Donald Trump indicted over 2020 election interference in Georgia

Former United States president Donald Trump was indicted Monday (August 14) in Georgia on charges of racketeering and a string of election crimes. This comes after an extensive two-year probe into his efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden in the US state of Georgia.This is the fourth criminal case to be brought against the 77-year-old Republican this year, the second case to allege that he tried to subvert the results of the vote. Trump called theindictment "rigged" and "Witch hunt".

The case relies on laws typically used to bring down mobsters and could lead to a watershed moment — the first televised trial of a former president in US history.

On Monday, the grand jury met for roughly 10 hours before handing up charges. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' case will be shielded from any potential Trump interference if he is reelected in 2024, unlike the election subversion allegations brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith. He will not be able to pardon himself or his allies of any state convictions, nor will he be able to order Fulton County to dismiss the charges.

Prosecutors charged 18 other people, including Mark Meadows, Trump's former White House chief of staff, and lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman. The case stems from a Jan2, 2021, phone call in which Trump urged Georgia's top election official, Brad Raffensperger, to "find" enough votes to reverse his narrow loss in the state, but the request was declined.

Two weeks before Trump was scheduled to leave office, on January 6, 2021, four days later, Trump's supporters attacked the USCapitol in an effort to stop Congress from certifying Biden's victory.

Reports have mentioned that Willis also investigated an alleged scheme by the Trump campaign to subvert the US electoral process by submitting false slates of electors, people who make up the Electoral College that elects the president and vice president.

Watch:Will televised trial proceedings affect Trump's popularity?

Trump has denied any wrongdoing

While responding to the indictment, the Trump campaign said: "President Trump will continue to power through this unprecedented abuse of power" and it also accused Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis, an elected Democrat, of being part of the "Deranged Democrat Prosecutor Club". As per the local reports, the statement is attributed to Karoline Leavitt, who is the spokesperson for Make America Great Again Inc.

Taking to his Truth Social platform, Trump slammed the indictment and called it "rigged".

"Sounds rigged to me! Why didn't they indict 2.5 years ago? Because they wanted to do it right in the middle of my political campaign. Witch hunt!"he wrote.

In a statement,Trump's lawyers took issue with the "leak of a presumed and premature indictment before the witnesses had testified or the grand jurors had deliberated", in what they say has been a "flawed and unconstitutional" process, a complaintTrumpalso alluded to in his post.

(With inputs from agencies)

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