ATLANTA—Former President Donald Trump, along with 18 co-defendants, found themselves in the crosshairs of a grand jury indictment issued in Fulton County, Georgia, on a Monday evening, underscoring their involvement in contesting the 2020 election outcomes within the state.

A sprawling 98-page indictment (accessible in PDF format) has levied a multitude of 13 charges against President Trump. These include alleged transgressions such as contravening the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act at the state level, purportedly inciting the breach of a public officer’s oath, being implicated in a conspiracy to orchestrate first-degree forgery, and allegedly collaborating in a scheme to propagate falsified documents.

Closely standing beside the former president, an assembly of 18 additional defendants has been ensnared within this legal web, unified by their common connection to charges rooted in the RICO Act. Notably, this case spans an extensive 41 charges across the defendants.

The linchpin of these allegations stems from assertions that these accused individuals swerved away from established legal avenues for contesting an election within the confines of Georgia. Instead, they are alleged to have masterminded a criminal apparatus aimed at subverting the outcome of the state’s presidential election—a pivotal moment in the nation’s history.

In a concise press briefing late on Monday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis expounded upon the indictment’s claims. She underscored the allegation that the collective of 19 defendants, which includes prominent figures like former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former legal representatives Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and Sidney Powell, embarked upon a concerted mission. Their purported objective, according to the indictment, was to engineer a situation that would have enabled President Trump to assert his claim to the presidential office, beginning on January 20, 2021.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis holds a press conference in the Fulton County Government Center after a grand jury voted to indict former President Donald Trump and 18 others in Atlanta, Ga., on Aug. 14, 2023.

The district attorney emphasized her intention to try all 19 defendants as a cohesive unit. While the grand jury issued arrest warrants for the accused, Ms. Willis announced that she would permit the defendants to voluntarily surrender by noon on Friday, August 25.

President Trump’s response to this legal development was captured in a video posted on his campaign’s website shortly after the indictment’s unsealing. He conveyed, “Justice and the rule of law are officially dead in America.”

He further contended, “This marks the fourth act of election interference by Crooked Joe Biden and the communist Democrats who are absolutely destroying our country.”

Accompanying this, President Trump’s campaign issued an extensive statement, alleging that the latest criminal charges were an outcome of a politically-motivated offensive launched by Ms. Willis. The statement characterized her as a “Democrat activist” who had backed a Democratic rival against a Republican being investigated in connection to the 2020 election inquiry. A judge subsequently ruled this to be a conflict of interest.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney receives documents from the county court clerk on August 14, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia.

The campaign asserted that Ms. Willis had “boasted to left-wing media outlets about her endeavors to take down Trump” and had sourced a considerable majority of her campaign funds by promoting her election investigation on social media. In the campaign’s estimation, the district attorney’s investigation had been “tainted by unethical behavior and political prejudice.”

The indictment itself outlines a narrative that posits the defendants as participants in an alleged conspiracy “to unlawfully alter the election outcome in favor of Trump.” The indictment also suggests that this conspiracy stretched beyond Georgia’s borders, encompassing other states like Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, where the post-election challenges are alleged to have played out.

The prosecution from Georgia asserts that these post-election challenges coalesced into “a criminal organization,” with the accused parties engaging in acts including fabricating falsehoods, impersonating public officials, committing forgery, engaging in computer-related crimes, conspiring to defraud the state, perjury, and influencing witnesses.

The indictment outlines a sequence of 161 such alleged acts that were undertaken to advance this purported conspiracy.

Concurrently, a roster of unindicted co-conspirators is enumerated within the indictment, suggesting that more charges could potentially follow in the future.

Beyond President Trump, the indictment targets a broad array of figures, including Mr. Meadows, Mr. Giuliani, Ms. Ellis, Ms. Powell, attorneys John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, Ray Smith III, and Robert Cheeley, former DOJ attorney Jeffrey Clark, GOP strategist Michael Roman, Georgia’s alternate electors Shawn Still, Cathleen Latham, and David Shafer, and Illinois pastor Stephen Lee, among others.

Former President Donald Trump at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Aug. 13, 2023.

The document with the charges mirrors a list that had been previously reported by Reuters earlier in the day. However, the Fulton County Superior Court clerk’s office later clarified that a “fictitious document” had circulated online.

Over the past two and a half years, Ms. Willis has been investigating allegations of criminal interference by President Trump and his allies in Georgia’s election results. President Trump has consistently challenged the election outcomes, particularly in Georgia, since the conclusion of the 2020 election. Reports of a phone call between President Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2, 2021, further fueled interest in investigating these claims.

As this legal saga unfolds, many remain skeptical of the outcomes, and independent citizen groups are continuing their scrutiny of voting records across multiple states, including Georgia. Despite court challenges, some unresolved concerns persist surrounding Georgia’s 2020 election.