Prosecutors have charged the former president of the United States, Donald Trump with attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state of Georgia.
The latest charge stands as the most damning indictment so far against the former president, as reported by Al Jazeera.
Emerging reports have revealed that the charges, brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Monday, added to the legal travails facing Trump.
Trump, who is the frontrunner in the race for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election is already facing three other cases.
“Trump and the other Defendants charged in this indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and wilfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump,” the indictment issued by Willis’s office read.
Willis said the defendants would be allowed to voluntarily surrender by noon on August 25.
She also said she planned to ask for a trial date within six months, Al Jazeera reported.
The 98-page indictment listed 19 defendants and details dozens of acts by Trump and his allies to undo his defeat in the battleground state.
This included bullying Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to find enough votes to keep him in power, as well as pestering officials with bogus claims of voter fraud.
He also attempted to persuade Georgia lawmakers to ignore the will of voters and appoint a new slate of electoral college electors favourable to Trump.
It also outlined a scheme to tamper with voting machines in one Georgia county as well as steal data.
The document described the ex-president, the former White House chief of staff, Trump’s lawyers, and the former mayor of New York as members of a “criminal organisation” who were part of an “enterprise” that operated in Georgia and other states – language that conjured up the operations of mob bosses and gang leaders.
Other defendants named in the indictment included former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows; Trump’s lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman; and a Trump administration Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, who advanced his efforts to undo his election loss in Georgia.
