“Just Say That the Election Was Corrupt, and Leave the Rest to Me”: In Georgia, Donald Trump Appears Beyond F--ked

On Monday night, in what has now become a regularly occurring event, Donald Trump was indicted for allegedly committing a whole bunch of crimes. This time it was by Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis, who accused the ex-president of plotting to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, and charged him and 18 co-conspirators with, among other things, violating the state’s RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act. If the terms “RICO” and “racketeer” sound familiar to you but you can’t figure out why, it’s probably because the law, passed on the federal level in 1970, has been famously used to crack down on organized crime groups like the Mafia, members of which are probably currently throwing around terms like “numbnuts” and “jamoke” in reference to the ex-president. In addition to the RICO charge, the Fulton County indictment includes more than three dozen counts, 13 of which Trump was charged with.

While Trump has obviously been indicted before—see the Manhattan hush money indictment, Jack Smith’s classified-documents indictment, and Smith’s election-interference indictment—the Georgia case should be especially worrisome to him given that 1) he can’t simply pardon himself if he becomes president again, as the case is state and not federal, and 2) the racketeering charge alone carries a minimum sentence of five years in prison, with a maximum of 20. (Other counts would of course also come with prison time; a conspiracy conviction, for example, would result in a minimum of a year in prison.)

Willis has said she wants the case to go to trial within the next six months, which would put it well before the general election. And based on the 98-page indictment, it seems pretty unlikely that things will go well for the former guy. Among the craziest allegations that are unlikely to convince a jury that the ex-president and his associates are innocent?

Trump was plotting to overturn the election before the election even happened

As the indictment notes, Trump’s false claim on November 4, 2020, that he had won the election was not some off-the-cuff, spur-of-the-moment declaration made in the heat of the moment. Rather, “approximately four days earlier, on or about October 31, 2020, DONALD JOHN TRUMP discussed a draft speech with unindicted co-conspirator Individual l…that falsely declared victory and falsely claimed voter fraud. The speech was an overt act in furtherance oft he conspiracy.”

Trump and then chief of staff Mark Meadows wanted an actual memo written re: blocking the certification of Joe Biden’s win

Note to anyone thinking of trying to overturn a free and fair election: maybe don’t commit your plan to pen and paper? From the indictment:

On or between the 1st day of December 2020 and the 31st day of December 2020, DONALD JOHN TRUMP and MARK RANDALL MEADOWS met with John McEntee and requested that McEntee prepare a memorandum outlining a strategy for disrupting and delaying the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021, the day prescribed by law for counting votes cast by the duly elected and qualified presidential electors from Georgia and the other states. The strategy included having Vice President Michael R. “Mike” Pence count only half of the electoral votes from certain states and then return the remaining electoral votes to state legislatures. The request was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.

Trump’s henchmen told a whole bunch of patently absurd lies—which they knew were lies—to Georgia state lawmakers

Here’s Willis on Rudy Giuliani, and just one of the many instances in which he allegedly told a bunch of ridiculous lies in an attempt to keep Trump in power: