Georgia set to take over the Trump indictment spotlight 

All eyes are on Georgia this week, where yet another indictment of former President Trump is expected imminently.  

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) has been probing Trump’s efforts to interfere in the state’s closely fought 2020 election for more than a year and is widely expected this month to bring the fourth indictment of 2023 against the former president. 

“The work is accomplished,” Willis recently told local news outlets in Atlanta. “We’ve been working for two-and-a-half years. We’re ready to go.” 

Willis previously advised courthouse security officials that she could bring charges in the case in the second or third week of August.  

Any charges brought by Willis would come after a federal indictment last week that was also connected to the 2020 election. In that case, the former president was charged with four counts for his role in trying to block the transfer of power.  

It’s not clear that Trump will face charges in the Georgia probe, though he has launched three separate suits seeking to quash Willis’s investigation. 

At the same time, Georgia prosecutors have a number of options to choose from should they decide to pursue a case against Trump.  

RICO charges 

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis watches proceedings during a hearing to decide if the final report by a special grand jury looking into possible interference in the 2020 presidential election can be released Jan. 24, 2023, in Atlanta.

Some experts say Willis may settle on Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) charges in bringing a case against Trump. 

RICO statutes are typically used for organized crime, but the Georgia statute is broader than its federal counterpart and can be geared toward any “enterprise,” enabling the use of the statute for a wider variety of conduct. 

Doing so would help weave together different elements of the Trump campaign’s efforts, connecting a plot carried out by numerous actors. It also would allow numerous conspirators to potentially be charged alongside the former president. 

“When you have a criminal enterprise that includes a pattern of violations, that’s inherently more serious and kind of separately serious than any individual criminal action,” said Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, who also helped draft a model prosecution memo analyzing the case. 

“Charging a RICO offense kind of captures that this is a multifaceted, larger plan. I think that’s part of why that kind of statute exists, and it’s part of why prosecutors may charge it. It allows you to review lots of different conduct, but it also allows you to present a case and present evidence that this is a bigger scheme and not a couple of disparate events that could be dismissed as kind of small, individual actions.” 

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RICO charges would allow prosecutors to sweep in criminal statutes in Georgia that aren’t directly tied to elections — such as making false statements and official certificates, as well as charges for computer trespass — which could be used to address broader Trump campaign efforts to access voter machine data in Coffee County, Ga. 

RICO also allows Willis to sweep in conduct outside of her Fulton County jurisdiction in the broader indictment, such as the Coffee County computer probe and phone calls made by Trump and those in his orbit to election officials residing in other Georgia counties.  

“There was a question as to what, if any, charges may be attached to some of the happenings in Cobb County with the Secretary of State investigator that was conducting an investigation in Cobb — she had a call from the president, she was visited by Mark Meadows,” said Gwen Keyes Fleming, a former Georgia District Attorney now in private practice who also worked on the memo. 

“She obviously as the Fulton County district attorney would not have jurisdiction over a crime that happens in Cobb, but she could add any sort of predicate of facts that she may want to attach to those actions to a Fulton County indictment, if two or more of the other charges happen in Fulton.”  

Solicitation and conspiracy charges  

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger attends the National Association of Secretaries of State winter meeting, Feb. 16, 2023, in Washington. Georgia’s Republican secretary of state has set the battleground state’s 2024 presidential primary for Tuesday, March 12, 2024, rebuffing the wishes of Democrats, including President Joe Biden, to move the state into the early weeks of the nominating calendar as a part of elevating more diverse electorates. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

Georgia has a suite of election-based charges that could be used to address Trump’s pressure campaign on various officials in the state. 

Trump’s infamous call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking him to “find” another 11,780 votes was just one of several examples of outreach. 

Trump also made such calls to Frances Watson, an employee in Raffensperger’s office who was investigating alleged signature mismatches.  

He pressured Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) to hold a special election in the state, and pressed him to call a special session of the Legislature to select electors who would support him. 

The Trump campaign also organized a group of 16 residents to serve as false electors for him, later submitting the false ballots to Congress and stating they were “duly elected and qualified.” 

Willis sent letters last year to each of the 16 electors informing them they are targets in the probe, though half the group have since begun cooperating with the investigation, arranging immunity deals. 

The various pressure campaigns on state officials could each back charges for criminal solicitation of election fraud, a 2011 law, and implicate other statutes that bar seeking to interfere with an official carrying out their duties, including those involved with overseeing an election. 

And the false elector scheme could trigger the use of other charges, including interference with primaries and elections and conspiracy to commit election fraud. 

Keyes Fleming said election charges would address conduct that can’t be charged though RICO. 

“A RICO indictment can only include those predicate acts that are listed within the RICO statute. And none of the election crimes under Title 21 are considered RICO eligible,” she said. 

After last week’s indictment, Trump has been pushing a defense that his election plots were protected by free speech, targeting portions of the indictment that allege that the former president knew full well his claims were false.  

In Georgia as well, experts believe there is ample evidence to demonstrate Trump’s intent in making the pleas, but the model prosecution memo said even a genuine belief by Trump that he won the election would be no defense. 

“Winners and losers alike can run afoul of the criminal statutes we discuss. A loser who believes he is a winner has no special license under Georgia law to solicit state officials to engage in conduct constituting a crime,” the memo reads.