Trump, Eastman, and 17 Other Co-Conspirators Are Indicted in Georgia

                    The First Mug Shots from Fulton County, Including Trump and Eastman

Fani Willis, District Attorney for Fulton County Georgia, has filed her criminal indictment of Donald Trump, John Eastman, and 17 other co-conspirators for a conspiracy to illegally overturn the outcome of the Presidential election of November 3, 2020.  As compared with the other three indictments of Trump, this is the most sprawling and complicated indictment so far.  There are 19 people indicted and 30 unindicted co-conspirators.  There are 41 counts in the indictment.  And under the first count--violation of the Georgia RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act--there are 161 Acts of Racketeering Activity.  If convicted under the RICO Act, the defendants could be sentenced to 5-20 years in prison.

The general accusation is summarized in the Introduction:  "Defendant Donald Trump lost the United States presidential election held on November 3, 2020.  One of the states he lost was Georgia.  Trump and the other Defendants charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined in a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor 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."

So, while the Indictment concentrates on Georgia, it sketches a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome in seven states--including Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.  The most important claim centers on December 14, 2020.  On that day, the presidential electors certified by the state officers in those states met in the state capitals to cast their votes for Biden because Biden had been certified as the popular vote winner in those states.  The Trump conspirators had tried to persuade public officials in those states that the election had been fraudulent, and that Trump was the true winner.  When that failed, because they could not present any evidence of vote fraud, they turned to a scheme for having the Trump electors in those states meet on December 14 and certify themselves as the true presidential electors.  They were to send their forged documents of certification to the National Archives and to Vice-President Pence, so that on January 6, 2021, he could accept those Trump electors as the true electors for those seven states.

The Indictment shows how that was done in Georgia.  Three of the people indicted were fraudulent Georgia electors for Trump--David Shafer, Shawn Still, and Cathleen Latham.  This Indictment does not indicate whether this scheme was carried out in the other six states.  But the Indictment from Jack Smith filed two weeks ago indicates that the fraudulent electors in all seven states did meet on December 14 and sign their fraudulent documents certifying themselves as the true electors (in Shaw's Indictment, see paras. 53, 66-69).

As I indicated in my previous post on the Shaw Indictment, I am particularly interested in Eastman's role in all this, because he provided the intellectual rationale for overturning the election.  In Shaw's Indictment, Eastman is an unindicted co-conspirator.  Now, in this Georgia Indictment, Eastman has been indicted.

As I said in my other post, Eastman has a right of freedom of speech in arguing that the presidential election of 2020 was fraudulent, and that there are constitutional ways to overturn that fraudulent election and identify Trump as the true winner.  But there are only two legal means for doing this.  He could have persuaded public officials in the seven contested states or in the U.S. Congress that there was massive evidence of vote fraud.  He failed to do that.  Or he could have persuaded the courts (state and federal) that there was clear evidence for vote fraud.  He also failed to do that.  He failed in both cases because he didn't have the evidence.

Having failed in these two legal means for correcting the supposedly fraudulent vote outcomes in those seven states, he turned to the illegal scheme for having the Trump electors in those states fraudulently certify themselves as the true electors, even though state officials had already legally certified the Biden electors as the true electors.

Eastman is the Director of Claremont Institute's Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence.  He and the Claremont Institute need to explain how his illegal activity in attempting to overturn the presidential election conforms to the rule of law and American constitutional governance.