Former President Donald Trump is accused yet again of attempting to fraudulently change the 2020 election results in order to retain power. However, for the first time, some of Trump’s closest associates and advisers are facing criminal charges for their roles in the alleged plan.
Trump is the principal defendant in a parallel case in Georgia now, charged with racketeering and other offenses, with aides, associates, and others identified below. Donald Trump was already accused by a federal grand jury in Washington of orchestrating a scheme to overturn the election.
Six lesser-known individuals, including some Georgia officials, are not listed because they have been charged with other crimes ranging from lying to conspiracy to commit computer theft in addition to racketeering.
Who are the Trump allies indicted in the Georgia election scheme?
1. Mark Meadows
Mark Meadows, who rose from being one of Trump’s top Republican allies in the House of Representatives to be his White House chief of staff, attended White House discussions pertaining to Trump’s election setback.
According to the indictment, he helped fuel the conspiracy by making false comments about the election and collaborated with Donald Trump to devise a strategy to disrupt and delay the congressional certification of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021.
It further claims he attempted to urge Frances Watson, a chief investigator in the Georgia secretary of state’s office, to expedite the Fulton County signature verification, and that he participated in a phone call in which Trump pushed Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to reverse his narrow loss in the state. Raffensperger declined to do so. An attorney for Meadows did not respond to a request for comment.
2. Rudy Giuliani
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, was a significant public figure in the Trump campaign’s efforts to promote false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. The former New York City mayor was involved in court-rejected litigation and falsely claimed in testimony at local hearings in Georgia that he had evidence demonstrating election fraud.
According to the indictment, he made many false representations regarding election fraud, including to authorities in other states such as Arizona and Pennsylvania, in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade them to adopt an alternative slate of electors to keep Trump in power. He and other Trump supporters are also accused of lying to Georgia lawmakers about the election, including claims about vote counting errors by Dominion voting machines. Giuliani’s attorney declined to comment.
3. John Eastman
Attorney John Eastman defended Trump in a long-shot lawsuit seeking to reverse voting results in four states Trump defeated in 2020. He has been investigated by both the US Special Counsel’s Office and state prosecutors in Georgia for penning a series of legal memos claiming that former Vice President Mike Pence could reject electors from certain states in order to deny Democrat Joe Biden a majority of Electoral College votes. The prosecution in Georgia claims he was involved in a scheme to designate phony electors.
Eastman’s legal representation stated that he will challenge the indictment “in any and all forums available to him,” and that the prosecution was an attempt to criminalize valid political expression.
4. Jeffrey Clark
Jeffrey Clark is a retired Justice Department employee. Clark attempted to persuade Trump in the last days of the Trump administration to remove Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen so that he could take over the department and aid follow Trump’s phony allegations by initiating an inquiry into voter fraud in Georgia and other swing states. Clark appears to be named as a co-conspirator in Smith’s federal indictment of Trump. Clark’s efforts to encourage Rosen to submit a letter to Georgia falsely stating the Justice Department had discovered voting irregularities are mentioned in Monday’s indictment.
Clark’s employer, the Center for Renewing America, said in a statement that Clark “was simply doing his job in 2020, and he doesn’t deserve to be subjected to this naked political lawfare.”
5. Sidney Powell
Attorney Sidney Powell was a driving force behind the promotion of bogus fraud claims following the 2020 U.S. election. She was part of a team that filed unsuccessful lawsuits to change election results, and one of those cases was sanctioned by a Michigan judge. After the election, she became Trump’s fraud adviser. In Coffee County, Georgia, she is accused of interfering with electronic ballot markers and tabulators, computer theft, and unlawfully possessing ballots, according to the indictment. She could not be reached for comment right away.
6. Kenneth Chesebro
Kenneth Chesebro, a Donald Trump campaign attorney, is accused in the indictment of assisting in the development of a scheme for Trump to submit bogus slates of electors in order to obstruct U.S. congressional certification of election results. The indictment alleges he wrote a memo that provided instructions for how alternate slates of electors in states including Georgia should proceed to meet and cast votes for Trump. An attorney for Chesebro did not respond to a request for comment.
7. Jenna Ellis
Jenna Ellis, an attorney, was a member of the Donald Trump campaign’s legal team, which falsely claimed rampant voter fraud in 2020. According to the indictment, Ellis was involved in an effort to get fraudulent electors nominated by state legislatures in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. According to the court documents, she produced legal memos for Trump outlining how Pence may delay the certification of Biden’s election victory on January 6, 2021. Ellis agreed to be censured by a Colorado court in March after confessing to false statements regarding voter fraud. In a Tuesday social media post, Ellis accused the Fulton County district attorney of “criminalizing the practice of law.”
8. David Shafer
According to the indictment, David Shafer, the former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, was instrumental in arranging and carrying out the plot to submit an alternate slate of electors. Shafer is one of the individuals accused of shipping a forged certificate of the so-called Trump electors to a federal courthouse, as well as other crimes related to the phony elector plan. He is also accused of providing misleading information to Fulton County detectives.
In a statement, lawyers for Shafer said their client is “totally innocent” of the charges. “His conduct regarding the 2020 presidential election was lawful, appropriate, and specifically authorized by the U.S. Constitution,” they added.
9. Michael Roman
Michael Roman, who worked for Trump’s 2020 campaign, is accused of being involved in the false elector plan. According to the indictment, he communicated with individuals organizing a conference of phony Trump electors in Georgia. He could not be reached for comment right away.
10. Trevian Kutti,
According to Reuters, Trevian Kutti, a publicist, flew to Georgia days before the violence on January 6, 2021, and showed up uninvited at the door of Ruby Freeman, an election worker in Georgia’s Fulton County. Kutti told Freeman she had been sent by a “high-profile individual,” whom she did not identify, to convey a message: Freeman was in unspecified danger “due to the election,” and had only 48 hours to “get ahead of the issue” before unknown people showed up at her home.
Kutti denied forcing Freeman to falsely plead fraud in an Instagram post after the piece was published.
11. Harrison Floyd
Reuters stated in a follow-up article that Trump campaign staffer Harrison Floyd, executive director of a group called Black Voices for Donald Trump, had hired Kutti to meet with Freeman. Floyd stated that he next participated by phone in a meeting Kutti had with Freeman at a police station in Cobb County, Georgia.
Floyd told Reuters that he was approached by a man he characterized as a chaplain with “connections” in federal law enforcement and asked whether he would be willing to arrange the meeting. He refused to identify the cleric or discuss his affiliations. Floyd stated that he organized the meeting to assist Freeman.
12. Stephen Lee
Reuters identified Stephen Lee, an Illinois-based former police officer, as the individual who sought Floyd’s assistance with Freeman in September 2022, based on police bodycam footage and other information. According to Reuters, Lee visited Freeman’s home in December 2020 but was turned away by the terrified election worker. Lee did not deny visiting Freeman in a brief interview at his home in Montgomery, Illinois, but he refused to discuss why or whether he was sent.
Sarah N. Lynch and Jacqueline Thomsen contributed reporting, as did Jack Queen in New York and Kanishka Singh in Washington. Editing was done by Ross Colvin, Howard Goller, and Daniel Wallis.