Politics

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A bipartisan group of former senior U.S. national security officials urged Congress on Wednesday to dedicate resources to President Joe Biden’s recent order restricting some outbound U.S. investment to China, calling it a top priority.  

Twenty-one veteran officials – including former deputy national security advisor during the Trump administration Matt Pottinger, and Colin Kahl, who stepped down in July as undersecretary of defense for policy – sent a letter to congressional leaders, calling the order “a positive step in the overdue process of limiting adversaries’ access to American capital.”

“The United States must ensure that [China] and other foreign adversaries aren’t able to use our financial dynamism and openness against us in ways that continue to threaten our national security and prosperity,” they wrote in the letter seen by Reuters, sent to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

The further development of outbound investment transparency and review should be “among your top foreign policy priorities”, they wrote, calling it essential that Congress commit resources to implementation.

Biden’s order, issued last week but expected to be implemented next year, is aimed at preventing American capital and expertise from helping China develop technologies that could support its military modernization and undermine U.S. national security.

It authorizes the U.S. Treasury secretary to prohibit or restrict U.S. investments in Chinese entities in three sectors: semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies and certain artificial intelligence systems.

Peter Harrell, a former Biden National Security Council official, and former commanders of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Harry Harris and Philip Davidson, were among the other officials who endorsed the letter.

China has said it is “gravely concerned” by the order, though some U.S. lawmakers have criticized it as having too many loopholes.

(Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Sharon Singleton)

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By Jack Queen

(Reuters) – A Georgia state law against racketeering could be a powerful tool in prosecuting Donald Trump, but applying charges traditionally used to take down organized crime risks miring the case in legal and logistical complications.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Monday charged the Republican former president and 18 associates in a wide-ranging scheme to reverse his 2020 presidential election loss in Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden.

All are accused of running afoul of the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, law.

Originally designed to take down mafia bosses, RICO charges are now broadly used to go after groups of loosely associated people bound only by their common participation in a criminal enterprise. But casting such a wide net has drawbacks.

“You can tell a great story in your indictment, and you might be able to prove it. But you also might be making it more complicated,” said former federal prosecutor Harry Sandick.

Echoing his criticism of the many other investigations he has faced, Trump assailed the indictment as a political “witch hunt” and accused Willis, an elected Democrat, of trying to sabotage his 2024 presidential comeback bid.

By contrast, U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith this month charged only Trump in a four-count indictment of conspiring to defraud the U.S. by preventing Congress from certifying Biden’s victory. The case cites six co-conspirators who are unindicted and unnamed.

Smith has asked that a trial begin as soon as Jan. 2. Willis faces a longer road.

She has said she aims for a trial in the next six months, but experienced lawyers expect the case to almost certainly be delayed due to the sheer number of defendants, each of whom is likely to raise a unique set of pre-trial issues.

“The problem with RICO is that it takes a lot longer because there are so many more elements to it,” said Jerry Froelich, a Georgia criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor. “I don’t know if you could even find a courtroom big enough for 19 defendants.”

But the numbers may also work in prosecutors’ favor.

In RICO cases, defendants are often loosely associated, making it easier for prosecutors to get them to “flip,” or turn on one another.

“That’s why the net is spread so wide,” Froelich said. “There’s going to be a lot of pressure on people to cut deals.”

RICO also enables prosecutors to charge defendants for so-called “overt acts” that would not necessarily be criminal on their own but are part of a larger conspiracy.

Willis’ 98-page indictment is thin on narrative detail, but it lists 161 overt acts by the defendants that allegedly demonstrate how they “willfully joined a conspiracy to change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.”

Some of those acts – including Trump’s social media posts and meetings with elected officials – are not inherently criminal.

“It’s going to be a challenge – though certainly not an insurmountable one – for prosecutors to prove these individuals knew they were part of an enterprise that had a common, illegitimate aim of overturning an election,” said Boston College law professor and former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Cohen.

Georgia’s RICO statute is more expansive than a federal law on which it is modeled and does not require criminal enterprises to be long-running. Georgia courts have upheld the law’s use in novel contexts that include Willis’ successful prosecution of teachers who falsified scores on standardized tests.

The unprecedented nature of the case could work in Trump’s favor, allowing his lawyers to argue it is inappropriate to charge a former U.S. president and his allies like gang members.

But the risks of trial may be higher than in typical conspiracy cases.

“In a normal case, if you’re convicted and looking at five years, you might get probation,” Froelich said. “Here there’s a minimum of five years. And the judge might say: ‘You tried to overthrow the U.S. government. I’m not cutting you any slack.’”

(Reporting by Jack Queen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Howard Goller)

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By Andy Sullivan, Jacqueline Thomsen and Joseph Ax

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Donald Trump faced a new raft of felony charges on Tuesday after a Georgia grand jury used a law developed to take down organized crime gangs to charge the former U.S. president with trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

The charges, brought late on Monday by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, charge Trump, the front-runner in the race for the 2024 Republican nomination and 18 associates for a scheme intended to reverse his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

The sprawling 98-page indictment listed 19 defendants and 41 criminal counts in all. All the defendants were charged with racketeering, which is used to target members of organized crime groups and carries a minimum penalty of 5 years in prison.

Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, and lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and John Eastman were among those charged.

“Rather than abide by Georgia’s legal process for election challenges, the defendants engaged in a criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia’s presidential election result,” Willis said at a press conference just before midnight.

Trump and the other defendants have until noon EDT (1600 GMT) on Friday, Aug. 25, to surrender voluntarily, rather than face arrest, Willis said. She said she intends to try all 19 defendants together within six months.

Court records show the case has been assigned to Judge Scott McAfee, a former prosecutor appointed in February by Republican Governor Brian Kemp. He will seek election next year to retain his position.

Unlike the federal courts where Trump is also awaiting trial, Georgia state courts allow television cameras, meaning the public could have the unprecedented spectacle of watching a former president’s trial on live TV as his campaign for a return to the White House goes into high gear.

Echoing his criticism of the many other investigations he faces, Trump called the indictment a political “witch hunt” in a social media post and accused Willis, an elected Democrat, of trying to sabotage his presidential comeback bid.

He said he would release a report on Monday on “Presidential Election Fraud” that would exonerate him. “They never went after those that Rigged the Election. They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!” he said.

Since his defeat in 2020, Trump has repeatedly made false claims that the election was marred by widespread fraud. Those claims have been rejected by dozens of courts, state reviews and members of his own administration.

Giuliani, who rose to national prominence by using racketeering laws to take down New York mobsters in the 1980s, said prosecutors in this case were “the real criminals.”

Other defendants either proclaimed their innocence or did not respond to requests for comment.

‘FIND’ VOTES

The 13 felony charges against Trump matched those listed on a document that was briefly posted on the court website earlier on Monday and reported by Reuters before it disappeared.

In a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call, Trump urged Georgia’s top election official, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to reverse his narrow loss in the state. Raffensperger declined.

Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol four days later in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent lawmakers from certifying Biden’s victory.

The indictment paints a picture of a broad conspiracy that started before the Nov. 3, 2020, election and lasted through September 2022, when it says one of those involved lied to a grand jury.

It says those involved in the scheme falsely testified to lawmakers that election fraud had occurred and urged state officials to alter the results.

It says the defendants tried to subvert the U.S. electoral process by submitting false slates of electors, people who make up the Electoral College that elects the president and vice president.

BREACHING VOTING MACHINES, HARASSING ELECTION WORKERS

It alleges that defendants breached voting equipment in a rural Georgia county, including personal voter information and images of ballots.

Prosecutors also said the defendants harassed an election worker who became the focus of conspiracy theories.

The indictment reaches across state lines, saying that Giuliani, Meadows and others called officials in Arizona, Pennsylvania and elsewhere to urge them to change the outcome in those states. It also encompasses the events of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

The indictment mentions 30 other co-conspirators, though they were not named or charged.

Willis has used the racketeering law to go after drug-dealing networks and educators accused of manipulating test scores.

She will not have to prove that Trump personally broke the law in order to be found guilty of racketeering, only that he knowingly coordinated with others who did. Trump is also charged with breaking other laws, including conspiracy and making false statements.

Unlike many Republican officials, Raffensperger and Kemp have refused to echo Trump’s baseless fraud claims.

“The most basic principles of a strong democracy are accountability and respect for the Constitution and rule of law,” Raffensperger said in a statement that did not mention Trump. “You either have it or you don’t.”

Kemp said the state’s elections have been secure and Trump’s supporters have failed to prove their fraud claims.

THREE OTHER CRIMINAL CASES

Outside of Georgia, Trump has pleaded not guilty in three other criminal cases. He could spend much of next year in court, even as he campaigns to retake the White House.

He faces a New York state trial in March 2024 involving a hush money payment to a porn star, and a federal trial beginning in May in Florida for allegedly mishandling federal classified documents.

A third indictment, in Washington federal court, accuses him of illegally seeking to overturn his 2020 election defeat. U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith has requested a January trial, but a date has yet to be set.

Willis’ proposed timeline would mean Trump would face trial in Georgia by mid-February 2024.

He also faces civil trials in October and January for fraudulent business practices and defamation.

Georgia, once reliably Republican, has emerged as one of a handful of politically competitive states that can determine the outcome of presidential elections.

Trump’s lead in polls over his Republican rivals has widened since the first charges were announced in April. But strategists say his legal woes may hurt him in the November 2024 general election, when he will have to win over more independent-minded voters.

In a July Reuters/Ipsos poll, 37% of independents said the criminal cases made them less likely to vote for him.

(Additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Rami Ayyub, Jack Queen, Tim Ahmann, Andrew Goudsward, Kanishka Singh, Nilutpal Timsina, Rich McKay, Tom Hals and Susan Heavey; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Scott Malone, Howard Goller and Daniel Wallis)

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By Diane Bartz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Moderate Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have formed a working group on artificial intelligence aimed at tackling the issue of what restrictions, if any, should be put on the technology.

The New Democrat Coalition announced the formation of the group on Tuesday, saying it would work with the Biden administration, companies and other lawmakers to develop “sensible, bipartisan policies to address this emerging technology.”

While artificial intelligence has been used for several years, it surged in popularity earlier this year with the rise of ChatGPT because of generative AI’s ability to use data to create human-seeming prose. Lawmakers are assessing ways to mitigate the potential harms – particularly to national security – while taking advantage of its strengths.

The group is to be headed by Representative Derek Kilmer, a Democrat from Washington state.

Vice chairs are Representatives Don Beyer of Virginia, Jeff Jackson from North Carolina, Sara Jacobs of California, Susie Lee of Nevada and Haley Stevens from Michigan.

In July, the White House announced that AI companies including OpenAI, Alphabet and Meta Platforms had made voluntary commitments to implement measures such as watermarking AI-generated content to help make the technology safer.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said last month that lawmakers would hear from developers, executives and experts later this year on possible legislative safeguards.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows filed notice on Tuesday seeking to move a case brought against him by the district attorney in Georgia’s Fulton County to federal court, according to a court document.

Meadows, who served in the Trump administration, was among those charged with former U.S. President Donald Trump for trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat to Democrat Joe Biden.

(Reporting by Jasper Ward; Editing by Caitlin Webber)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Fulton County Georgia court clerk on Tuesday acknowledged the release on its website of a document about former President Donald Trump being criminally charged, as Reuters reported on Monday after seeing the document on the court’s public website.

A statement from the court clerk said the system was being tested before the grand jury voted later in the day on whether to indict Trump on charges of trying to overturn his election defeat.

The court had released a statement on Monday saying a media outlet had obtained a “fictitious” document.

Tuesday’s court clerk statement said: “While it may have appeared that something official had occurred because the document bore a case number and filing date, it did not include a signed ‘true’ or ‘no’ bill nor an official stamp with Clerk Alexander’s name, thereby making the document unofficial and a test sample only.”

In its statement, the court said a media outlet utilizing “the Fulton County Press” queue obtained a docket sheet on Monday. The document obtained by Reuters was publicly available on the website the court uses to disseminate public records.

The 13 felony charges that the grand jury brought late on Monday against Trump matched those listed on the document that was posted on the court website earlier in the day and reported by Reuters before it disappeared.

The Georgia grand jury used a law developed to take down organized crime gangs to charge Republican Trump for trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat to Democrat Joe Biden.

The charges, brought on Monday by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, name Trump, the front-runner in the race for the 2024 Republican nomination, and 18 associates.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Jasper Ward; Editing by Scott Malone and Grant McCool)

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By Sarah N. Lynch, Jacqueline Thomsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Former President Donald Trump again stands accused of illegally trying to overturn the 2020 election results to stay in power. But for the first time some allies and closest advisers also face criminal charges for their roles in the alleged scheme.

Already charged by a federal grand jury in Washington with orchestrating a plot to overturn the election, Trump is the lead defendant in a parallel case in Georgia now, charged with racketeering and other crimes along with aides and associates listed below.

Not listed are nine lesser-known Georgia officials charged with additional crimes ranging from perjury to conspiracy to commit computer theft in addition to racketeering.

MARK MEADOWS

Mark Meadows, who went from being one of Trump’s top Republican allies in the U.S. House of Representatives to his White House chief of staff, attended White House meetings related to attempts to undo Trump’s election defeat.

The indictment alleges he helped to fuel the conspiracy by making false statements about the election and conspired with Trump to develop a plan to disrupt and delay the congressional certification of the electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021.

It also alleges he tried to pressure a chief investigator in the Georgia secretary of state’s office, Frances Watson, to speed up the Fulton County signature verification and that he took part in a phone call in which Trump pushed Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to reverse his narrow loss in the state. Raffensperger declined to do so. An attorney for Meadows did not respond to a request for comment.

RUDY GIULIANI

Trump’s former personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, played a prominent public role in the Trump campaign’s efforts to push false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. The former New York City mayor was involved in litigation that was rejected by courts and falsely claimed in testimony at local hearings in Georgia that he was in possession of evidence proving election fraud.

The indictment alleges he made numerous false statements about election fraud, including to officials in other states like Arizona and Pennsylvania, in a failed bid to convince them to approve an alternative slate of electors to keep Trump in power. He and other Trump allies are also accused of making false statements to Georgia lawmakers about the election, including claims about vote counting errors by Dominion voting machines. Giuliani’s attorney declined to comment.

JOHN EASTMAN

Attorney John Eastman represented Trump in a long-shot lawsuit to overturn voting results in four states Trump lost in 2020. He has been under scrutiny by both U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office and state prosecutors in Georgia for penning a series of legal memos which claimed that former Vice President Mike Pence could reject electors from certain states to deny Democrat Joe Biden a majority of Electoral College votes. The indictment in Georgia alleges he was part of a plot to appoint fake electors. His attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

JEFFREY BOSSERT CLARK

Jeffrey Clark is a former high-ranking Justice Department official. In the waning days of the Trump administration, Clark sought to persuade Trump to oust Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen so that he could take over the department and help pursue Trump’s false claims by opening an investigation into voter fraud in Georgia and other swing states. The federal indictment brought by Smith against Trump also appears to refer to Clark as a co-conspirator. Monday’s indictment cites Clark’s efforts to persuade Rosen to submit a letter to Georgia falsely claiming the Justice Department had detected voting irregularities there. His attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

SIDNEY POWELL

Attorney Sidney Powell played a leading role in promoting false fraud claims after the 2020 U.S. election. She was part of a team that filed unsuccessful lawsuits seeking to overturn election results and was sanctioned by a Michigan judge in one of those cases. She became an adviser to Trump on fraud claims after the election. The indictment accuses her of tampering with electronic ballot markers and tabulators in Coffee County, Georgia, computer theft and unlawfully possessing ballots. She could not be immediately reached for comment.

KENNETH CHESEBRO

Kenneth Chesebro is a Trump campaign attorney accused in the indictment of helping to devise a plan to submit fake slates of electors for Trump to obstruct U.S. congressional certification of the election results. The indictment alleges he wrote a memo that provided instructions for how alternate slates of electors in states including Georgia should proceed to meet and cast votes for Trump. An attorney for Chesebro did not respond to a request for comment.

JENNA ELLIS

Attorney Jenna Ellis was part of the Trump campaign’s legal team that falsely claimed widespread voter fraud in 2020. The indictment alleges that Ellis was part of an effort to get false electors appointed by state lawmakers in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The court papers assert that she wrote legal memos for Trump on how Pence on Jan. 6, 2021, could delay the certification of Biden’s election win. Ellis in March agreed to be censured by a Colorado court after admitting to making false claims about voter fraud. She could not be immediately reached for comment.

DAVID SHAFER

The indictment alleges that David Shafer, who served as Georgia Republican Party chairman, played a key role in organizing and executing the plan to submit an alternate slate of electors. Shafer is among those charged with mailing a fake certificate of the so-called Trump electors to a federal courthouse, as well as other offenses tied to the fake elector plot. He is also charged with making false statements to Fulton County investigators. A lawyer for Shafer did not have an immediate comment.

MICHAEL ROMAN

Michael Roman, who worked for Trump’s 2020 campaign, is alleged to have played a role in orchestrating the fake elector plot. The indictment claims he was in touch with those organizing a meeting of the fake Trump electors in Georgia. He could not be immediately reached for comment.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Jacqueline Thomsen; Additional reporting by Jack Queen in New York; Editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller)

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By Sarah N. Lynch and Jacqueline Thomsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former President Donald Trump again stands accused of illegally trying to overturn the 2020 election results to stay in power. But for the first time some allies and closest advisers also face criminal charges for their roles in the alleged scheme.

Already charged by a federal grand jury in Washington with orchestrating a plot to overturn the election, Trump is the lead defendant in a parallel case in Georgia now, charged with racketeering and other crimes along with aides and associates listed below.

Not listed are nine lesser-known Georgia officials charged with additional crimes ranging from perjury to conspiracy to commit computer theft in addition to racketeering.

MARK MEADOWS

Mark Meadows, who went from being one of Trump’s top Republican allies in the U.S. House of Representatives to his White House chief of staff, attended White House meetings related to attempts to undo Trump’s election defeat.

The indictment alleges he helped to fuel the conspiracy by making false statements about the election and conspired with Trump to develop a plan to disrupt and delay the congressional certification of the electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021.

It also alleges he tried to pressure a chief investigator in the Georgia secretary of state’s office, Frances Watson, to speed up the Fulton County signature verification and that he took part in a phone call in which Trump pushed Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to reverse his narrow loss in the state. Raffensperger declined to do so. An attorney for Meadows did not respond to a request for comment.

RUDY GIULIANI

Trump’s former personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, played a prominent public role in the Trump campaign’s efforts to push false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. The former New York City mayor was involved in litigation that was rejected by courts and falsely claimed in testimony at local hearings in Georgia that he was in possession of evidence proving election fraud.

The indictment alleges he made numerous false statements about election fraud, including to officials in other states like Arizona and Pennsylvania, in a failed bid to convince them to approve an alternative slate of electors to keep Trump in power. He and other Trump allies are also accused of making false statements to Georgia lawmakers about the election, including claims about vote counting errors by Dominion voting machines. Giuliani’s attorney declined to comment.

JOHN EASTMAN

Attorney John Eastman represented Trump in a long-shot lawsuit to overturn voting results in four states Trump lost in 2020. He has been under scrutiny by both U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office and state prosecutors in Georgia for penning a series of legal memos which claimed that former Vice President Mike Pence could reject electors from certain states to deny Democrat Joe Biden a majority of Electoral College votes. The indictment in Georgia alleges he was part of a plot to appoint fake electors. His attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

JEFFREY BOSSERT CLARK

Jeffrey Clark is a former high-ranking Justice Department official. In the waning days of the Trump administration, Clark sought to persuade Trump to oust Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen so that he could take over the department and help pursue Trump’s false claims by opening an investigation into voter fraud in Georgia and other swing states. The federal indictment brought by Smith against Trump also appears to refer to Clark as a co-conspirator. Monday’s indictment cites Clark’s efforts to persuade Rosen to submit a letter to Georgia falsely claiming the Justice Department had detected voting irregularities there. His attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

SIDNEY POWELL

Attorney Sidney Powell played a leading role in promoting false fraud claims after the 2020 U.S. election. She was part of a team that filed unsuccessful lawsuits seeking to overturn election results and was sanctioned by a Michigan judge in one of those cases. She became an adviser to Trump on fraud claims after the election. The indictment accuses her of tampering with electronic ballot markers and tabulators in Coffee County, Georgia, computer theft and unlawfully possessing ballots. She could not be immediately reached for comment.

KENNETH CHESEBRO

Kenneth Chesebro is a Trump campaign attorney accused in the indictment of helping to devise a plan to submit fake slates of electors for Trump to obstruct U.S. congressional certification of the election results. The indictment alleges he wrote a memo that provided instructions for how alternate slates of electors in states including Georgia should proceed to meet and cast votes for Trump. An attorney for Chesebro did not respond to a request for comment.

JENNA ELLIS

Attorney Jenna Ellis was part of the Trump campaign’s legal team that falsely claimed widespread voter fraud in 2020. The indictment alleges that Ellis was part of an effort to get false electors appointed by state lawmakers in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The court papers assert that she wrote legal memos for Trump on how Pence on Jan. 6, 2021, could delay the certification of Biden’s election win. Ellis in March agreed to be censured by a Colorado court after admitting to making false claims about voter fraud. She could not be immediately reached for comment.

DAVID SHAFER

The indictment alleges that David Shafer, who served as Georgia Republican Party chairman, played a key role in organizing and executing the plan to submit an alternate slate of electors. Shafer is among those charged with mailing a fake certificate of the so-called Trump electors to a federal courthouse, as well as other offenses tied to the fake elector plot. He is also charged with making false statements to Fulton County investigators. A lawyer for Shafer did not have an immediate comment.

MICHAEL ROMAN

Michael Roman, who worked for Trump’s 2020 campaign, is alleged to have played a role in orchestrating the fake elector plot. The indictment claims he was in touch with those organizing a meeting of the fake Trump electors in Georgia. He could not be immediately reached for comment.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Jacqueline Thomsen; Additional reporting by Jack Queen in New York; Editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller)

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By Andy Sullivan, Jacqueline Thomsen and Joseph Ax

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Former U.S. President Donald Trump was hit with a fourth set of criminal charges when a Georgia grand jury issued a sweeping indictment accusing him of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

The charges, brought late on Monday by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and which Trump called a “witch hunt”, add to the legal woes facing the former president, the front-runner in the race for the Republican nomination for the 2024 election.

The sprawling 98-page indictment listed 19 defendants and 41 criminal counts in all. All of the defendants were charged with racketeering, which is used to target members of organized crime groups and carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.

Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, and lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman were among those charged.

“Rather than abide by Georgia’s legal process for election challenges, the defendants engaged in a criminal, racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia’s presidential election result,” Willis said at a press conference.

Trump and the other defendants have until noon EDT (1600 GMT) on Friday, Aug. 25, to surrender voluntarily, rather than face arrest, Willis said. She said she intends to try all 19 defendants together.

“This one-sided grand jury presentation relied on witnesses who harbor their own personal and political interests,” Trump lawyers Drew Findling, Jennifer Little and Marissa Goldberg said in a statement.

“We look forward to a detailed review of this indictment, which is undoubtedly just as flawed and unconstitutional as this entire process has been,” Trump lawyers added.

Trump, in a social media post overnight, repeated his verbal attacks against Willis and called the indictment a “witch hunt” as he seeks the White House a third time: “Why didn’t they Indict 2.5 years ago? Because they wanted to do it right in the middle of my political campaign.”

The 13 felony charges against Trump matched those listed on a document that was briefly posted on the court website earlier in the day and reported by Reuters before it disappeared.

Lawyers for those named either declined to comment or did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call, Trump urged Georgia’s top election official, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to reverse his narrow loss in the state. Raffensperger declined to do so.

Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol four days later in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent lawmakers from certifying Biden’s victory.

The indictment cites a number of crimes that Trump or his associates allegedly committed from before the Nov. 3, 2020, election until September 2022, including falsely testifying to lawmakers that election fraud had occurred and urging state officials to alter the results.

It says the defendants tried to subvert the U.S. electoral process by submitting false slates of electors, people who make up the Electoral College that elects the president and vice president.

BREACHING VOTING MACHINES, HARASSING ELECTION WORKERS

It alleges that defendants breached voting equipment in a rural Georgia county, including personal voter information and images of ballots.

Prosecutors also said the defendants harassed an election worker who became the focus of conspiracy theories.

The indictment reaches across state lines, saying that Giuliani, Meadows and others called officials in Arizona, Pennsylvania and elsewhere to urge them to change the outcome in those states.

The indictment mentions 30 other co-conspirators, though they were not named or charged.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing, and has pleaded not guilty in three other criminal cases.

He faces a New York state trial in March 2024 involving a hush money payment to a porn star, and a federal trial beginning in May in Florida for allegedly mishandling federal classified documents. In both cases Trump pleaded not guilty.

A third indictment, in Washington federal court, accuses him of illegally seeking to overturn his 2020 election defeat. Trump denies wrongdoing in this case as well, and a trial date has yet to be set.

Georgia, once reliably Republican, has emerged as one of a handful of politically competitive states that can determine the outcome of presidential elections.

Trump persists in falsely claiming he won the November 2020 election although dozens of court cases and state probes have found no evidence to support his claim.

NOT HURTING HIS CAMPAIGN

Strategists said that while the indictments could bolster Republican support for Trump, they may hurt him in the November 2024 general election, when he will have to win over more independent-minded voters.

In a July Reuters/Ipsos poll, 37% of independents said the criminal cases made them less likely to vote for him.

Willis’s investigation drew on testimony from Trump advisers including Giuliani, who urged state lawmakers in December 2020 not to certify the election, and Republican state officials like Raffensperger and Governor Brian Kemp, who refused to echo Trump’s false election claims.

While many Republican officials have echoed Trump’s false election claims, Kemp and Raffensperger have refused to do so.

Raffensperger has said there was no factual basis for Trump’s objections, while Kemp certified the election results despite pressure from within his party.

Trump has been mired in legal trouble since leaving office.

Apart from the criminal cases, a New York jury in May found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million in a civil case. A second defamation lawsuit scheduled for January seeks $10 million in damages. Trump denies wrongdoing.

Trump is due to face trial in October in a civil case in New York that accuses him and his family business of fraud to obtain better terms from lenders and insurers.

Trump’s company was fined $1.6 million after being convicted of tax fraud in a New York court in December.

(Additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Rami Ayyub, Jack Queen, Tim Ahmann, Andrew Goudsward, Kanishka Singh, Nilutpal Timsina and Susan Heavey; writing by Andy Sullivan; editing by Scott Malone and Howard Goller)

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By Jack Queen

(Reuters) – Criminal charges filed against former U.S. President Donald Trump in Georgia state court include allegations that he violated an anti-organized crime law known as RICO that is more expansive than its federal counterpart.

WHAT IS RICO?

U.S. lawmakers passed the federal Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act in 1970 to battle organized crime, notably the mafia. Most states enacted similar laws with various twists.

The main requirements under the federal RICO law are at least two underlying crimes and participation in a criminal enterprise over a long period of time.

Georgia’s RICO law does not require criminal enterprises to be long running and lists nearly 50 underlying crimes that qualify as racketeering, compared with 35 under its federal counterpart.

Defendants who are found guilty of Georgia RICO charges face between five and 20 years in prison, and while federal law has the same maximum, it does not have a minimum.

HOW IS RICO TYPICALLY USED?

The mafia in the U.S. has largely been dismantled, and RICO’s application has been broadened to many other types of organized criminal activity.

Prosecutors have applied the law to all sorts of groups that they characterize as criminal “enterprises,” including Wall Street banks and traders engaged in market manipulation.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, an elected Democrat who brought the charges against Trump, once used the law to prosecute more than two dozen Atlanta educators for allegedly scheming to cheat on standardized test scores in 2014.

Attorneys for the teachers said Willis overreached by deeming Atlanta’s public school system a “criminal enterprise,” but the convictions held up on appeal.

WHY ARE PROSECUTORS USING RICO?

RICO was originally conceived as a tool to go after mafia kingpins who kept their hands clean by parking ill-gotten gains in shell corporations and leaving the dirty work to underlings.

The law does not require prosecutors to prove that defendants directly engaged in criminal activity, just that they were part of a larger organization that did.

That means prosecutors would not necessarily have to prove Trump personally broke the law but knowingly coordinated with others who did.

WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF USING RICO?

RICO cases are inherently more complex because prosecutors must first prove the existence of a criminal enterprise.

The Trump indictment names an additional 18 co-defendants, including Trump’s onetime lawyer Rudy Giuliani, his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and lawyer John Eastman.

Prosecutors will need to prove that Trump and his co-defendants worked together towards a common criminal purpose, which is not always as straightforward as proving an underlying RICO crime.

But each additional co-defendant is another that prosecutors could coax into testifying against the others.

(This story has been refiled with a corrected picture caption)

(Reporting by Jack Queen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Howard Goller)

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