Counts against mr. Trump, handed up last night by a grand jury after a 2 1 2 year investigation conducted by District Attorney willis in georgia. Willis writes, quote, defendant donald trump lost the election. One of the states he lost was georgia. Trump and the other defendants charged in this Indictment Refuse to accept that trump lost. They knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of trump. Among those codefendants, some of the most wellknown people in the former president s orbit during his final days in office. Including his white house chief of staff, mark meadows, personal attorney and former new york city mayor, rudy giuliani, jeffrey clark, who tried to assert significant election concerns had been identified, and a string of lawyers, including john eastman, Sidney Powell and speaking to the press just before midnight, she rejected trumps accusation on social media that she was persecuting him for political reasons.
win. at least a significant number of republicans, led by the popular governor, believe his claims are totally bunk. in the short-term, that s not going to stop donald trump from running the playbook we have seen after the last couple of indictments. you will see posts on truth social and a lot of emails and texts to his supporters urging them to donate money. we saw it from marjorie taylor greene, one of donald trump s biggest surrogates here, saying now is the time to back him up, basically, with cash. running a presidential campaign amid four criminal cases with other people who you are helping pay for it is very expensive. all the money that donald trump has been raising around the indictments it s been millions of dollars they are burning through it at a rapid clip. it s only going to accelerate as the cases accelerate. the fund-raising effort between now and when he shows up in georgia to be arraigned is probably priority number one in trump world. have we seen the money is
this indictment. we got a statement from kenneth chesebro. saying that he was asked by the trump campaign to provide advice on issues related to constitutional and election law. each of the alleged overt acts that are attributed to mr. chesbro relate to his work as an attorney. that s the main part of that statement. i suspect that s going to be something that we repeatedly hear as we get more statements from the people who were also listed in the indictment. laura, let s talk about the size, the scope of this indictment. i think that was a surprise we are talking about 19 different people. i did a quick check. at least nine are lawyers. as i m reading through, i m thinking, this isn t bread crumbs. there are emails, text messages,
phone messages, phone calls, public statements, public press conferences. risk versus strength. when you look at that idea that nine lawyers at least were involved in all of this, according to the indictment, what are the risks in the size of this? what are the strengths of this indictment? they certainly the prosecutors will argue they should have known better if they were lawyers. it appears at least in some of the communications, they did know better. john eastman says, the president is aware that these numbers are false, and yet he signed a certification, according to this indictment, anyway to the effect about voters in atlanta that was incorrect. they have signalled trump s legal team, that they will make this advice of counsel defense. that s a risky move considering it opens up pandora s box into discovery into communication back and forth. you might get more communication