Why is this indictment different from all other indictments?
After more than a year of investigation, and months of telegraphing what, in retrospect, seems like an inevitable outcome, a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, on Monday night handed up a massive criminal indictment against former President Donald Trump and more than a dozen co-conspirators, alleging they engaged in a "criminal enterprise" to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election in Trump's favor. Over the course of the 98-page document, Trump and his co-conspirators are accused of racketeering, conspiracy to commit forgery, perjury, illegally breaching voting equipment and other charges, with the former president himself facing 13 felony counts related to his push to "unlawfully change the outcome of the election" which he'd lost.
The Georgia indictment completes what had widely been expected to be a quadrangle of criminal charges against the former president, alongside charges stemming from his alleged hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election, mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, and broader election subversion in the wake of his 2020 loss. But the Georgia charges — bringing Trump's grand total to 91 — stand apart from their predecessors in terms of both scale and specificity, marking a "key departure from special counsel Jack Smith's charges against Trump for election subversion," according to CNN. So what makes this latest indictment so different from Trump's previous charges, and where could this all lead as we draw closer to the upcoming presidential election?
What are the commentators saying?
The Fulton County indictment "may be the last of the Trump indictments, but it was the big one," The Associated Press said. Thanks to Georgia's unique anti-racketeering statutes, District Attorney Fani Willis was able to craft "a wide-ranging narrative by citing and charging other players in the alleged wrongdoing, even those out of state," as compared to Smith's more narrowly focused federal indictment. Willis' case is "far more encompassing and detailed than Smith's ongoing federal investigation" agreed The Washington Post, while noting that Willis has "declined to say if she has had contact with Smith" in the lead-up to Monday's charges. Unlike a "conspiracy" charge, the RICO statutes behind this latest indictment mean Willis is "painting this picture of people winking and nodding and working toward this end goal of overthrowing the election, but without some kind of expressed agreement," Georgia State University law professor Anthony Michael Kreis explained at The Conversation. Moreover, the expansive nature of RICO charges creates a "big incentive for people who are listed as co-defendants to cooperate with the state and to provide evidence, in order to escape punishment and secure favorable deals," Kreis continued. "This is probably the biggest risk to Trump, and the likelihood that he would be convicted in Fulton County rests with this."
Conversely, the sprawling nature of the RICO charges could make things more difficult when it comes time to bring the case to trial. "'Less is more' is the gold standard that Jack Smith used in the recent Jan. 6 indictment of just one defendant, Donald Trump," former federal prosecutor Gene Rossi told Bloomberg. The more defendants there are, as in the case of Fulton County, "they all have their own schedules and their calendars. It's like herding cats."
Crucially, while Trump is expected to "employ a similar defense in both the earlier federal indictment and the Fulton County case" — that of simply having exercised his First Amendment right to speak out against what he legitimately viewed as election fraud — "it's not clear that defense will work" in this case, AP said. No matter how benign some of the 161 listed acts undergirding the alleged criminal enterprise may seem when taken alone, "the indictment argues they were all steps in what it calls 'a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump,'" AP continued. In other words, the alleged crime is less about the sprawling web of individual actions than it is about their cumulative effect and the motivation behind them.
What's next?
Speaking Monday evening after the charges were announced, Willis gave Trump and his 18 co-conspirators until Aug. 25 to "voluntarily" turn themselves in, and said that she would recommend their trial be set sometime in the coming six months. Accordingly, "there stands to be some crossover in evidence – especially in the form of witness testimony – that may pose challenges" for Willis and Smith's "dueling" trial timelines, CNN said, noting that "once one of the cases goes to trial, any witness that testifies in that case will be locked in for their testimony in the other – or otherwise facing the risk of perjury." Moreover, if Trump is actually convicted in Georgia, he will nevertheless be unable to issue himself a pardon — or ask for one from anyone else — should he be elected president regardless. Not only are federal pardons inapplicable on state charges, but unlike other states, Georgia does not allow the governor to directly pardon convicted people. While there is a complicated state pardon process, it involves an appointed board of members and can only be applied years after the initial conviction and sentencing.
"Unless someone tells me differently, we are following our normal practices," Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat said when asked about how Trump's arraignment and booking would proceed. That means Trump would be "subject to a mug shot that could be made public and a surrender at the county jail where squalid conditions and an inmate death recently sparked a Justice Department investigation," according to the Post.
Ultimately, this latest indictment comes amid the quickening pace of the Republican presidential primary race, and the 2024 presidential election at large. In that context, "a fourth Trump indictment is unlikely to be any more ruinous to his political career than the previous three – at least, in the Republican primary," CNN asserted, noting that none of the former president's rivals have been able to "take advantage of Trump's political liabilities without alienating vast numbers of his supporters." Crucially, however, Trump's trial in Georgia may be televised, at least in part, and "there is a difference between indictments and actually sitting there in a courtroom in a trial and how that impacts voters," Marc Short, former chief of staff to Trump's Vice President Mike Pence, told CNN's Jake Tapper this week.
