A court in Georgia, USA, indicted former US President Donald Trump and 18 others on Monday for their alleged unlawful attempts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election in the key southeastern state and related offences.
This is the fourth criminal indictment in less than six months for Trump, who is campaigning to be elected as the Republican presidential nominee at the party's primaries ahead of presidential and legislative elections in 2024.
Fulton County Prosecutor Fani Willis used a law in force in Georgia on organised crime, applied in particular against gangs and providing for sentences of between five and twenty years in prison, to indict Trump.
Despite the incumbent’s defeat in Georgia in 2020, Trump and the other defendants refused to acknowledge that he had lost and knowingly and willfully participated in a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in his favour, according to the indictment.
A grand jury in the capital of the southeastern state approved the indictment after a day of testimony from witnesses called by the prosecution. The panel of citizens vested with investigative powers was set up by Ms. Willis, who has been investigating the case since 2021 to determine whether there was enough evidence to indict Donald Trump, in particular for fraud and electoral interference.
Trump again attacked the prosecutor in a statement from his campaign on Monday evening, calling her a “rabid partisan” serving the interests of Democratic President Joe Biden.
He accused her of slowing down her investigation to interfere as much as possible with the 2024 presidential race and harm his campaign in the polls.
