Donald Trump's attorneys are attempting a last-minute push to block an Atlanta-area investigation into whether the former President and his allies broke the law when they sought to overturn Trump's 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. And now we know why.
Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has developed evidence to charge the twice-indicted former President with a sprawling racketeering indictment next month.
The Guardian reports:
In the Trump investigation, the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, has evidence to pursue a racketeering indictment predicated on statutes related to influencing witnesses and computer trespass, the people said.
Willis had previously said she was weighing racketeering charges in her criminal investigation, but the new details about the direction and scope of the case come as prosecutors are expected to seek indictments starting in the first two weeks of August.
It sure sounds like Trump has a pattern with this sort of behavior.
The racketeering statute in Georgia requires prosecutors to show the existence of an "enterprise" – and a pattern of racketeering activity that is predicated on at least two "qualifying" crimes.
As for evidence, it's on audio. We all heard it. But there's more than that.
The specific evidence was not clear, though the charge regarding influencing witnesses could include Trump's conversations with Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which he asked Raffensperger to "find" 11,780 votes, the people said – and thereby implicate Trump.
For the computer trespass charge, where prosecutors would have to show that defendants used a computer or network without authority to interfere with a program or data, that would include the breach of voting machines in Coffee County, the two people said.
The breach of voting machines involved a group of Trump operatives – paid by the then Trump lawyer Sidney Powell – accessing the voting machines at the county’s election office and copying sensitive voting system data.
The copied data from the Dominion Voting Systems machines, which are used statewide in Georgia, was then uploaded to a password-protected site from where election deniers could download the materials as part of a misguided effort to prove the 2020 election had been rigged.
There was an attempt to rig the election. Trump tried to steal Joe Biden's victory. It sounds like Fani Willis is stopping the steal.
