Trump, indicted for trying to rig the results of the 2020 presidential election

"Why didn't they charge me two and a half years ago? Because they wanted to do it in the middle of my campaign," replies the former president

A Georgia grand jury has indicted former President Donald Trump and 18 others for trying to interfere in the 2020 presidential election, in what is already the fourth battery of charges against the New York tycoon, who continues to insist on the theory of "hunting of witches" policy against him.

The alleged crimes date back to the chaotic months after those elections, when Trump refused to admit that he had lost to Democrat Joe Biden and undertook all kinds of tricks to reverse the result, including a controversial call to the Secretary of State of Georgia, Republican Brad Raffensperger, in which he directly urged her to "find" the votes she lacked - she had lost in that state by just 12,000 votes.

The former president has been charged with 13 counts, including violation of Georgia's racketeering crime law, conspiring to impersonate an official, pressuring an official to betray the oath of office, and conspiring to present false documents and conspiring to commit counterfeiting in a "criminal association" in which another thirty people also participated, not included in the statement of charges.

In total, the former president and the rest of the defendants, including some of his closest collaborators such as John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows, face 41 charges brought by Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis. All of them would have engaged in "criminal activity" with the sole objective of avoiding electoral defeat.

Thus, Trump has been accused, for example, of inciting public officials, including former Vice President Mike Pence, to violate their oath, of making false statements, of distributing fraudulent documents at polling stations, of harassing poll workers after his defeat in Georgia and acts of obstruction.

"Trump and the other defendants refused to accept that they lost, and knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully swing the election outcome in favor of Trump," the indictment reads. "That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity in Fulton County, Georgia, elsewhere in Georgia, and in other states," he adds.

It has also alleged that Trump and his associates "engaged in various interrelated criminal activities such as "impersonation of a public official, attempting to bribe witnesses, computer theft, computer trespassing, computer invasion of privacy, conspiracy to defraud the State and acts related to theft and perjury".

In addition, Willis has announced an arrest warrant against the defendants, although he has given them until August 25 to "turn themselves in voluntarily." The Prosecutor's Office intends to prosecute Trump in the next six months, a process that has already been assigned to Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee.

TRUMP INSISTS ON THE "WITCH HUNT"

As he has been doing in recent years in the face of any type of political and judicial setback, Trump has once again denounced that he feels he is the victim of a "witch hunt", this time undertaken by a "out of control and very corrupt" prosecutor. "Why didn't they charge me two and a half years ago? Because they wanted to do it in the middle of my political campaign," he has sentenced on his own social network, the now pre-candidate in the Republican Party primaries for the 2024 elections.

In statements to Fox News, he has influenced this same thesis and has called on Willis to "focus on the people who rigged the 2020 presidential elections, not on those who ask for answers for what happened", thus giving free rein to a conspiracy theory. for which there is still no evidence almost three years after the vote.

This is the fourth indictment that Trump has received, and the second for trying to interfere in the elections. Unlike the charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith, the former president would not be able to pardon himself or his associates if found guilty and re-elected as president of the country due to a state conviction.

Trump, the first ex-president of the country to be accused, was already charged in March in the framework of the investigation against him for the alleged payment of a bribe to the porn actress Stephanie Clifford, known as Stormy Daniels, and also faces to 40 charges for the case of classified documents.