It also charges Trump with making false statements and writings for a series of claims he made to Raffensperger and other state election officials, including that up to 300,000 ballots “were dropped mysteriously into the rolls” in the 2020 election, that more than 4,500 people voted who weren’t on registration lists and that a Fulton County election worker, Ruby Freeman, was a “professional vote scammer.”
Giuliani, meanwhile, is charged with making false statements for allegedly lying to lawmakers by claiming that more than 96,000 mail-in ballots were counted in Georgia despite there being no record of them having been returned to a county elections office, and that a voting machine in Michigan wrongly recorded 6,000 votes for Biden that were actually cast for Trump.
In a statement, Giuliani did not respond directly to any of the allegations but called the indictment an “affront to American democracy” and “just the next chapter in a book of lies.”
Also charged are individuals prosecutors say helped Trump and his allies on the ground in Georgia influence and intimidate election workers.
One man, Stephen Cliffgard Lee, was charged by prosecutors for allegedly traveling to Freeman’s home “with intent to influence her testimony.” Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss testified to Congress last year about how Trump and his allies latched onto surveillance footage from November 2020 to accuse both women of committing voter fraud — allegations that were quickly debunked, yet spread widely across conservative media.
Both women, who are Black, faced death threats for several months after the election.
The indictment also accuses Powell and several co-defendants of tampering with voting machines in Coffee County, Georgia, and stealing data belonging to Dominion Voting Systems, a producer of tabulation machines that has long been the focus of conspiracy theories.
According to evidence made public by the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot, Trump allies targeted Coffee County in search of evidence to back their theories of widespread voter fraud, allegedly copying data and software.
Besides the two election-related cases, Trump faces a separate federal indictment accusing him of illegally hoarding classified documents as well as a New York state case charging him with falsifying business records.
As indictments mount, Trump — the leading Republican candidate for president in 2024 — often invokes his distinction as the only former president to face criminal charges. He is campaigning and fundraising around these themes, portraying himself as the victim of Democratic prosecutors out to get him.
Republican allies once again quickly rallied to Trump’s defense. “Americans see through this desperate sham,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
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Associated Press writers Jeffrey Martin, Brynn Anderson, Bill Barrow, Jeff Amy in Atlanta; Jill Colvin and Michael R. Sisak in New York; Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia; Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston; Farnoush Amiri in Washington; Christine Fernando in Chicago; Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho; Denise Lavoie in Richmond, Virginia; and Lea Skene in Baltimore contributed to this report.
