Trump and 18 allies charged in Fulton County grand jury indictment: Highlights

Former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows filed court documents today seeking to move the Fulton County case to federal court.

Meadows filed a notice of removal in U.S. District Court for Northern Georgia, arguing for immunity under the Constitution’s supremacy clause, which Meadows and lawyers said should prohibit “state interference in a federal official’s duties.”

"Here, it is unmistakably clear that the indictment charges Mr. Meadows with alleged state crimes based on acts he took as Chief of Staff to the President of the United States and in the course of his duties in the position," the 14-page filing said.

ABC News first reported the court filing.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who's running for the GOP presidential nomination, said today that the latest charges against Trump are an example of the "criminalization of politics."

In a virtual news conference with New England media outlets, DeSantis said the RICO statute used in the new indictment “was really designed to be able to go after organized crime, not necessarily to go after political activity. And so I think it’s an example of this criminalization of politics.”

DeSantis, who said he hadn't had a chance to read the entire 98-page filing, added that if he is elected president he would “lean in against some of these local prosecutors if they are not following the law or if they are abandoning their duty to enforce the law evenly.”

Last week, DeSantis suspended Orlando-area State Attorney Monique Worrell, a Democrat and the only Black woman serving as a local prosecutor in Florida. Last August, he suspended Tampa-area prosecutor Andrew Warren.

Trump co-defendant Mike Roman, a former White House official who worked for the Trump campaign in 2016 and 2020, played a major role in propagating a video that became a cause célèbre after the 2008 election of Barack Obama.

Two members of the extremist New Black Panther Party stood outside a polling place in north Philadelphia in 2008, one of them holding a baton. They were responding to the presence of white Republican poll watchers, and there were no voters in the majority Black neighborhood who claimed they were intimidated. The incident was over within a few minutes.

Roman, a native of Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, played a key role in promoting the video on his website.

The minuteslong incident nevertheless became a yearslong controversy for the Justice Department after its Civil Rights Division pushed forward a case under a rarely used federal statute. The conservative-controlled U.S. Commission on Civil Rights even launched an investigation into the Justice Department’s handling of the case. After Obama, the country’s first Black president, took office, far-right lawmakers repeatedly argued he and the first Black attorney general were covering up for the extremist organization.

Carlos De Oliveira, the Mar-a-Lago property manager charged in another case against Trump, involving the alleged mishandling of classified documents, pleaded not guilty today in federal court in Florida.

De Oliveira and his attorney, Donnie Murrell, entered the plea around 10 a.m. in the Fort Pierce courthouse. Murrell waived a formal reading of the federal indictment, which charged his client along with Trump and Trump aide Walt Nauta.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Shaniek Maynard wished De Oliveira “good luck.”

Read the full story here.

Harvey Silverglate, the lawyer for Fulton County defendant John Eastman, called yesterday's indictment "political" and said his client would challenge the charges "in any and all forums."

"Lawyers everywhere should be sleepless over this latest stunt to criminalize their advocacy," Silverglate said in a statement. "This is a legal cluster-bomb that leaves unexploded ordinances for lawyers to navigate in perpetuity."

In a Truth Social post today, Trump said none of the four indictments against him should go to trial until after the next presidential election, arguing that anything short of that would amount to election interference.

"All of these Biden Administration bogus trials and cases, including the locals, should be brought after the 2024 Presidential Election," Trump, the GOP front-runner, said on his social media platform.

The timing proposed by Trump would clash with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' desire to go to trial within the next six months.

Two of Trump's three other cases are already scheduled to start before the election. State Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the New York case involving hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, has set a trial date for March 25. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the classified documents case, set a trial start date of May 20. She rejected Trump's request to delay the trial until after the election.

The judge presiding over Trump's 2020 election case in Washington, D.C., is expected to set a trial date on Aug. 28. Special counsel Jack Smith is pushing for a Jan. 2, start date.

The presidential election is scheduled for Nov. 5, 2024.

The clerk's office at the Fulton County Courthouse today provided new details about a document posted to the court's website yesterday that indicated Trump had been indicted before the grand jury voted on the charges.

In a statement, the Office of the Fulton County Clerk of Superior and Magistrate Courts said a media outlet obtained a docket sheet through the "Fulton County Press" queue and then shared the "sample working document" with other news organizations.

"Upon learning of the mishap, Fulton County Clerk of Superior and Magistrate Courts, Che Alexander, immediately removed the document and issued correspondence notifying the media that a fictitious document was in circulation and that no indictment had been returned by the Grand Jury," the clerk's office said in today's statement.

Reuters reported yesterday that a docket indicating Trump had been charged appeared on the court website shortly after noon. The document was quickly removed, Reuters reported, and the news agency changed its reporting to say Georgia was “set to charge” Trump. The county clerk’s office said in a statement yesterday that a “fictitious document that has been circulated online.”

The charges in the "fictitious document" were the same as the ones listed in official indictment later in the day.

When he was working as a federal prosecutor in New York in the 1980s, Rudy Giuliani was hailed for his innovative use of racketeering laws against the mob.

Now he faces a similar charge — a violation of Georgia’s RICO (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act — for allegedly taking part in a conspiracy with Trump and others in a bid to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

The law is a favorite tool of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who brought the case against Trump and Giuliani.

Read the full story here.