Fourth indictment filed against Donald Trump

A grand jury in the US state of Georgia has indicted former President of the United States (US) Donald Trump for trying to overturn his loss to Democrat Joseph Biden in the 2020 election. It is the fourth criminal indictment against the 45th US president and the second to charge him. that he tried to change the results of the 2020 vote.

The charges, filed by Fulton County District Attorney Fanny Willis, are the latest in a string of legal problems for Trump, who is the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Prosecutors filed 11 counts of indictment against Trump and his associates, including forgery and racketeering, which are used against members of organized crime groups.

In addition to Trump, 10 other people have been indicted, including Mark Meadows, Trump's former chief of staff, and lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman.

The case in which they are charged relates to a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call in which Trump pressured Brad Raffensperger, Georgia's top election official, to "find" enough votes to overturn the state's election, which Trump narrowly lost. by difference. Rafensperger refused to do so.

Officials at the Fulton County Circuit Court handed the indictments to Judge Robert McBurney, but did not make them public at first.

The media initially reported that on the first page it was stated that the jury issued 10 indictments, but it was not stated who was accused and for what.

Court Clerk Che Alexander told reporters that it would take her office up to three hours to process the indictments once the judge accepts them.

A list of charges against Trump briefly appeared on the Fulton County Circuit Court website, but prosecutors later indicated that Trump had not been charged.

Reuters reported that the website published a list of several charges against the former president, including blackmailing government officials, conspiracy to make false statements and soliciting a public official to violate his oath of office.

Reuters, which later published a copy of the document, said the list was quickly taken down from the district's website.

A spokesman for the prosecutor's office said reports of the indictment were "inaccurate," but gave no further details.

In Fulton County, there were heavy security measures, fences on the streets around the courthouse in downtown Altanta, and a large number of media crews gathered.

For the past two and a half years, District Attorney Fannie Willis has been investigating the actions of Trump and other individuals in attempts to reverse his defeat in Georgia, where he was narrowly defeated by Democrat Biden.

Former state Sen. Jen Jordan, who received a binding subpoena to testify before a grand jury, said after leaving a Fulton County courtroom Monday that she answered questions for about 40 minutes. Media reported that former state assembly members Bee Angien and Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the Georgia secretary of state's office, were also seen leaving the courtroom on Monday.

Former president calls Georgia probe a witch hunt.

Gabriel Sterling, a senior election official who helped organize the state's 2020 recount, was a guest on ABC's "This Week" last weekend.

"We counted the votes three times. He lost in our country, and he still claims that he didn't. And that only creates tension and chaos," he said.

Sterling was asked if Trump's strong, public criticism of Attorney Willis could lead to some kind of violence.

"It will not be some larger united group of conspirators. The violence could be caused by one, probably mentally unstable person who will be radicalized in the whole process," said an election official from Georgia.

"If the former president is indeed indicted in Georgia, voters should carefully consider his presidential candidacy," Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie told ABC television.

"I think Republican voters are going to have to ask themselves two questions. First — is he, the man under indictment in four different court cases, given his past actions — really someone who can beat Joe Biden or any other Democrat in the November 2024?"

President Biden himself is under investigation for allegedly mishandling classified documents. A special prosecutor was appointed last Sunday to investigate, with even greater independence, the dealings of the president's son, Hunter Biden.

Congressman Jamie Raskin, a Democrat, commented on the case on ABC television.

"It's clear to all of us that this guy was a drug addict and he did a lot of illegal and wrong things. And we said we should let the justice system do its job."

After Hunter Biden recently pleaded guilty to tax evasion and illegal gun possession, his chances of going to trial are now much better, prosecutors say.

Trump criticized the prosecutor from Georgia, the judge from Washington

The former US president harshly criticized prosecutor Willis from Georgia, on his social network Truth, where he wrote, in all caps: "Can someone please tell the Fulton County grand jury that I did not meddle in the election. The people who election meddling by those who set them up, and unfortunately, Fanny Willis, who has allowed Atlanta to become one of the most dangerous cities in the world, is not interested in looking at the overwhelming amount of evidence, or finding out who the people who committed these crimes are. She just he wants to "catch Trump," he wrote.

He added that he would be "very happy" to present the evidence to a grand jury, even though during the months of the criminal investigation, he refused all offers to testify.

On Monday, Trump also criticized the federal judge in charge of the case in which he is accused of conspiring to overturn election results, days after she warned him not to make inflammatory statements about the case.

On his social network, the former president called judge Tanja Čatkan "extremely partisan" and "very biased and unfair!", due to her earlier comments in a separate case of sentencing one of the defendants for the riots on January 6, 2021.

During Friday's hearing, Chatkan issued a so-called "protection order" that sets limits on which of the evidence that prosecutors handed over to the former president's legal team can be released to the public. She warned Trump's lawyers that his defense should be conducted in the courtroom, "not on the Internet."