Yesterday, a grand jury in Georgia indicted Trump and 18 others, including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, and Sidney Powell, on a massive slate of felony charges for being part of a conspiracy to subvert the presidential election.
The latest issue of the Public Notice newsletter unpacks the latest of Trump's four criminal indictments.
From the newsletter:
According to the indictment, Trump and his co-defendants used at least eight methods to try to undermine the election: (1) Making false statements to members of state legislatures, including Florida, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia; (2) Making false statements to high-ranking state officials in Georgia, such as the secretary of state and the governor; (3) creating a slate of fake electoral voters; (4) harassing and intimidating a Fulton County election worker; (5) soliciting high-ranking members of the United States Department of Justice to make false statements to government officials in Georgia; (6) soliciting Mike Pence to reject electoral college votes properly cast by Georgia's electors; (7) unlawfully accessing voter equipment and voter data; and (8) making false statements and committing perjury to cover up the conspiracy.
***
It's not a crime to make a phone call about an election. But if that phone call is part of a coordinated plan to accomplish something illegal, it can be one of the overt acts. Think about it this way: renting a car is not illegal. However, renting a series of cars as part of a nationwide scheme to rob banks can be an overt act, as can being the person who does all the planning even if they never go on a bank job.
***
Additionally, the Georgia indictment brings home how hard denizens of Trumpland went after Ruby Freeman, a Fulton County poll worker who conservatives fixated upon as having overseen a massive voter fraud enterprise. Giuliani told members of the Georgia House on December 10, long past when it was clear Trump had lost, that Freeman was "quite obviously passing around USB ports as if they're vials of heroin or cocaine" to infiltrate Dominion voting machines. The indictment shows that several of the named defendants —Stephen Lee, Harrison Floyd, and Trevian Kutti — all repeatedly called Freeman, called her neighbors, and showed up at her home, telling her she needed "protection" and offering to help. The help they offered was not much help at all, though — only that Trump and his allies would leave Freeman alone if she lied about election night and aligned her story with the fever dreams of Rudy Giuliani and friends.
