 6 committee. Then, on Nov. 30, Giuliani and Jenna Ellis gave a presentation to Arizona legislators—along with Trump, who joined by phone—and asked the legislators to unlawfully appoint electors in Arizona. The very next day, Giuliani and Ellis, as well as “unindicted co-conspirator Individual 5,” allegedly met with Bowers, president of the Arizona Senate Karen Fann, and other Arizona legislators. During the meeting, the indictment states, Giuliani again made false statements about fraud in the election and asked Bowers, Fann, and the legislators to call the Arizona legislature into session.

The Fake Electors

Overlapping with this narrative is the story of the efforts to create and deploy “fake,” unauthorized electors who would vote for Trump—separate from any effort by state legislatures. According to the indictment, this plan began sometime around Nov. 30, 2020, when Trump campaign operative Michael Roman instructed an unnamed, unindicted co-conspirator to coordinate with Trump campaign associates to contact state legislators on Trump’s behalf, “in Georgia and elsewhere,” to encourage them to appoint presidential electors. 

On Dec. 6, Eastman allegedly sent an email to Cheeley, a person identified only as “unindicted co-conspirator Individual 8,” and Georgia State Sen. Brandon Beach, informing them that Trump elector nominees had to meet on Dec. 14 to sign electoral certificates. The next step, Eastman said, was to mail the certificates “to the President of the Senate and to other officials.” Cheeley then allegedly sent an email to a person identified only as “unnamed co-conspirator Individual 2,” telling that person that he and Eastman were trying to organize a phone call with the speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives and president pro tempore of the Georgia Senate to convince them to call a special session of the Georgia General Assembly. In the email, Cheeley allegedly wrote that Eastman told him it was “critical” that the Trump electors meet and vote on Dec. 14. “I assume you can make sure this happens,” Cheeley wrote. The next day, according to the indictment, Individual 2 sent an email connecting Cheeley with Shafer and telling Cheeley that he should “get on a call” with Shafer, as the latter “has been on top of a lot of effort in the state”—allegedly referring to efforts to overturn Georgia’s election results.

On Dec. 7, the indictment states, Eastman emailed a memo to Giuliani entitled “The Real Deadline for Selling a State’s Electoral Votes.” The memo, written by Chesebro, encouraged Trump presidential nominees in Wisconsin to meet and cast votes for Trump on Dec. 14, despite the fact that Trump had lost the presidential election in the state. A few days later, Chesebro allegedly sent an email to Wisconsin GOP Party Chairman Brian Schimming that contained proposed language for documents used by Trump presidential elector nominees to unlawfully cast votes for Trump on Dec. 14. 

According to the indictment, on Dec. 10, Chesebro emailed Thomas W. King III, general counsel of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, with documents to be used by the state’s false electors to cast their electoral votes for Trump, despite his having lost the election. Chesebro also emailed Nevada GOP Vice Chairman Jim DeGraffenreid, saying that Giuliani and others had asked Chesebro to contact DeGraffenreid to coordinate “the plan to have all the Trump-Pence electors in all six contested States meet and transmit their votes to Congress[.]” Later that same day, Chesebro allegedly sent DeGraffenreid documents to be used by the fake electors to cast their “votes” for Trump. The very next day, the indictment states, Chesebro emailed Roman and other members of the Trump campaign the same documents.

On Dec. 11, then-Georgia GOP chair Shafer reserved a room at the Georgia State Capitol for the purpose of convening a meeting of Trump presidential elector nominees in Fulton County. The next day, Dec. 12, Roman allegedly instructed Trump campaign officials to fill out a “tracker for the electors” listing contact information for Trump elector nominees in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and noting whether the nominees had been contacted and whether they had confirmed that they would attend the meetings in their respective states on Dec. 14. The indictment further describes coordination efforts undertaken by Roman, Shafer, and a person identified only as “unindicted co-conspirator Individual 4” to confirm the Trump elector nominees for Fulton County. That same day, the indictment states, Giuliani told Chesebro and Schimming that the media should not be informed about the Dec. 14 meeting of Trump elector nominees in Wisconsin.

On Dec. 13, the indictment alleges, Chesebro sent documents to be used by Trump elector nominees in New Mexico and Georgia to Roman over email. In a separate email, Chesebro also informed Roman that Giuliani wanted to keep the Dec. 14 Fulton County elector plan “quiet” until the voting was completed. Chesebro also allegedly emailed Giuliani with a memo outlining strategies for disrupting the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, stating that the strategies outlined were “preferable to allowing the Electoral Count Act to operate by its terms.” 

The indictment also describes several examples of co-conspirators’ efforts to conceal the fake electors’ plan. The day of the Dec. 14 meeting in Georgia, for example, Shafer texted an unindicted co-conspirator with instructions to tell the electors to “go straight to Room 216 to avoid drawing attention to what we are doing.”

At the Dec. 14 Georgia meeting, the indictment alleges, Shafer, Still, Latham, and 13 unindicted co-conspirators signed a document titled “CERTIFICATE OF THE VOTES OF THE 2020 ELECTORS FROM GEORGIA” in which they misrepresented themselves as the state’s lawful electors and purported to vote as such. They then transmitted this document to the archivist of the United States and a federal judge in the Northern District of Georgia, among other officials. That same day, Shafer and Still also produced another document entitled “RE: Notice of Filling of Electoral College Vacancy,” in which they falsely represented themselves as both lawful electors and officials for the 2020 Georgia Electoral College Meeting. They transmitted this document to the office of the Governor of Georgia. Roman—who is described as having coordinated with Shafer in the lead-up to the Dec. 14 meeting—is alleged to have sent an email to “unindicted co-conspirator Individual 7” stating, “All votes cast, paperwork complete, being mailed now.”

The Pressure Campaign Against Mike Pence

In its final iteration, the plan involving the development of false slates of electors depended on the participation of Vice President Mike Pence, who would be presiding over the Senate during the counting of the electoral vote under the Electoral Count Act. On Jan. 4, 2021, Chesebro allegedly forwarded Eastman an email between Chesebro and Giuliani with the subject line “PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL - Brief Notes on ‘President of the Senate’ Strategy.” The email to Eastman, the indictment alleges, “outlined multiple strategies for disrupting and delaying the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021.” That same day, the indictment says, Eastman and Trump gathered in the White House with Pence and his counsel, Greg Jacob, in an effort to persuade Pence of his authority under the Electoral Count Act to reject slates of Biden electors or stall the count. Crucially, the indictment alleges that Eastman “admitted both options violated the Electoral Count Act.”

The following day, Trump tweeted, "The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors." And the planning within the Trump camp continued in private as well as in public. Also on Jan. 5, Ellis allegedly drafted a memo titled "Re: Vice President Authority in Counting Electors pursuant to U.S. Constitution and 3 U.S. Code §§ 5 and 15,” which proposed that Pence should halt the count of the electoral vote at the first state, Arizona. Eastman, meanwhile, allegedly met with Jacob and Pence Chief of Staff Marc Short to push his plan for Pence to reject some slates of electors. Trump himself reportedly met with Pence and called his vice president multiple times, at one point commenting that Pence was doing “a great disservice.” The president then released a statement through his campaign announcing, falsely, that "[t]he Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.”

Trump continued to put pressure on Pence the next day, Jan. 6, tweeting multiple times at Pence to “send [the electoral vote] back” to the states, calling him and telling him that he would “go down as a wimp” if he refused to act, and demanding during his speech on the Ellipse that Pence take action. Giuliani and Eastman, too, made similar points at the Ellipse rally. Soon, rioters would storm the U.S. Capitol. That evening, with Congress reconvening to finish the electoral count following the riot, Eastman emailed Jacob to ask one final time that Pence adjourn the electoral count for 10 days.

Coffee County

So far, the Fulton County racketeering plot looks a lot like the federal Jan. 6 conspiracy. But at this point, the story incorporates several different subplots. The first of these involves the computer intrusions in Coffee County, Georgia, the subject of a lengthy Lawfare piece by Anna Bower. 

This story begins on Nov. 20, 2020. Prosecutors allege that Shafer, a former Georgia state senator and chair of the Georgia Republican Party at the time, emailed an unindicted co-conspirator and others. The email announced that Hall, a Georgia bail bondsman, “has been looking into the election on behalf of the President at the request of David Bossie.” (Bossie is a conservative political activist.) 

Several weeks later, on Dec. 6, Powell allegedly entered into a written engagement agreement with the forensic data firm SullivanStrickler LLC in Fulton County, Georgia, to conduct an analysis of Dominion Voting Systems equipment in Michigan and elsewhere. This became relevant to later events in Coffee County, per the indictment.

On Jan. 6, 2021, Hall and Latham allegedly talked on the phone multiple times, including about a request by Hall to gain access to the Coffee County Board of Elections & Registration Office. On Jan. 7, 2021, Latham, then-head of the Republican Party in the rural county, purportedly drove Hall from the local airport to that office “for the purpose of assisting with the unlawful breach of election equipment” there. Latham and Hall, joined by lawyer Sidney Powell and the county’s election supervisor Hampton, then allegedly gained unauthorized access to the computer systems, voter records, and other equipment and data, some of which they took into their possession.  This included equipment and information belonging to Dominion Voting Systems.  On Jan. 18, 2021, Hampton allegedly facilitated access to non-public areas of the same office for two unindicted co-conspirators as well.

A number of unindicted co-conspirators later accessed that same data multiple times over the next several weeks, including from a server maintained by SullivanStrickler. On Apr. 22, 2021, “unindicted co-conspirator Individual 28” is alleged to have directed an employee of SullivanStrickler to transmit all data copied from the Dominion Voting Systems in Coffee County to an associate of Powell and the Trump campaign.

According to the indictment, Powell would later misrepresent the Coffee County episode in a deposition before the Jan. 6 committee. In her sworn deposition, prosecutors say, Powell told the committee that she “didn’t have any role in really setting up” those efforts to access voting machines in Coffee County and that she recalled an “effort by some people” to gain access in Georgia but didn’t “know what happened with that” and did not “remember whether that was Rudy or other folks.” Latham would also perjure herself in a litigation-related deposition on Sept. 1, 2022, by misrepresenting her own role and participation in the scheme. 

The Intimidation of Ruby Freeman

Also not present in the federal indictment is the considerable attention the Fulton County case gives to the terrorizing of Ruby Freeman. That part of the story hinges on Giuliani’s Dec. 10, 2020, appearance before the Georgia House of Representatives, in which he falsely claimed that election workers at the State Farm Arena—including Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss—were “quite obviously surreptitiously passing around USB ports as if they’re vials of heroin or cocaine.”

Four days later, Stephen Lee showed up at Freeman’s house and spoke with her neighbor. He returned the next day and knocked on Freeman’s door. Both times, the indictment says, Lee intended to influence Freeman’s testimony regarding activities at the State Farm Arena. Then, over the course of the following weeks, Lee solicited assistance from another alleged co-conspirator, Harrison Floyd, in his efforts to influence Freeman, telling Floyd that Freeman was “afraid to talk to [Lee] because he was a white man.”

On Jan. 2, 2021, Trump, too, allegedly turned his focus to Freeman. He made various representations to Georgia officials, including Raffensperger, that may have included claims that Freeman was a “professional vote scammer and a known political operative[,]” that she and Moss had awarded “at least 18,000 ballots” to Biden while serving as election officials, and that she had stuffed ballot boxes.

The next day, the indictment states, Floyd repeatedly placed calls and sent a text message to Freeman. The day after that, Trevian Kutti, another co-conspirator, allegedly traveled from Chicago to Freeman’s home, telling a neighbor that she was a “crisis manager attempting to ‘help’ Freeman”; she later called Freeman and told her she was in danger and should meet Kutti at the Cobb County Police Department. Freeman did so, and the two spoke for about an hour, with Floyd joining by phone. Floyd and Kutti offered to provide her protection, according to the indictment.

The Statutes 

Georgia RICO Act (Ga. Code § 16-14) 

The most anticipated charge against Trump and the co-defendants was surely Count 1, under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Georgia’s RICO law was inspired by the federal RICO law and was designed to combat organized crime. As laid out in the indictment, Trump and his co-conspirators violated Georgia’s RICO law when, “while associated with an enterprise, [they] unlawfully conspired and endeavored to conduct and participate in, directly and indirectly, such enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity in violation of Ga. Code § 16-14-4(b).” A RICO conviction in Georgia carries a mandatory minimum prison sentence of five years, or a fine of the greater of $25,000 or three times the amount of any pecuniary value gained, or both. At her press conference, however, Fani Willis stated that she expects any guilty defendants to serve time. That matter will ultimately be up to the judge.

In order to be subject to Georgia’s RICO statute, the defendants must be involved in an “enterprise,” defined to include any “group of individuals associated in fact although not a legal entity,” including “illicit as well as licit enterprises and governmental as well as other entities.” The indictment alleges that Trump and his co-conspirators were “associated in fact” because they “had connections and relationships with one another and with the enterprise;” the affiliates of the group “functioned as a continuing unit for a common purpose of achieving the objectives of the enterprise;” they operated in Fulton County and elsewhere in the state of Georgia and across the United States; and “the enterprise operated for a period of time sufficient to permit its members and associates to pursue its objectives.” To achieve the enterprise’s objectives, the indictment alleges, Trump and several co-defendants used the eight different methods listed above.

Details about the enterprise and its operative goals are plenty in the indictment. But perhaps most important to the RICO charge is the “racketeering” element of the statute. Under Georgia’s RICO statute, racketeering activities include more than 40 predicate crimes, such as forgery, perjury, evidence tampering, and computer crimes. In order to satisfy the “pattern of racketeering” element, § 16-14-3 requires that Trump had to have engaged in “at least two acts of racketeering activity in furtherance of one or more incidents, schemes, or transactions that have the same or similar intents, results, accomplices, victims, or methods of commission, or otherwise are interrelated by distinguishing characteristics and are not isolated incidents.” 

The indictment lays out 161 predicate acts spanning 50 pages, including making false statements and writings; impersonating a public officer; forgery; filing false documents; influencing witnesses; computer theft, trespass, and invasion of privacy; conspiracy to defraud the state; acts involving theft; and perjury. 

Once it is done laying out the single RICO charge against all the defendants, the indictment changes tack. While Count 1 paints a broad and inclusive picture of a single far-reaching conspiracy, the remaining 40 charges focus on far more narrow bands of criminal activity. In some cases, the indictment brings a number of overlapping charges for substantially similar conduct on the part of the defendant. In others, it charges repeated iterations of the same conduct as separate violations.

Together, the remaining charges in the indictment cover all 19 defendants multiple times and form an intimidating morass of intersecting facts and legal authorities that can be difficult to untangle. But grouping the remaining charges by the type of conduct they seek to address helps to make sense of them.

Charges Relating to the Pressure Campaign Against Georgia State Officials

Most of the criminal charges in the indictment relate to alleged efforts by Trump and his associates to lobby Georgia legislators and other state officials to manipulate the outcome of the 2020 outcome by decertifying the election, appointing alternate electors, or taking similar steps. Most are rooted in the state’s criminal solicitation statute (Ga. Code § 16-4-7), which makes it a crime to “solici[t], reques[t], importun[e], or otherwise attemp[t] to cause [another] person” to “engage in conduct constituting a felony[,]” even where that person “could not be guilty of the crime solicited.” The felony being solicited is almost always a violation of an oath of office by a public official (Ga. Code § 16-10-1), a provision that installs criminal penalties for “[a]ny public officer who willfully and intentionally violates the terms of his oath as prescribed by law[.]” Conviction can carry a criminal penalty of between one and three years in prison.

The indictment also charges several individuals involved in these efforts under Georgia’s false statements and writings law (Ga. Code § 16-10-20), which punishes anyone who “knowingly and willfully falsifies, conceals, or covers up … a material fact” or “makes a false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation” in any state governmental matters with between one and five years in prison. In each case, the indictment ties these charges back to statements the defendant is alleged to have made that asserted or repeated false claims about the 2020 elections in Georgia, ranging from false counts of fake or unlawful ballots to false allegations that Democratic officials had taken steps to manipulate the vote results. Whereas the solicitation charges focus on the efforts to lobby officials to engage in unlawful activity, these charges specifically target the false information that certain individuals deployed to build the case for such measures.

In leveling these charges, the indictment focuses on six specific engagements that Trump or his associates pursued with Georgia state officials, each of which led to a number of individual criminal charges:

• The Dec. 3, 2020, meeting with members of Georgia’s state senate and its judiciary subcommittee that Giuliani, Eastman, Ellis, and Smith participated in, along with an unindicted co-conspirator. Count 2 of the indictment charges Giuliani, Eastman, Ellis, and Smith with soliciting public officers to violate their oath at this meeting (Ga. Code § 16-4-7 and § 16-10-1) while Counts 3 and 4 charge Giuliani and Smith, respectively, with making false statements and writings at the same (Ga. Code § 16-10-20).
• The Dec. 7, 2020, phone call that Trump held with Speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives David Ralston. Count 5 of the indictment charges Trump with soliciting a public offer to violate their oath (Ga. Code § 16-4-7 and § 16-10-1) in relation to this meeting.
• The Dec. 10, 2020, meeting that Giuliani, Smith, and several unindicted co-conspirators held with members of Georgia’s House of Representatives and its governmental affairs committee. Count 6 charges both Giuliani and Smith with soliciting a public offer to violate their oath at this meeting (Ga. Code § 16-4-7 and § 16-10-1) while Count 7 charges Giuliani with making false statements and writings (Ga. Code § 16-10-20). 
• The Dec. 30, 2020, meeting of the Georgia Senate’s judiciary subcommittee, which Giuliani, Smith, and Cheeley attended. Count 23 charges all three with soliciting a public offer to violate their oath at this meeting (Ga. Code § 16-4-7 and § 16-10-1) while Counts 24, 25, and 26 charge each, respectively, with making false statements and writings (Ga. Code § 16-10-20). 
• The infamous “perfect phone call” that Trump and Meadows held with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021. Count 28 charges both men with soliciting a public offer to violate their oath at this meeting (Ga. Code § 16-4-7 and § 16-10-1) while Count 29 specifically charges Trump with making false statements and writings (Ga. Code § 16-10-20). 
• The letter that Trump sent to Raffensperger on Sept. 17, 2021, encouraging him to “decertif[y] the Election, or whatever the correct legal remedy is, and announce the true winner.” Count 38 once again charges Trump with soliciting a public offer to violate their oath (Ga. Code § 16-4-7 and § 16-10-1) for this exchange while Count 39 charges Trump with making false statements and writings (Ga. Code § 16-10-20) for his claim therein that “the number of false and/or irregular votes is far greater than needed to change the Georgia election result[.]”

Notably, the indictment states that all of these exchanges took place in substantial part within Fulton County, placing them within the district attorney’s jurisdiction.

Two additional charges in the indictment address related activity but depart from this model in the charges they bring.

Count 23 addresses Clark’s effort to persuade senior Justice Department officials to send an official letter to Georgia state officials asserting that the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election” in Georgia, which occurred between Dec. 28, 2020, and Jan. 2, 2021. As this effort was ultimately unsuccessful, Count 23 charges Clark under Georgia’s criminal attempt statute (Ga. Code § 16-4-1), which makes it a crime for an individual to, “with intent to commit a specific crime, ... perfor[m] any act which constitutes a substantial step toward the commission of that crime.” In this case, the underlying crime was a violation of Georgia’s false statements and writings provision (Ga. Code § 16-10-20). While Clark’s actions took place outside of the state, the indictment notes that they “constituted an attempt to commit a crime within the state of Georgia” and thus fall within the scope of Georgia’s criminal jurisdiction law (Ga. Code § 17-2-1(b)(2)).

Count 27, meanwhile, relates to false statements about the 2020 election that Trump and Eastman included in a complaint they filed in federal district court in the matter of Trump v. Kemp on Dec. 31, 2020. Instead of bringing charges under Georgia’s false statements and writings provision, Count 27 charges both Trump and Eastman with a more specific provision (Ga. Code § 17-10-20.1(b)(1)) that makes it a crime to “[k]nowingly file, enter, or record any document in a public record or court of this state or of the United States knowing or having reason to know that [it] is false or contains a materially false [statement].” Violations of this filing false documents provision carry a stiffer penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

The Fake Electors Scheme

The indictment brings another set of criminal charges in relation to the scheme to appoint false electors. These once again include charges under Georgia laws relating to false statements and writings (Ga. Code § 16-10-20), filing false records (Ga. Code § 17-10-20.1(b)(1)), and criminal attempt (Ga. Code § 16-4-1). But they also include charges under several other criminal provisions that relate to forgery, impersonating public officials, and criminal conspiracy.

The defendants allegedly involved in the false electors scheme fall into two categories. The indictment brings a diverse array of criminal charges against Shafer, Still, and Latham, the three defendants accused of directly executing the false electors scheme. But it also brings a number of closely related conspiracy charges against a broader group of defendants, including Trump, Giuliani, Eastman, Chesebro, Smith, Cheeley, and Roman. In this sense, prosecutors posit that, while Shafer, Still, and Latham played the most direct role in the scheme, their efforts were part of a broader conspiracy that included Trump—and that both groups should be held criminally responsible, albeit under different legal avenues.

Count 8 begins by charging Shafer, Still, and Latham with the crime of impersonating a public officer (Ga. Code § 16-10-23) for falsely holding themselves out as Georgia state electors on the “CERTIFICATE OF THE VOTES OF THE 2020 ELECTORS FROM GEORGIA” purporting to be valid electoral votes that they transmitted to an array of state and federal officials. Counts 10 and 12 follow up, respectively, with charges of forgery in the first degree (Ga. Code § 16-9-1(b)) and making false statements and writings (Ga. Code § 16-10-20) against the same three defendants for more or less the same conduct. Count 14, meanwhile, charges the same trio with criminal attempt (Ga. Code § 16-4-1) to file a false document (Ga. Code § 17-10-20.1(b)(1)) for submitting the same certification to a federal district court in an unsuccessful attempt to have it filed there.

Counts 16 and 18 then shift focus to another concrete part of the false elector scheme perpetrated by Shafer and Still, in which they held themselves out as duly qualified presidential electors and officials in the Georgia Electoral College meeting in a document entitled “RE: Notice of Filing of Electoral College Vacancy” on or about Dec. 14, 2020. Count 16 again charges the two men with forgery in the first degree in relation to this conduct (Ga. Code § 16-9-1(b)) while Count 18 brings additional charges of making false statements and writings (Ga. Code § 16-10-20). 

The indictment states expressly, however, that, in each of these cases, these three defendants were acting as part of a broader conspiracy that included Trump, Giuliani, Eastman, Chesebro, Smith, Cheeley, and Roman. For this reason, Counts 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, and 19 charge these same seven defendants with six criminal conspiracies (Ga. Code § 16-4-8) to commit the specific offenses that Shafer, Still, and Latham are charged with committing.

The Intimidation of Ruby Freeman

A separate set of criminal charges addresses the efforts to intimidate Freeman. Count 1 discusses the extent to which Freeman suffered harassment and intimidation after being falsely accused of election interference in a Dec. 10, 2020, speech by Giuliani. But the other related charges in the indictment address that issue only obliquely and instead focus on the specific efforts that several co-defendants allegedly made to influence her eventual testimony as to events on Election Day. 

Counts 20 and 21 both charge Stephen Lee with criminal attempts (Ga. Code § 16-4-1) to influence witnesses (Ga. Code § 16-10-93(b)(1)(A)). Count 20 covers the trip that Lee made to Freeman’s home on Dec. 14, 2020, when he spoke with her neighbors. Count 21 addresses the return trip he made the next day, when he returned to her home and knocked on her door. Both trips, the indictment alleges, were substantial steps made with the intent of influencing Freeman’s possible testimony regarding events at State Farm Arena, where she was accused of having facilitated some form of election fraud.

Count 30 and 31, meanwhile, cover Lee’s later efforts to make contact with Freeman in coordination with Floyd and Kutti. Count 30 charges all three defendants with a criminal conspiracy (Ga. Code § 16-4-8) to solicit (Ga. Code § 16-4-7) false statements and writings (Ga. Code § 16-10-20) in relation to their Jan. 4, 2021, meeting with Freeman. Count 31, meanwhile, charges the trio with influencing witnesses (Ga. Code § 16-10-93(b)(1)(A)) at the same meeting, through their offer of assistance to Freeman and assertions that she needed protection. 

Coffee County

The indictment brings yet another set of charges in relation to the alleged scheme to gain access to electronic voting records and equipment in Coffee County. Like the false electors scheme, the indictment approaches the scheme in Coffee County as a set of substantially overlapping conspiracies. All five conspiracies charged involve the same four defendants—Powell, Latham, Hall, and Hampton—along with potential unnamed co-conspirators. Notably, however, the indictment charges these conspiracies not just under the state’s standard criminal conspiracy law (Ga. Code § 16-4-8) but also under separate state conspiracy laws specifically relating to violations of election law, computer crimes, and efforts to defraud the state. 

Counts 32 and 33 charges the four Coffee County defendants with conspiracies under a Georgia statute criminalizing conspiracies to violate state election laws (Ga. Code § 21-2-603). Count 32 charges a conspiracy to “willfully tamper with electronic ballot markers and tabulating machines” in violation of state election law that criminalizes interference in primaries and elections (Ga. Code § 21-2-566). Count 33, meanwhile, charges a conspiracy to give third parties access to official ballots outside Georgia state polling places in violation of another election-related state law making it a felony for “[a]ny person, other than an officer charged by law with the care of ballots or a person entrusted by any such officer,” to have an official ballot “in his or her possession outside the polling place” (Ga. Code § 21-2-574).

Counts 34 through 36 shift focus away from election law and toward state laws on computer crimes. Each alleges a separate conventional criminal conspiracy (Ga. Code § 16-4-8) to violate a different provision of Georgia’s state computer crimes law (Ga. Code § 16-9-93). Count 34 charges a conspiracy to violate a provision of that law addressing computer theft while Count 35 charges a conspiracy to violate a separate computer trespass provision. Both stem from the unauthorized access of Dominion Voting Systems computers and the unauthorized removal of information from them. Count 36, meanwhile, charges a conspiracy to engage in computer invasion of privacy arising from the conspirators’ alleged effort to examine personal voter data without authorization.

Finally, Count 37 alleges a fifth conspiracy between Powell, Latham, Hall, and Hampton to defraud the state, under state laws making it a crime where an individual “conspires or agrees with another to commit theft of any property … which is under the control or possession of a state officer or employee in his official capacity” (Ga. Code § 16-10-21).

Notably, all five counts relating to the Coffee County scheme also make reference to certain facts that seem intended to support the Fulton County district attorney’s claim of jurisdiction. Specifically, they assert that Powell entered a contract with the firm SullivanStrickler in Fulton County for the purpose of advancing the object of the conspiracy—and that Latham, Hall, and Hampton aided and abetted that firm’s employees in accessing Coffee County’s elections office and voter data held there. In this sense, the indictment aims to tie all six Coffee County conspiracies to Fulton County, even though the focus of their efforts took place elsewhere in the state.

Charges Relating to False Statements During the Investigations

The final two counts in the indictment don’t relate to alleged election interference or related acts. Each is instead a product of the district attorney’s investigation and seeks to impose criminal penalties for lying to investigators and other state officials.

Count 40 charges David Shafer with making false statements and writings (Ga. Code § 16-10-20). Specifically, it alleges that, in an April 25, 2022, meeting with investigators, Shafer made false statements regarding his role in the meeting of Trump presidential elector nominees that took place on Dec. 14, 2020.

Count 41, meanwhile, charges Robert David Cheeley with violating state perjury laws (Ga. Code § 16-10-70(a)), which make it a crime for a person “to whom a lawful oath or affirmation has been administered” to “knowingly and willfully mak[e] a false statement” in a judicial proceeding. The indictment asserts that Cheeley made several such false statements while giving testimony before the special purpose grand jury on Sept. 15, 2022, all of which related to his involvement in the false electors scheme. 

Notably, these aren’t the only misrepresentations by defendants discussed in the indictment. As mentioned above, the indictment also alleges that Latham committed perjury (Ga. Code § 16-10-70(a)) by lying in testimony before a federal court in the matter of Curling v. Raffensperger, specifically about her role in the Coffee County scheme. It also states that Powell lied about her involvement in the same in a sworn deposition to the Jan. 6 committee. The indictment does not itself bring separate criminal charges for either, however; instead, it simply identifies these as overt acts in support of Count 1’s RICO charge.

What Now?

The Georgia indictment appears to complete the quartet of criminal actions that Trump is expected to face in the coming election year—barring, of course, more superseding indictments in any of the jurisdictions where he is already charged, or more unexpected indictments elsewhere. Trump and his co-defendants can be expected to launch any number of attacks on the validity of the charges brought against them, several of which are likely to raise First Amendment and related constitutional arguments similar to what Trump’s lawyers have already previewed as a central pillar of his defense against the federal Jan. 6 indictment. The first issue to be fought over, however, is likely to be the same one that Trump recently lost in relation to his New York indictment: an effort to remove the matter from Georgia state courts to federal court. 

Indeed, less than 24 hours after the release of the indictment, Meadows filed a notice with the court stating his intent to pursue precisely that, beating his fellow co-defendants to the punch. The fact that so many defendants’ charged conduct occurred while they were in federal office and arguably related to their official duties is likely to make this a much closer question than in the New York case. But how close—and what efforts at removal might mean for those defendants and charges that lack any federal nexus—are complex questions that will have to wait for another day. That makes for one more uncertainty out of many when it comes to the mechanics of the Georgia case.

Still, those uncertainties haven’t stopped the former president and his allies from weighing in. A few hours after the indictment became available to the public, Trump “truthed” at 1:28 a.m. ET: 

So, the Witch Hunt continues! 19 people Indicated [sic] tonight, including the former President of the United States, me, by an out of control and very corrupt District Attorney who campaigned and raised money on, ‘I will get Trump.’ And what about those Indictment Documents put out today, long before the Grand Jury even voted, and then quickly withdrawn? Sounds Rigged to me! Why didn’t they Indict 2.5 years ago? Because they wanted to do it right in the middle of my political campaign. Witch Hunt!

Trump’s reaction to the indictment is similar to his previous reactions to indictments in Washington, D.C., Florida, and New York. He maintains that his prosecutions are a result of corruption and part of a witch hunt to prevent him from holding office again. A statement from the Trump campaign echoed this sentiment, writing that Willis—like others prosecuting the former president—is “a rabid partisan” who has ripped a “page from Crooked Joe Biden’s playbook” to strategically “maximally interfere with the 2024 presidential race and damage the dominant Trump campaign.” 

On Tuesday morning at 8:49 a.m. ET, Trump announced that next Monday at a “major news conference,” he will present a “Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia” that proves that “all charges should be dropped” against him and others and that “There will be a complete EXONERATION!”

Some of Trump’s co-defendants have also made public statements expressing their displeasure with the indictment. On Twitter, Giuliani described the indictment as an “affront to American democracy” that “does permanent, irrevocable harm to our American justice system” and that the charges were “lies” with the purpose of “framing” Trump. Ellis wrote that Willis and the Democrats were “criminalizing the practice of law” and that she was “resolved to trust the Lord” on the matter. 

Trump’s allies and supporters echoed his calls of corruption and persecution. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said of the indictment that “a radical DA in Georgia is following Biden’s lead by attacking President Trump and using it to fundraise her political career.” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) tweeted that the indictment was “just the latest political attack in the Democrats’ WITCH HUNT” against Trump.” And on Fox News, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) emphasized to host Sean Hannity that he was “pissed.” 

One group of Republicans who were not so sympathetic to Trump’s claims of fraud were senior statewide elected officials in the state of Georgia. Gov. Brian Kemp tweeted a screenshot of Trump’s announcement of the report that he insists will exonerate him. He did not mention Trump or the indictment specifically, instead writing, “The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen….Our elections in Georgia are secure, accessible, and fair and will continue to be as long as I am governor. The future of our country is at stake in 2024 and that must be our focus.”

Like Kemp, Raffensperger—who, remember, was a central figure in Willis’s investigation—also did not mention Trump by name in his statement following the former president’s indictment. He wrote, “The most basic principles of a strong democracy are accountability and respect for the Constitution and the rule of law. You either have it, or you don’t.”