Trump faces a charge usually aimed at mobsters. Here's what we know (2024)

Another day, another indictment.

A grand jury in the US state of Georgia has decidedto charge Donald Trump with serious crimes.

They relate to alleged efforts to meddle in the 2020 election result in Georgia, a crucial swing state that helped Joe Biden win the White House.

This is the fourth set of charges faced by the former president, and the second relating to election interference.And this time, 18of his supportersare being charged alongside him.

They've been given untilAugust 25 to voluntarily surrender to the office of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Shesaid she was seeking a trial date in the next six months, and she intended to try all 19 defendants together.

Mr Trump'sco-defendants include high-profile lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and John Eastman, and his White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

All are charged with multiple offences, including violating the state's anti-racketeering statute — a law generally used to target gangs and organised crime, andwhich carries minimumjail time of between five and 20 years.

"There is time you have to serve — it is not a probated sentence,"Ms Willistold a press conference after the indictment.

Mr Trump claims he is the victim of another political witch-hunt. But a jury of Georgia citizens has voted there's enough evidence for him to face trial.

An indictmentis essentially a formal accusation yet to be tested at trial. Mr Trump facestwo federal indictments — in Florida (classified documents) and Washington(election interference).And he now facestwo state indictments — in New York ("hush money") and Georgia (election interference, again).

What are the charges this time?

Mr Trump and his co-defendants have been charged with 41 different offences.

All face at least two charges. Mr Trump faces 13 separate counts.

All 19 people indictedhave been charged with violatingGeorgia's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations legislation, better known as RICO.

"It's usually a law that is generally brought against, or thought of as being brought against, the mafia," explains Georgia State University's Anthony Michael Kreis, an assistant professor of law.

"But really what RICO is, is it's an attempt to capture large-scale criminal enterprise, where there's a lot of different individuals who are up to no good … who don't necessarily know how they fit in the broader machine."

The RICO charges come with heavy penalties: prison sentences of between five and 20 years, and fines of at least $25,000.

And while Donald Trump being sentenced to many years in prison is "fairly unlikely", Professor Kreis says the heavy penalties could serve another purpose:scaring his allies into flipping.

"If it was a light slap on the wrist, it might be harder to get people who are very loyal to the former president to provide evidence against him," he says.

"But given the severity of the charges, and given how incredibly steep the punishment is, for some of these charges, it might be easier … to strike deals."

So what exactly happened in Georgia?

The indictment says Mr Trump and the other defendants "knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favour of Trump".

"That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity" in Georgia and elsewhere, it alleges.

Throughout the indictment, they are referred to as "a criminal organisation" and "members of the enterprise".

Among the key eventsis thenow-infamous phone call Mr Trump made to Georgia's secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffensperger, on January 2, 2021.

In that call, leaked to the press, Mr Trump insisted the results in Georgia were wrong, "and there's nothing wrong with saying that, you know, that you've recalculated".

"Look, all I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state."

Other allegations in theindictment include:

• Spreading conspiracy theories about fraudulent election results. These include claims that more than 10,000 dead people voted in Georgia, and an edited video used to push a now-debunked theory that suitcases of illegal ballots were counted.
• Making presentations to politicians in Georgia in December 2020, in which they gave "false statements", such as those above, "to persuade Georgia legislators to reject lawful electoral votes".
• Accessing election equipment in Georgia's Coffee County after being hired by Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, where they"stole data, including ballot images, voting equipment software, and personal voter information".
• Making "false accusations" about election worker Ruby Freeman committing election crimes, and defendants travelling "from out of state to harass Freeman, intimidate her, and solicit her to falsely confess".
• Filing false documents, making false statements and committing perjury in judicial hearings in Georgia.
• Soliciting high-ranking Justice Department officials, and former vice president Mike Pence, to the scheme.

And then there are the so-called fake electors organised by members of Team Trump.

Who were the 'fake electors'?

This generally takes a bit of explainingin Australia, where the US's electoral college system feels quite foreign.

In American elections, after a state counts its votes, it appoints a group of "electors". These people as tasked with representing the state, and how its population voted, in subsequent ballots in their state capitals.

The electors'votes are then counted and certified at a session of Congress on January 6(but we all saw what happened on that date last time).

Georgia is one of seven states where Mr Trump's team is accused of organising "fraudulent electors" to show up at these state meetings and cast votes for Mr Trump, to then be sent on for the January 6 vote count.

This idea failed in all those states. But the alleged efforts have been a focus of multiple investigations, including this one in Georgia.

What makes this case different to allthe others?

Andrew Pieper, a political scienceprofessor at Georgia's Kennesaw State University, says there are several things that could make the case in his state different.

"One is ... we know there are someultimately, kind of, smoking guns out there," he says.

"We have the tape of him speaking to the secretary of state of Georgia, asking him to, quote, 'find the votes'."

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And if those "smoking guns" lead to a conviction, it would be harder for Mr Trump to avoid punishment, he says.

"This is a state prosecution,and so any clemency or pardons could not come from a president.

"All those other federal crimes could theoretically be almost erased on day one of any Republican presidency."

It's extremely rare for a prisoner in Georgia to bereleased from prison on a pardon.

Unlike in other states, the governor cannot pardon a prisoner. Instead, a five-personBoard of Pardons and Paroles has to find that new evidence has proven a prisoner innocent.

How did this case in Georgia come about?

The district attorney has been investigating suspected attempts at election interference for two-and-a-half years.

Last year, Ms Willisasked that a special grand jury be assembled to investigate "possible criminal disruptions" in the election.

That jury of 26 people heard from 75 witnesses between June and December. The witnesses included poll workers, investigators, technical experts,and Georgia officials and public servants.

Thespecial grand jury didn't have the power to indict anyone — that decision fell to a regular grand jury. It's been meeting in Atlantato consider the special grand jury's report (which has mostly been kept confidential) and hear additional evidence.

So the decision to indict Mr Trump was made by a different group of jurors to those who initially looked at the evidence.Unlike a trial jury, which requires a unanimous decision, a grand jury can indict by majority vote.

What has Donald Trump said?

Mr Trump didn't wait for this latest indictment to start attacking it and the people who were moving towards bringing it down.

He used his social media platform, Truth Social, to insist he "did not tamper with the election", repeatbaselessclaims that it was rigged and stolen, and describe his phone call to Mr Raffensperger as "a perfect phone call of protest".

In a later statement "from the Trump Campaign", Ms Willis — an elected Democrat — was described as a "rabid partisan", and the indictment was criticised as an attempt to interfere with the 2024 presidential race.

A televised trial?

Professor Kreis says there's another big difference between the local courts and many other jurisdictions.

"Fulton County has a history ofshowing the public through media, namely TV or even just through streaming on YouTube, all of our criminal law proceedings," he says.

"So I think it's quite possible, if not likely, that what we'll see in Georgiain the arraignment process is it unfold live for everybody to see."

Already, cameras have been allowed to broadcast live from the courtroom where the indictment documents were handed up to the judge.

And what happensnow?

The process of indicting a president has become something of an established pattern in the US, though each of the previous three indictments has worked a little differently.

And this time, there are far more people being charged.

While any future trial dates are up to a judge, Ms Willis said all 19 defendants haduntil noon on August 25 to "voluntarily surrender".

So they arelikely to facearraignment hearings in the coming days or weeks.

This is wherethey could enter pleas.All indications are that MrTrump would plead not guilty to everything.

At these hearings,conditions could be set on the defendants'release, pending a trial.

At previous arraignments, Mr Trump has avoided having a mugshot taken.

This time, he may not be so lucky(or, perhaps, unlucky — the Trump camp seems to view a mugshot as so politically helpful, it put a fake one on a T-shirt and sold it to raise campaign funds).

The local sheriff, Pat Labat, hassaid his office would follow "normal practices" for an arraignment, unless "someone tells me differently".

"And so it doesn't matter your status. We'll have mugshots ready for you."

Atlanta itself has been upping security in the city in preparation for this for some time.

Roads have been closed around the local courthouse for more than a fortnight,and crowd-control barricades have been put up on the street outside.

People with court hearings were asked to dial in via Zoom instead of attending in person, and local media reported court staff were being directed to work from home for much of August.

"If an indictment came today, we would be ready," the sheriff said at the start of the month.

"We look forward to an opportunity to show the world that we are ready."