Former US president Donald Trump is expected to appear in court later this month after being charged under racketeering and other legislation in Georgia with attempts to overturn his defeat in the presidential election in 2020.
However, Mr Trump said on Tuesday he would release an “irrefutable report” on election fraud in Georgia next week after which all charges against him should be dropped.
The former president’s planned press conference at his golf club in New Jersey next Monday will be just days before he has been directed to present himself to authorities in Georgia on foot of a new indictment.
A grand jury in Atlanta on Monday indicted Mr Trump and 18 others including his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and his former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
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Mr Trump was charged with 13 counts, including violating Georgia’s racketeering act, soliciting a public officer to violate their oath, conspiring to impersonate a public officer, conspiring to commit forgery in the first degree and conspiring to file false documents.
The former president has been given until midday on Friday, August 25th to surrender voluntarily to authorities in Atlanta where he is expected to be formally arraigned in court.
On Tuesday Mr Trump doubled down on his claims that the 2020 presidential election was beset by fraud.
In a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, following release of the indictment he said: “A large, complex, detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the presidential election fraud which took place in Georgia is almost complete and will be presented by me at a major news conference at 11:00 A.M. on Monday of next week in Bedminster, New Jersey.”
“Based on the results of this CONCLUSIVE report, all charges should be dropped against me and others – There will be a complete EXONERATION! They never went after those that rigged the election. They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!” he said.
The Georgia indictment marks the fourth occasion on which Mr Trump has been criminally charged in recent months and he is already scheduled to stand trial in three cases next year.
The indictment says Mr Trump lost the presidential election in November 2020 including in the state of Georgia but that he and other defendants refused to accept his defeat.
It alleges that they “knowingly and wilfully joined a conspiracy to change the outcome of the election in favour of Trump”.
“That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity in Fulton County Georgia, elsewhere in the state of Georgia and in other states.”
The indictment charges Mr Trump – who is by far the frontrunner to secure the Republican Party nomination to run again for the White House next year – with 13 felonies.
As well as Mr Giuliani and Mr Meadows, among those who were indicted by the grand jury in Atlanta were legal advisers John Eastman, Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis.
A senior Department of Justice official in Washington, Jeffrey Clark, who backed false claims of fraud and allegedly sought to get the department to intervene to challenge the vote in Georgia, was also indicted.
Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County in Georgia, who led the investigation that led to the grand jury indictment, said on Monday night that she would be seeking a trial date within the next six months.
Mr Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has accused Ms Willis, an elected Democrat, of being politically motivated.
The indictment laid out eight ways the defendants allegedly sought to obstruct the 2020 presidential election: by lying to the Georgia state legislature, lying to state officials, creating fake pro-Trump electors, harassing election workers, soliciting officials in the Department of Justice, soliciting vice-president Mike Pence, breaching voting machines and engaging in a cover-up.
It highlights just over 160 separate acts which prosecutors claimed were undertaken to support the alleged criminal conspiracy.
These include Mr Trump’s now infamous phone call to the secretary of state in Georgia, Brad Raffensnperger, in January 2021 in which he urged him to find just under 12,000 votes to allow him to overtake his rival Joe Biden.
Mr Giuliani’s claims to politicians in Georgia in December 2020 about election fraud are also included in the indictment.
