The Georgia Indictment Offers the Whole Picture
Fani Willis filed charges against Donald Trump and 18 others, alleging a sweeping scheme to overturn the 2020 election.
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If justice is blind, she sometimes heads down unpredictable paths. For example, only in Donald Trump’s fourth felony indictment, unsealed last night in Atlanta, has a local prosecutor managed to deliver a sweeping, nationwide view of the former president’s scheme to steal the 2020 election.
The indictment, obtained by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, accuses Trump and 18 others of a racketeering scheme, stretching across states and months, that sought to subvert the results of the election Trump lost. Some of the names are household ones, or have become so over the past three years: Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Mark Meadows. Others will be new to all but the most avid followers of the postelection machinations in Georgia.
Earlier this month, Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith charged Trump in connection with the postelection scheme, but Smith kept his indictment narrow, focusing on Trump himself and just a few of the fronts along which he tried to challenge the vote.
Willis takes a very different approach, with 41 counts against the 19 defendants. Crucially, the charges are brought under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. That’s a favorite of the prosecutor—“I’m a fan of RICO,” she said in a news conference about a gang-related case last year—and it allows her to charge a large number of people with a concerted effort toward a goal, even if not all members of the group committed all of the crimes involved.
The indictment charges that Trump, the 18 co-defendants, and 30 other unindicted co-conspirators “constituted a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in various related criminal activities including, but not limited to, 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.”
This indictment is not a gripping read, stretching over 80-some pages and collecting 161 separate alleged overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy. But in its comprehensive scope, it gives a fuller picture of Trump’s attack on American democracy than any other indictment so far. In many ways, it echoes the report put together by the House committee on January 6 that completed its work earlier this year, just before Republicans took over the majority.
The elements of the conspiracy include crimes specific to Georgia: a breach of voting machines in Coffee County; an attempt to intimidate Ruby Freeman, an election worker in Fulton County; lies told to Georgia officials and attempts to enlist them in the election subversion; the creation of false slates of electors to be submitted to the Electoral College.
But the indictment also sweeps up crimes committed by the defendants elsewhere, including similar efforts at the state level in Arizona and Pennsylvania, an attempt to leverage the Justice Department to help justify subversion schemes, and a ploy to get then–Vice President Mike Pence to throw a wrench in the January 6, 2021, certification of the election.
It is remarkable, and a bit troubling, to see a local official like Willis—even one in a huge county like Fulton—bringing charges of this scope. On the one hand, common sense says that the paperwork coup, whether or not it was criminal, was clearly a connected whole and not a series of isolated actions, and so it makes sense to treat it as such in court. Smith’s August indictment is an odd document, hitting some elements hard while ignoring others.
On the other hand, an attempt to undermine the presidential election on a national scale is clearly a matter larger than any county prosecutor’s purview. A nation in which local district attorneys feel empowered to charge presidents, current or former, is a potentially chaotic one. (What’s to stop conservative prosecutors in small counties from bringing flimsy charges against Joe Biden?)
Willis has the freedom to bring a much broader case in part because she is a local prosecutor. Though under Merrick Garland, the Justice Department has emphasized its distance from politics, Smith must know how politically incendiary and possibly unworkable an enormous federal RICO indictment would be. Perhaps even more important, he knows that if Trump or another Republican wins the 2024 election, they will likely try to shut down any federal prosecution as soon as they take office—encouraging him to keep his case tightly focused and fast-moving. Willis, an elected official, doesn’t have the same political constraints, and her case isn’t subject to the whims of the federal executive branch.
But proving such a case will be difficult. RICO cases are famously complicated, unwieldy, and sometimes confounding to jurors, even in less politically charged situations. In a statement last night, Trump argued that his actions as charged under the indictment constitute free speech. “They are taking away President Trump’s First Amendment right to free speech, and the right to challenge a rigged and stolen election that the Democrats do all the time,” he said.
Trump also complained that the charges have taken too long to bring. Without any evidence, he wrote that Willis had “strategically stalled her investigation to try and maximally interfere with the 2024 presidential race,” adding, “They could have brought this two and half years ago.” Though investigations take time, he’s got a point. Still, underscoring that all Americans were aware of his subversion scheme at the time it was happening is not as exculpatory as Trump might like to pretend.
Whatever the reasons for the timeline, Willis has speed on her mind now. She said at a press conference after the indictments were released that she wanted to bring all 19 defendants to trial together within the next six months. That would put the case right in the heat of the Republican primary.
As I have written, the criminal-justice and political systems are not just designed to not work well together; they are designed to be separate. This case is about Trump testing the strength of the American system of governance; trying it will be yet another chance for him to test it.
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