former president of the United States Donald Trump new charges have been brought against again, this time in the state of Georgia on Tuesday morning Finnish time.
A grand jury in Fulton County District Court voted to indict Trump and his allies in Georgia after the 2020 presidential election. Trump lost the election For Joe Bidenbut did not accept his defeat and tried to overturn the election result.
The Georgia state charges include forgery, violation of the state’s Organized Crime Act and inciting an officer to violate the oath of office. The so-called RICO law used in the case allows a maximum prison sentence of up to 20 years.
In addition to Trump, 18 allies of the former president, such as Trump’s lawyer, were indicted Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. There are a total of 41 charges in the wide-ranging indictment, of which Trump is accused in 13 charges.
In this article, we go through why it was the state of Georgia that brought charges against Trump and why the charge is very serious.
Georgia accuses Trump of meddling in the vote count
The charges in Georgia concern Trump’s interference in the counting of the results of the previous presidential election in the state of Georgia, where Biden won the vote by a meager margin of 0.23 percentage points, or 11,779 votes.
A couple of months after election day, Trump called Georgia’s highest election official To Brad Raffensperger a long phone call in which he demanded that Raffensperger “find” enough new votes for Trump to overtake Biden in the already completed tally.
– Look, I want nothing more than to find 11,780 votes, Trump demanded in the call, accusing the election result of being incorrect. However, Raffensperger assured that the election result in Georgia was flawless.
In the call, Trump implied that Raffensperger might commit a crime if he doesn’t “find” the votes Trump demands.
– You know, it’s criminal, it’s a crime. You can’t let that happen. That would be a big risk for you and your lawyer. Big risk, Trump spoke.
The next day, Raffensperger, who himself represents the Republican Party, recorded the call to the newspaper The Washington Post. Earlier, Trump had scolded Raffensperger harshly on the messaging service Twitter, when Raffensperger had not agreed to cooperate with Trump.
Raffensperger later said he felt obligated to release the recording of the call because Trump misrepresented the content of the conversation in his own speeches.
Listen to an excerpt of Donald Trump’s call to Brad Raffensperger here:
The Trump-Raffensperger call is the evidence of election tampering at the center of the charges filed in Georgia. According to the prosecutor, in addition to putting pressure on Raffensperger, Trump’s allies tried, among other things, to gain access to the state’s vote counting material and set in motion fake voters whose votes were used to replace Biden’s votes.
Trump will not be able to get rid of the Georgia indictment
The state of Georgia quickly launched an investigation into the Trump-Raffensperger call already in early 2021. Charges have been awaited for a long time, because the obvious evidence of the lawsuit has been in the public domain for over two and a half years.
Georgia’s accusation is serious for Trump, because he will not be able to try to get rid of the lawsuit, even if he wins the presidential election next year.
From the White House, Trump would be able to freeze the federal charges brought against him earlier, but he would not have the power to stop the state court process. Trump would also not be able to pardon himself from a state-level conviction.
However, neither the charges nor a possible sentence will prevent Trump from running in next year’s presidential election. It is also unclear whether the prison sentence would be carried out during the presidency if Trump were to win next year’s election and return to the presidency.
The schedule and location of the trial on the Georgia charges are not yet known. Trump is likely to seek to stall the process and seek a transfer from state to federal court. The lawsuit in Georgia can be predicted to be long, because the charges are extensive and there are several defendants.
The trial schedule has to be squeezed in among Trump’s several other trials. Preliminary trials for Trump in other cases are planned for January, March and May of next year.
Trump criticized the charge as interfering with the election campaign
Trump has not previously been charged with a crime against a former or sitting president of the United States, but the charges in Georgia are Trump’s fourth indictment in the past four months.
In the past, Trump has been indicted at the federal level for possessing secret documents after his presidency and for attempting to subvert the 2020 presidential election. In addition to this, in the state of New York, Trump is accused of tampering with the accounting of his business group.
Trump has denied that he was guilty of a single crime and claimed that all charges were a political chase. Amidst the lawsuits, Trump is seeking to return to the presidency, and according to him, the charges brought against him are interference with the ongoing election campaign.
Trump barked in his own messaging service at Truth Social Fulton County Attorney Fan of Willis “very corrupt”.
Trump also criticized the indictment as being tampered with, as a summary of the indictments was inadvertently published on the website of the Fulton County court yesterday, even though the grand jury had not yet voted on indictments.
Trump is in opinion polls clearly the most popular candidate among Republican voters for the party’s nomination for next year’s presidential election. Previous criminal charges have not undermined Trump’s popularity among Republicans, but have rather cemented Trump’s position as the front-runner.
The Republicans will vote for their own candidate in the primaries lasting until the spring of next year, and the actual presidential election will be held in November next year.