Former US president Donald Trump has been hit with a fourth set of criminal charges when a Georgia grand jury issued an indictment accusing him of efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
The charges, brought on Monday by Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis, add to the legal woes facing Trump, the frontrunner in the race for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.
Prosecutors brought 11 counts against Trump and his associates, including forgery and racketeering, which is used to target members of organised crime groups.
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 January 2 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. Raffensperger declined to do so.
Four days later, and two weeks before Trump was due to leave office, his supporters stormed the Capitol in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent lawmakers from certifying Biden’s victory.
Willis also investigated an alleged scheme by the Trump campaign to subvert the electoral process by submitting false slates of electors, people who make up the Electoral College that elects the president and vice president.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing, and accuses Willis, an elected Democrat, of being politically motivated.
The court briefly posted a document on its website earlier on Monday listing several felony charges against Trump, but quickly removed it without explanation. Willis’s office said at the time no charges had been filed and declined to further comment.
Trump has already pleaded not guilty in three criminal cases.
He faces a New York state trial beginning on March 25 2024, involving a hush money payment to a porn star, and a Florida trial beginning on May 20 in a federal classified documents case. 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.
Strategists said that while the indictments could bolster Republican support for Trump, they may hurt him in next year’s general election, when he will have to win over more independent-minded voters.
Willis’ investigation drew on testimony from Trump advisers including Giuliani, who urged state lawmakers in December 2020 not to certify the election, and allies like Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham, who asked state officials to examine absentee ballots following Trump’s loss.
Voters in the state also might be less receptive to Trump’s complaints than elsewhere. Republican US Senate candidates who backed his false election claims narrowly lost runoff elections in January 2021 and December 2022, frustrating the party’s hopes of winning control of the chamber.
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 US$5 million (A$7.7 million) in a civil case. A trial is scheduled for January 15 on a second defamation lawsuit seeking US$10 million (A$15 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 US$1.6 million (A$2.5 million) after being convicted of tax fraud in a New York court in December.
