Good evening everyone, and welcome back to our special breaking news coverage, im laura coates on this a stunning night in american history. As the 45th u. S. President s criminally indicted now for the fourth time. Donald trump now accused of leading a criminal enterprise to overturn the 2020 election in georgia. Im kaitlan collins, its not just trump. 18 others have been charged alongside him in this 41 count indictment tonight, including his former Chief Of Staff, mark meadows. His former attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and the onetime mayor of new york. All 19 defendants are facing racketeering charges. I mean, the indictment states all, quote, refused to accept that trump lost and they knowingly, and willfully, joined the conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of trump. Joining me now here in d. C. Is cnns evan perez, also the washington correspondent of the atlanta journalconstitution, tea mitchell and is back as well. Tour former house judiciary special co
Large interest most significant federal indictment of donald trump ever. This is in a way that well document more significantly than the legal headaches he already has. This will be tonight the first time any former president has been indicted by the Justice Department for trying to steal an election. Now, i mentioned, if you have been walking our breaking coverage, we have been going through what is a voluminous filing. Jack smith found six other coconspirators that are named in the filing. It alleges that trump spread lies, that there had been outcome determinant fraud, fraud that would have swung the election back to him, and these claims were false. And trump knew they were false. Ill put on the screen what were watching for. Want to share what were learning. S this a day we have been trying to hew closely to what we know and dont know. In the last several moments, the most heads up youll get from an agency that jack smith will approach the podium you see here. Some of the local Be
as investigators worked to piece together a motive. ramos s aunt shelby telling me she s in disbelief. my heart hurts for everyone right now. do you have any idea why he flipped. people go through things and nobody understands. everybody has, i don t know what was going on. reporter: while he had no known criminal history or record of mental health illness, a series of private messages posted on facebook give a chilling warning. the third post, less than 15 minutes before arriving at the school was i m going to shoot an elementary school. across texas, emotions running high. former congressman beto o rourke running for governor in texas disrupting his opponent greg abbott s news conference on wednesday saying another shooting would happen without real reform. you re doing nothing. no. he needs to get his sir, you re out of line. reporter: as so many others struggle to make sense of yet another mass shooting. this morning the painful images are continuing t
avoid the legalists tick language and read the meat of each paragraph, it tells you the story and it includes all of these details. he was noting just how many different acts there are. you worked on the january six congressional committee, just knowing what you didn t have access to, people like mark meadows who fought cooperating, and working with your committee, when you read through this, what stands out to you not just from coffee county about everything? i think what stands out is the tools that we had at our disposal. one thing that we didn t have was the power to charge. i think that here you look at the extensive number of descendants, these are folks who are presumably either chose not to cooperate, or were asked that s one thing we didn t have interest to gauge. and the second thing is time. we are under the gun with our select committee, we had the
this is one just one of the many lies that, as david pointed out, this is sort of a masterpiece in terms of a narrative. and yet it s also it s a tragedy in terms of what it tells us country that this is talking about allegations just to be clear, it still has to be proved, but allegations against the former president, of repeated lies, even where it could lead to violence against his own vice president, such that i mean, it s just remarkable that you have mark meadows who there s a reason i think he is not one of the coconspirators when you look at this. it suggests to me he definitely cooperated, because when you read just that paragraph, to me it a reads like that s where they got some of that information. you ve gotten people to