redstate.com
After a 97-page, 41-count true bill of indictment was returned by a Fulton County, GA grand jury Monday night, charging Donald Trump and 18 of his associates with felonies, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis held a press conference starting at 11:35 PM Eastern time to trumpet the charges.
Willis said that each defendant was charged with one count of violating Georgia’s RICO law, describing Trump’s election integrity team as a “criminal enterprise” intent on helping Trump “seize” the White House on January 20, 2021.
BREAKING: DA Fani Willis says the 19 “defendants engaged in a criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia’s presidential election result.”
Willis said the defendants have “the opportunity to voluntarily surrender” by noon on Aug. 25.https://t.co/M2qhDb2wKj pic.twitter.com/MxSp8mAqOu
â ABC News (@ABC)Â August 15, 2023
She also said that while the judge sets the timetable for the case to proceed through the system, but that her office would be preparing a proposed scheduling order this week and they will be calling for a trial within six months. Willis intends to try all 19 defendants together, she stated, and didn’t elaborate on how that would be possible with 19 sets of attorneys who will all have different discovery issues and likely competing defenses to charges (which makes it impossible to try the co-defendants together), not to mention how long a trial would last when you have 19 sets of attorneys who can cross-examine every prosecution witness. A judge cannot order one attorney to ask questions for all of the defendants as a block, because that violates their constitutional rights…
