Atlanta.- A year after a grand jury in Georgia indicted Donald Trump and others on charges of illegally trying to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election in the state, the case is stalled with no chance of going to trial before the end of the year.
When Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis secured the indictment a year ago Thursday, it was the fourth and most sweeping case brought against the former president. Trump narrowly lost Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden, and Willis used Georgia’s racketeering law to charge Trump and 18 others with participating in a scheme to overturn the will of the state’s voters.
Willis’ team scored some early wins, but explosive allegations by one of the defendants earlier this year have caused delays and could even torpedo the entire case.
The nearly 100-page indictment includes 41 criminal charges against Trump and 18 others, including his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and conservative lawyer Sidney Powell.
They were all charged with violating the state’s racketeering law, and the indictment lists 161 alleged acts that support that charge. The narrative laid out by prosecutors is that multiple people committed separate crimes to accomplish a common goal: overturning Trump’s election loss.
The case involves a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call between Trump and Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump asks the state’s top election official to help him “find” the votes to win. Other charges include pressuring Republican electors to falsely declare Trump won the state, harassment of a Georgia election worker and tampering with election equipment in a rural southern county in Georgia.
The judge overseeing the case dismissed six charges in March, including three of the 13 counts against Trump. Judge Scott McAfee wrote that the prosecution had failed to adequately detail what crimes were allegedly committed in those instances. Willis’ team has appealed that decision.
When Trump arrived in Atlanta in August last year for booking, he was immediately released. But his brief stay in the Fulton County jail marked the first time a former US president has had to be photographed for a mugshot.
While Trump and the others had to be booked into jail, they skipped the initial court appearances. While their lawyers have gone to court and made arguments at numerous court dates over the past year, Trump himself has so far not set foot in the courtroom.
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