Donald J. Trump is faces felony counts in the State of Georgia regarding Trump and his allies illegally seeking to overturn the state's election results.
If Trump is charged it will mark his fourth Indictment in five months and the second to arise from his efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump was charged with 13 counts, including violating the state’s racketeering act, soliciting a public officer to violate their oath, conspiring to impersonate a public officer, conspiring to commit forgery in the first degree and conspiring to file false documents.
Among those named in the sweeping indictment, charged under Georgia’s anti-racketeering law, are Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who served as Trump’s personal attorney after the election; Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows; and several Trump advisers, including attorneys John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro, architects of a scheme to create slates of alternate Trump electors.
Also indicted were two Georgia-based lawyers advocating on Trump’s behalf, Ray S. Smith II, and Robert Cheeley; a senior campaign adviser, Mike Roman, who helped plan the elector meeting; and two prominent Georgia Republicans who served as electors: former GOP chairman David Shafer and former GOP finance chairman Shawn Still.
Several lesser known players who participated in efforts to reverse Trump’s defeat in Georgia were also indicted, including three people accused of harassing Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman. They are Stephen Cliffgard Lee, Harrison Floyd and Trevian Kutti. The latter is a former publicist for R. Kelly and associate of Kanye West.
A final group of individuals charged in the indictment allegedly participated in an effort to steal election-equipment data in rural Coffee County, Ga. They are former Coffee County elections supervisor Misty Hampton, former Coffee County GOP chair Cathy Latham and Georgia businessman Scott Hall.
9:30pm EST: Georgia Grand Jury returns 10 Indictments; Awaiting Unsealing
10:54pm EST: Trump indictment is unsealed
10:57pm EST: Former President Trump and 18 co-defendants have been charged altogether with more than 41 counts in Georgia’s 2020 election probe (19 Total Charged)
11:05pmEST: Fulton County DA will be speaking live.
11:05pm EST: Those charged Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Mark Meadows, Jeffrey Clark, Jenna Ellis, Kenneth Chesebro, Sidney Powell, Ray S. Smith III, Robert Cheeley, Mike Roman, David Shafer, Shawn Still, Stephen Cliffgard Lee, Harrison Floyd, Trevian Kutti, Misty Hampton, Cathy Latham, and Scott Hall
11:10pm EST: Read the full indictment
11:30pm EST: Awaiting Fulton County DA to speak
11:38pm EST: Fulton County DA press conference
11:45pm EST: Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis states that there will be no probation, and the minimum sentence is jail time.
She described the landmark indictment against Donald Trump and allies for attempting to alter the 2020 elections. Ms Willis said the indictment alleged a “criminal conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in this state” which had “the illegal goal of allowing Donald J Trump to seize the presidential term of office.”
The prosecutor announced a deadline of 25 August for the defendants to turn themselves in.
11:50pm EST: All 19 will be tried together.
Sources:
Reuters: Georgia court website briefly publishes, removes document about potential Trump charges
Rolling Stone: Trump’s ‘Co-Conspirators’ Are Already Starting to Turn on Each Other
NBC News: Fulton County grand jury returns 10 indictments in 2020 election probe for Georgia
The Independent: Trump campaign launches sprawling attack as Georgia grand jury hands down indictments
MSNBC: Hillary Clinton tells Rachel Maddow: Trump indictments mean ‘the system is working’
Washington Post: Trump charged in Georgia 2020 election probe, his fourth indictment
The right to vote is sacred, our elections are sacred. People have thrown themselves against overwhelming force to have this right, they've bled for it, they've died for it, they've killed for it.
This is not a part of the game. This is not just politics. If you fuck with our vote, you will get fucked back, one way or another.
Correction: Democrats will fuck him back. I don't think a single Republican is willing to even believe any of these indictments are legit.
Watch as DeSantis gets elected, pardons Trump and turns America Fascist.
Fun fact: despite all the media noise and bluster, DeSantis is not popular among Republicans.
He is polling around 14% for the primaries. That's lower than ROFL Kennedy, who is polling at 15.2% among Democrats. If you think Republican-in-sheep's-clothing Kennedy is extremely unlikely to win, you should also think the same thing about Meatball McPuddingFingers.
Facts and math don't matter to conservatives /republicans - they ALWAYS fall in line. Look how fast they all fell in line when trump was the nominee.
People have different opinions why rightwingers always fall in line (hatred of libs, to them it's a sports team, fascists gotta fascist, the authoritarians always need a leader, etc etc)
For whatever reason, if a hamster got the republican nomination, rightwingers would fall in line then too
For the general election, you're absolutely right. But as things stand right now, DeSantis has the same chance to be in the general as RFK has- practically none.
That's not accurate either. Assuming and this is a big assumption that Trump is rendered ineligible by some mechanism. Which by All rights he should. But we've come to not believe in due to the fact that certain classes of people have no consequences. DeSantis would actually stand a good chance as the one who remains. It's a ridiculous proposition to even have to consider. But this is where we are.
I absolutely agree with you, which is why I said "as things stand right now."
They imploy strength in numbers and are you in or out. In a productive system we can have 4 or 5 different candidates with platforms that vary but not drastically and choose from the 12 or so popular candidates.
But our system does not reward good ideas politically. Our system rewards outrage and alignment of only two possible teams.
How the fuck is Kennedy at 15%?
It's just name recognition mixed with being the only non-Biden candidate getting any airtime. It's far weaker than DeSantis in reality because DeSantis voters could pick anyone further right or further left or more Institutional or less, more like Trump or less.
RFK Jr supporters include anyone who refuses to vote for someone older than 75, but if the race is Biden v Trump again they don't have a younger-than-75 option.
Fortunately there are 3rd parties for those who want to vote for none of the above pieces of shit.
It's been proven that voting for a third party only helps the major candidate least-aligned with your values. Until we do away with first-past-the-post and winner-take-all, it's foolish to even suggest third party. Yes it sucks, but that's the reality.
I don't care, my vote counts for jack shit anyway so I will always vote for the best candidate, which is never a member of the 2 parties in control. My vote is mine only, and I use it as I see fit.
Do you think that every voter whose chosen candidate doesn't end up winning has "thrown away" their vote? Does it only count to vote if you pick the winner?
Yeah your logic is naive unfortunately. Michigan won and other places won because every vote mattered and they enshrined abortion and many progressive policies passed and are getting better daily.
Voting for a random third party actually does just throw your vote away. It's also a vote for Republicans who are the current fascist party. "Rage voting" actually just hurts you too. It just accelerates us faster into a dictatorship.
So no your vote doesn't count for "jack shit" because unfortunately mathematics and statistics don't care what you think. Your vote would help or matter if you bothered to vote logically rather than with your emotions.
Actually, if they live in an over-vote state (red or blue, doesn't matter), their vote literally does not count.
You need 50%+1 to win an election.
So look at California 2020:
Biden: 11,110,250
Trump: 6,006,429
17,116,679 votes cast. Biden needed 8,558,341 to win.
2,551,909 Biden votes literally didn't count. He already won. They could have voted for Mickey Mouse and Biden would have still won.
Invert it, same for Texas, but much closer:
Trump: 5,890,347
Biden: 5,259,126
11,149,473 votes cast,
5,574,737 needed to win. 315,610 Trump votes didn't mean anything. Just As long as they didn't vote for Biden, it didn't matter who they voted for.
Every vote matters. You know that New York lost a bunch of seats to the GOP because everyone assumed they were Dem shoe-ins, right?
No, just the voters who refuse to acknowledge there is a candidate from party A who is closer to their values, and a candidate from party B who is further from their values, and candidates C-Z who don't fucking matter and that any vote for them only helps candidate B win. It would be nice to live where we could vote for a candidate we like, instead of strategically voting against who we don't, but we don't.
Yeah I've heard all that before, and none of it refutes the fact that my vote is still mine to choose my preferred candidate with. I don't vote for the corporate oligarchs in control, period.
Your mistake is assuming that my vote "rightfully belongs" to your preferred party or something along those lines. It does not.
It's absolutely yours. I think you're just frustrated that the people around you won't let you play pretend. If you're vote actively harms the views you claim to stand for, your views are flimsy and people see right through you.
Well you can call it whatever you want, but you're not going to talk me into voting for any [D] or [R] pieces of shit anyway. Both parties want to infringe my rights and I will continue to vote against them both. My vote stands for my principles, regardless of anyone's opinion.
Voltaire would roll in his grave over those gymnastics. They both want to take your rights? Man a statement that loaded absolutely deserves explanation. But you say "continue to vote against them" so it's plain to see that you've never been much of an agent of change, just whining so I'll let this pass.
Yeah OK then I guess I'll let you pass on along too so you can continue to be a sheep following the herd as your brain has been programmed to do.
I really have to laugh at people like you who think that voting makes you "an agent of change" LOL - whoooeee your tiny thousandth of a percent of change in the final tally of votes made such a spash
Nobody is saying your vote belongs to the party.
Just to make everyone's argument really simple: There are 100 votes. You like apples and hate bananas.
Candidate A supports apples and are corpo shills. (Democrats) 49 Democrats vote for A
Candidate B wants to outlaw apples, supports only having bananas and are corporate shills. (Republicans) 50 Republicans vote.
Candidate C-Z don't stand a snowballs chance in hell of winning (see the vote totals) but they support apples and aren't corpo shills.
You like apples and so do people voting for A, but you don't like corpo shills (neither do any of us) but since you insist on voting for candidate C-Z Candidate B wins which means you not only don't get your apples, they get taken away, and you also get the corporate shills you didn't want to begin with.
You're delusional if you think any but the most fringe of voters thinks of Biden as a "piece of shit" lol
I'm pretty sure we could easily find several million Americans with that same opinion. You're delusional if you don't realize that, or possibly just ignorant of the numbers.
Low information name recognition.
lmao Kennedy may backfire and take Republican votes with him.
in this situation State charges cannot be pardoned by a President
This is a key takeaway and I love it.
Can't even be pardoned by the governor in Georgia. There is a pardoning committee.
Chris Christie is now ahead of Desantis.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4152546-christie-pulls-ahead-of-desantis-in-new-hampshire-gop-primary-poll/
This is gold.
He's corrupt as fuck but smart and sometimes reasonable.
Pretty big Achilles heel with the whole bridge thing, but I bet most folks forgot about it by now. :(
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Lee_lane_closure_scandal
I heard he bankrupted the guy's brother in law's tractor dealership.
There are no pardons in the GA charges.
And Republicans have definitely come out against this douchebag they just don't get the attention because other news is too sexy to ignore.
POTUS cannot pardon state crimes. This indictment is from Georgia, not federal.
At least for these charges the ability to pardon is limited. The governor doesn't have that power.
It's a good thing that the president can't pardon charges at the state level, so this one should have more sticking power......for now
Hell, watch Trump get elected and pardon himself. (knocks on wood)
The president can't pardon state level charges. He would need the Georgian governor to pardon this specific one
Georgia Constitution says the governor can't pardon. There's a board of corrections or something, that you go through for a pardon. Which can't happen until 5 years after your sentence is carried out.
Yeah I think there are only two or three states set up this way. And you don't get a pardon unless you admit and explain your crimes, unless your request is based on factual innocense, in which case the criminal charge must be resolved in your favor by way of a post judgment notion to dismiss the criminal complaint.
Thank you for the explanation. I was misinformed and am happy to now know the correct reason he will be unable to pardon himself. Also it's promising to hear that it's run by a board rather than leaving it just up to the governor alone
Ah that's true, forgot this was state level, excellent!
🤔 Is the Georgia governor up for reelection next year?
No, Kemp just won reelection in 2022.
Ah, okie. Georgia has a pardon board, right? Are they elected or appointed?