WASHINGTON — Though Donald Trump’s fourth indictment was brought in Georgia, efforts by the former president and his allies to convince Pennsylvania Republicans to reject the 2020 election results in the state figured prominently in the 97-page document.
Pennsylvania is mentioned 46 times in the 41-count indictment, named as one of the locations where the “criminal enterprise” was staged. The indictment said Mr. Trump and 18 others were responsible for “false statements and writings, impersonating a public officer, forgery, filing false documents, influencing witnesses, computer theft, computer invasion of privacy, conspiracy to defraud the state, acts involving theft, and perjury.”
Georgia is where Mr. Trump asked Secretary of State Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call to help "find 11,780 votes" and give the state’s electoral votes to him rather than Joe Biden, who had won the state.
The document released by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Monday also highlights efforts to overturn the results in Pennsylvania and the five other states previously cited in a four-count, 45-page federal indictment brought by special counsel Jack Smith earlier this month.
Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Peters, called it “another sad day for America” in a tweet, saying Ms. Willis and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. were “more concerned with amplifying their name than the facts.”
“Both made targeting President Trump the key to their campaigns, and both are weaponizing our justice system to advance their ambitions,” he said Tuesday.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Drew Findling, Jennifer Little and Marissa Goldberg, said in a statement: “This one-sided grand jury presentation relied on witnesses who harbor their own personal and political interests — some of whom ran campaigns touting their efforts against the accused and/or profited from book deals and employment opportunities as a result. We look forward to a detailed review of this indictment which is undoubtedly just as flawed and unconstitutional as this entire process has been.”
In a press conference Monday night, Ms. Willis brushed aside accusations that the investigation was politically motivated. She told reporters that her office handled the case in the same manner as 12,000 cases prosecuted during her tenure, including 10 previous Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act indictments.
”I make decisions in this office based on the facts and the law,” she said. “The law is completely nonpartisan.”
Ms. Willis said she’ll push for a trial to begin within six months.
Like the federal charges, the Georgia indictment mentions efforts by supporters of the former president to assemble a false slate of electors in the hope they could convince Vice President Mike Pence, presiding as president of the U.S. Senate, to accept those results rather than the state-certified electoral votes when Congress convened to ratify the election on Jan. 6, 2021.
It said that “members of the enterprise” made false statements in November and December 2020 to state legislators in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Michigan; and to other officials in those three states.
One of those indicted in Georgia, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, sent a text message to U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, R-York, Pa., in November 2020, asking him for the numbers of the Republican legislative leaders because Mr. Trump “wants to chat with them,” according to the indictment.
Mr. Perry, who was not one of those indicted in Georgia, later sent documents to the Justice Department in December 2020 alleging there were “more votes counted than voters who voted” in the state, according to emails released by the House Oversight Committee in August 2021.
The Georgia indictment provided more details about the effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to convince Pennsylvania Republicans to assemble a fake slate of electors who would vote for the former president, and mentioned Mr. Trump’s false claim that there were “205,000 more votes than voters” in Pennsylvania.
In “furtherance of the conspiracy,’’ two of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and lawyer Jenna Ellis, joined by the former president by telephone, “solicited, requested and importuned” a November 2020 meeting of Pennsylvania legislators in Gettysburg to name their own presidential electors even though Mr. Biden had won the state.
Mr. Trump then invited some state lawmakers to meet with him at the White House, where they discussed holding a special legislative session; Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Ellis followed up with calls on three successive days to then-House Speaker Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster, and Senate President Pro Tem Jacob Corman, R-Centre, urging them to appoint their own electors. Mr. Trump delivered the same message to Mr. Corman by phone and the following month met Mr. Cutler in the Oval Office.
Another one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Kenneth Chesebro, who also was indicted, then sent documents to the state Republican Party to be used by the fake electors in casting votes for Mr. Trump.
“These were overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy,” the indictment said.
And the day before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Mr. Trump called Mr. Pence and asked if the vice president had received a request from Pennsylvania legislators asking Congress to return the state-certified electoral votes that went for Mr. Biden. “You gotta be tough tomorrow,” Mr. Trump told his vice president, according to the indictment.
Jonathan D. Salant: jsalant@post-gazette.com, @JDSalant Benjamin Kail contributed.
First Published: August 15, 2023, 10:33 a.m.
Updated: August 15, 2023, 9:04 p.m.