Tag: Georgia

Georgia court charges Donald Trump with trying to illegally overturn 2020 election

Trump is already defending several other cases – just a year before he hopes to reclaim the presidency.

Pic: AP

A court in Georgia has charged Donald Trump with trying to illegally overturn the 2020 election.

Among the charges is ‘solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer’ in other words trying to persuade someone to betray their office.

It is the fourth set of charges against the former president.

Prosecutors brought 13 counts against Trump and his associates, including forgery and racketeering, which is most often used to target members of organised crime groups.

Ten other people have been charged including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Trump’s former lawyer and ex New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, another of Trump’s ex lawyers.

The court in Atlanta sat beyond usual working hours as a grand jury decided whether or not to charge the former president.

Trump narrowly lost to Joe Biden in Georgia and his lawyers, including former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, made false claims of election fraud.

Audio of a call by Trump to Georgia’s secretary of state also emerged in January 2021 in which he suggested election officials could “find” the votes he needed to win.

Trump is already defending several other cases – just a year before he hopes to reclaim the presidency.

The most serious concern allegations he plotted to overturn his election loss, laying the ground for the infamous US Capitol riots.

He denies the claims and says they are politically motivated.

In a statement, the Trump campaign said: “They could have brought this two and a half years ago, yet they chose todo this for election interference reasons in the middle of President Trump’s successful campaign.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/georgia-court-investigating-donald-trump-over-2020-election-delivers-10-indictments-12940272

Why Georgia’s case against Trump could be so damaging

Former President Trump on Aug. 5 in Columbia, S.C. Photo: Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images

A legal tool normally reserved for the Mafia and organized crime could make former President Trump’s next potential indictment his most damaging.

Why it matters: Georgia’s expansive racketeering law — known as RICO — gives prosecutors a powerful tool to pursue charges in their investigation into Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

What’s happening: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who has kept her plans quiet, says a charging decision could come by Sept. 1.

Willis is expected to present her case to a grand jury early this week. Two potential witnesses, including a former Georgia lieutenant governor, said they were asked to appear on Tuesday.

State of play: Willis will likely invoke RICO when she presents her case to the grand jury, legal experts say.

  • The law — inspired by federal statutes with the same name — allows prosecutors to string together crimes committed by different people toward one common goal.
  • The DA’s investigation has spanned two years and has involved testimony from dozens of witnesses.

The big picture: If charges are brought, they’d represent the fourth indictment against the 2024 GOP frontrunner since April.

  • Trump has now pleaded not guilty to state charges in a hush-money case, federal charges in a classified documents case and federal charges in an election conspiracy case.

Zoom in: Experts point to several reasons why the potential Georgia charges could be more likely than the other cases to be damaging for Trump:

1. The complexity of RICO cases makes it difficult for lawyers to implement a coherent trial strategy, explained Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University.

  • The stiff penalties associated with RICO charges are also a major incentive for co-defendants to seek deals in return for new evidence.
  • “The defendants who are left standing without plea deals and grants of immunity may especially feel squeezed as the process goes on,” Kreis said.
  • Some Trump allies and supporters have already been informed by the DA’s office that they are targets of the investigation, including Rudy Giuliani and the GOP electors who falsely “certified” Trump as Georgia’s 2020 victor.

Source : https://www.axios.com/2023/08/14/trump-georgia-rico-charges-fani-willis

 

Anti-LGBT mob storms pride event in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi

A pride festival in Georgia was broken up by a mob of protesters who stormed past police, destroyed rainbow flags and lit fires.

A mob of up 2,000 anti-LGBT+ protesters stormed a pride event in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on Saturday, setting fires, scuffling with police and destroying rainbow flags.

The pride festival had to be cancelled as participants were evacuated to safety.

About 5,000 protesters marched towards the lakeside park where the event was held, according to Georgian media. Many of them waved Georgian flags and carried religious icons.

LGBT+ rights are protected by law in Georgia, but many people face widespread discrimination in the socially conservative, predominantly Orthodox Christian country.

Georgia’s deputy interior minister Aleksandre Darakhvelidze said police tried to stop the demonstrators but could not hold them all back.

But event organisers accused the authorities of colluding with the demonstrators to disrupt the festival.

Mariam Kvaratskhelia told the Reuters news agency that far-right groups had publicly incited violence against LGBT+ activists in the days leading up to the pride festival and said the police and government had not investigated.

“I definitely think this [disruption] was a pre-planned, coordinated action between the government and the radical groups,” she said.

“We think this operation was planned in order to sabotage the EU candidacy of Georgia.”

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/anti-lgbt-mob-storms-pride-event-in-georgias-capital-tbilisi-12917581

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