A recount of the first, all-inclusive racketeering count takes up the majority of the pages in the indictment, spanning events from Oct. 31, 2020, three days before the election, to Sept. 15, 2022.

“Defendant Donald John Trump lost the United States presidential election held on November 3, 2020,” the indictment reads, introducing the racketeering count. “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. 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.”

Its account of the conspiracy spans 161 acts across that period of time laying out the case.

Additional charges against Trump focus on his efforts to pressure Republican state legislators to reject the results of the 2020 election in the state and declare him the winner, charges around a campaign to have certified false electors on his behalf, and a January 2021 call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump solicited the Republican to “find” the exact number of votes Trump needed to overturn his deficit in the state. Charges against Trump-aligned attorney Powell included election fraud, computer theft, and computer trespass for alleged efforts to swipe voting machine data from Coffee County, Georgia. Other crimes charged included efforts to intimidate Ruby Freeman, an election worker falsely accused of fraud by Giuliani, into giving false testimony about the election.

The Trump campaign released its statement before the indictment was even unsealed. Much like a recent campaign ad run in advance of the presumed indictment, it accused Willis of being a “rabid partisan who is campaigning and fundraising on a platform of prosecuting President Trump” in the same league of other prosecutors who have indicted Trump. The campaign accuses Willis of timing the indictment to hurt his presidential campaign—Trump has been leading the polling to win the Republican presidential nomination by significant margins for months. The 2024 Iowa Republican caucuses are scheduled on Jan. 15, 2024, exactly five months from Tuesday.

“These activities by Democrat leaders constitute a grave threat to American democracy and are direct attempts to deprive the American people of their rightful choice to cast their vote for President,” the campaign said. “Call it election interference or election manipulation—it is a dangerous effort by the ruling class to suppress the choice of the people. It is un-American and wrong.”

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The campaign also released a long email of background against Willis, accusing her again of “fundraising on her bogus indictments of President Trump.” Six minutes prior to that email, the Trump campaign sent out an email fundraising on its indictments.

The 19 defendants’ charges come from a list of 41 total offenses. In Georgia, the RICO charge has a mandatory minimum sentence of five years. Presidents cannot pardon state convictions, which means that even if Trump, or another Republican, were to win the presidency, they could do little to scupper this prosecution. In Georgia, even the governor’s power to issue commutations and pardons is severely limited compared to other states. Trump has for years attacked Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp for certifying the 2020 election and refusing to go along with Trump’s efforts to subvert that election. In 2022 Trump pushed to have Kemp ousted in the Republican primary. Kemp won that election by more than 50 points before winning reelection in the general.

• 2020 Campaign
• Donald Trump
• Jurisprudence
• Rudy Giuliani
• Georgia
• Trump Trials