In our law and justice lead.
A closer look now
at the 18 coconspirators
charged in this indictment
along with Donald Trump
in Fulton County, Georgia.
One of those
co-defendants is Mark
Meadows, the former president's
former White House chief of staff,
who was obviously in the room
for many of the pivotal events
surrounding election
subversion attempts in recent months.
Mark Meadows has kept a low profile,
but not low enough to fly under
the Georgia District Attorney's Radar.
In Donald Trump's previous
federal indictment
connected to the 2020 election.
Mark Meadows had managed to escape
any charges,
leading many to wonder
if the former White House
chief of staff
may have turned on his former boss.
I think one name that's obviously not in
the indictment is Mark
Meadows, who was kind of the ringleader
of all of this.
But Meadows
fate changed Monday night
when the grand jury in Fulton
County, Georgia,
charged him and 18 other defendants,
including the former president,
with racketeering
for their efforts to try to overturn
the 2020 election.
In the indictment,
prosecutors say the defendants, quote,
joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change
the outcome of the election.
In favor of Trump.
Beyond Trump himself, Meadows
is the highest ranking official
to be charged.
And the indictment outlines
the key role prosecutors
say Meadows played
to try to keep Trump in power.
Mr.
President, in the weeks
following Trump's
election loss, Meadows got involved,
according to the indictment,
on November 20th.
Meadows and Trump
met with Michigan legislators
in the White House,
where the former president
made false claims of election
fraud in that state.
The next day,
prosecutors say,
Meadows sent a text
to Pennsylvania Congressman Scott Perry
asking, quote,
Can you send me the number
for the speaker?
And the leader
of Pennsylvania legislature?
Produce wants to chat with them.
The following week, Meadows and Trump
met with Pennsylvania legislators
at the White House.
The same day, co-defendants
Rudy Giuliani
and Jenna Ellis
also traveled
to the Commonwealth and, quote,
solicited request ID
and important
to the Pennsylvania legislators
present at the meeting
to unlawfully appoint
presidential electors from Pennsylvania.
Meadows was also allegedly
deeply involved in the efforts
to overturn election results in Georgia.
According to the indictment,
on December 22nd,
Meadows
traveled to Cobb County, Georgia,
and attempted to watch an election audit
that was in progress
but not open to the public.
He was turned away.
Meadows
then arranged a phone call between Trump
and then chief investigator
for the Georgia Secretary of State,
Frances Watson.
The people of Georgia are so angry
at what happened in Illinois,
one won
by hundreds of thousands of votes
and women
lost when the right answer comes out,
you'll be outraged.
But perhaps the most notable,
if not the most damning, phone call.
Meadows arranged for President
Trump
was with Georgia
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger Mr.
President, everybody is on the line.
And just so
this is Mark Meadows, the chief of staff,
just so we all are aware
where Trump told Raffensperger
this so all I want to do is this.
I just want to find
11,780 votes,
which is one more that we have
because we won the State Meadows Roll.
And that phone call
earned him a second charge
for solicitation
of violation of oath by a public officer.
And CNN's Tom Foreman is here for us.
Now, Tom,
let's take a closer look
at some of Trump's other co-defendants
in this case.
Let's start with Rudy Giuliani.
Yeah, remember,
we've been talking about
here, Jake, over and over again
the idea of racketeering,
of a lot of people working together,
sometimes explicitly,
sometimes implicitly in that role.
Rudy Giuliani
in this indictment is presented
as something of a ringmaster
with his fingers in many different areas,
not just in the indictment.
But in our experience as well.
What is he
specifically charged with here?
That he made false
claims of election
fraud over and over again
and specifically made them before
members of Georgia's legislature
asking them to take steps to overturn it.
And he backed the idea of fake electors,
people who would go forward and say,
no, we're the real electors.
We're here
to give the electoral votes to Trump,
even though they lawfully
and rightfully belonged to Joe Biden.
Giuliani spoke about it
just this afternoon and listen
to what he had to say.
I woke
up this morning
more excited than I have and weeks.
He said, Why?
Because I got a fight on my hands
and a justifiable one.
We're going to
we're going to beat these fascists
into the ground.
Bull take there, Jake.
What about some of the other names
of individuals close to Donald Trump?
Some.
You will recognize Sidney Powell
being one of them,
another attorney that worked with him.
She is specifically tied to this notion
that was mentioned earlier on in the show
about the breach of election computers
that happened out in Coffee County
out there.
What happened?
Were there
some Trump supporters out there,
some people who came in out there
who allegedly broke into the system
to basically get
the sensitive protected data
because they were trying to prove
that something
was wrong with the voting machines?
Yeah, some locals were also charged, but
there is
email evidence, a chain that could link
Sidney Powell in the White House
to these people out there.
Again, speaking to that
idea of racketeering, Jake,
not just a few people going off the off
the grid here at the grassroots level,
but all the way up to the top.
And then we get down to
several people whom
probably very few
of our viewers would recognize.
And yet they've also been charged
along with the former president.
And tell us about them.
Well, one is a minister
from up around
Chicago he's charged with traveling
all the way down to Georgia
to put pressure
on election
workers to say,
I want you to admit there was fraud
even though there was no fraud.
And then there is a Treveon Curry,
who was once a publicist for R Kelly
and for a year.
Kanye West, you mentioned earlier.
Same sort of charge,
the idea of leaning on
and threatening
campaign workers
to admit to things
that simply did not happen.
All of which
speaks to the idea of all these people,
as we said, working in concert.
That's the basic point.