15 August 2023 , 07:41
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Hillary Clinton admitted it was a "terrible moment" for the US last night after former president Donald Trump was slapped with another ten charges over his bid to overturn the 2020 election.
The former Secretary of State was making a guest appearance on MSNBC when the Fulton County district attorney's office unveiled a lengthy set of charges against Donald Trump, along with some of his compatriots.
The grand jury was investigating the efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state where Joe Biden narrowly beat Donald Trump.
Mrs Clinton, who famously lost to Donald Trump during the 2016 election, labelled the charges a "profound sadness that we have a former president who has been indicted for so many charges that went right to the heart of whether or not our democracy would survive."
The former Secretary of State was talking on MSNBC when the news broke out (MSNBC)
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"He set out to defraud the United States of America and the citizens of our nation," she said.
Mrs Clinton added she would "wait to see what the indictments themselves say," but "I don't know that anybody should be satisfied. This is a terrible moment for our country to have a former president accused of these terribly important crimes. The only satisfaction may be that the system is working."
The nearly 100-page indictment details dozens of acts by Mr Trump or his allies to undo his defeat, including beseeching Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to find enough votes for him to win the battleground state; harassing a state election worker who faced false claims of fraud; and attempting to persuade Georgia lawmakers to ignore the will of voters and appoint a new slate of electoral college electors favourable to Trump.
“The indictment alleges that rather than abide by Georgia’s legal process for election challenges, the defendants engaged in a criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia’s presidential election result,” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, whose office brought the case, said at a late-night news conference.
Other defendants include former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows; Mr Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani; and a Trump administration Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, who advanced the then-president’s efforts to undo his election loss in Georgia. Multiple other lawyers who devised legally dubious ideas aimed at overturning the results, including John Eastman, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, were also charged.
"He set out to defraud the United States of America and the citizens of our nation," she said (Getty Images)Mr Willis said the defendants would be allowed to surrender by noon August 25 voluntarily. She also said she plans to ask for a trial date within six months and that she intends to try the defendants as a group.
The indictment bookends a remarkable crush of criminal cases — four in five months, each in a different city — that would be daunting for anyone, never mind someone like Trump who is simultaneously balancing the roles of criminal defendant and presidential candidate.
It comes just two weeks after the Justice Department special counsel charged him in a vast conspiracy to overturn the election, underscoring how prosecutors after lengthy investigations that followed the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol have now, two-and-a-half years later, taken steps to hold Trump to account for an assault on the underpinnings of American democracy.
Mr Tump hit back at the charges and claimed he did not tamper with the election and that he would "be happy" to talk to the grand jury that has been meeting this week in Fulton County.
"Would someone tell the Fulton County grand jury that I did not tamper with the election," he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
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