The district lawyer in Fulton County, Ga., Fani T. Willis, started investigating former President Donald J. Trump 21 months earlier than Jack Smith was appointed particular counsel — however they each secured indictments, masking a lot of the identical floor, in a single two-week span.
The Fulton County indictment represents a single chapter within the four-count indictment introduced by Mr. Smith: the previous president’s try to strong-arm Georgia into his win column.
However the Atlanta case, due to its use of the state’s expansive anti-racketeering legislation, extends far past Georgia’s borders to embody Mr. Trump’s broader effort throughout the nation to cling to energy — creating a unprecedented parallel-track prosecution of a number one political determine not like something within the nation’s historical past.
In a densely packed 98 pages, Ms. Willis makes the case that Georgia was not merely the location of Mr. Trump’s prison acts, but additionally the hub of a Trump-orchestrated nationwide conspiracy, abetted by the identical folks implicated by Mr. Smith’s staff as complicit within the effort to overturn the 2020 election. 5 of the six unindicted co-conspirators who have been doubtless included within the federal indictment — Rudolph W. Giuliani, Kenneth Chesebro, John Eastman, Sidney Powell and Jeffrey Clark — have been named within the indictment by Ms. Willis on Monday.
Ms. Willis and Mr. Smith, who’ve interviewed most of the similar witnesses and reviewed a lot of the identical proof, converged on the identical conclusion from totally different instructions — that Mr. Trump and his allies “knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election,” Fulton County prosecutors wrote in summing up the fees.
Mr. Smith’s staff described an identical conspiracy, one which he stated was “fueled by lies.”
There is no such thing as a highway map for indicting a former president, a lot much less concurrently prosecuting one for comparable crimes in two jurisdictions. Prosecutors, particularly these working for the Justice Division, usually search to keep away from concurrent instances to stop discrepancies, small or vital, in witness testimony that may be exploited by the protection.
How this can work out stays unclear. Mr. Smith, who was appointed particular counsel in November, has a extra streamlined case, and is pushing laborious for a speedy trial beginning in early January. Ms. Willis, talking to reporters late Monday, stated she had no “desire to be first or last.” However she additionally instructed her staff would request a trial date “within six months,” which might be by February 2024, despite the fact that folks concerned within the case have stated such a brief timetable appears extremely unlikely.
The federal indictment treats Georgia as one in all a number of states the place unlawful conduct occurred main as much as the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, however each indictments span a broad number of actions. These embody Mr. Trump’s unrelenting effort to strain Vice President Mike Pence into blocking official certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory, whilst Trump loyalists rampaged by the halls of Congress.
One of many extra shocking developments revealed on Monday was how far Ms. Willis’s investigators roved past state borders. A lot of the prison acts outlined within the indictment occurred in state, she informed reporters after it was unsealed, however “some occurred in other jurisdictions, and are included because the grand jury believes they were part of the illegal effort to overturn the results of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.”
The state is talked about no fewer than 48 instances within the 45-page federal indictment, and most of the most vital incidents and actions investigated by Ms. Willis and her prosecutors have been additionally cited by Mr. Smith and his staff.
They embody: the notorious Jan. 2, 2021, cellphone dialog throughout which Mr. Trump requested Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad J. Raffensperger, to “find” the 11,780 votes wanted to place him excessive; his insistence on repeating fabricated claims that hundreds of lifeless folks and out-of-state residents had been allowed to vote for Mr. Biden — despite the fact that Mr. Raffensperger and others repeatedly offered proof that it was unfaithful; Mr. Giuliani’s false accusation that election employees in Atlanta logged fraudulent vote totals; and the dissemination by Mr. Trump’s authorized adviser, Ms. Powell, of debunked conspiracy theories, together with the fictional declare that Mr. Biden’s supporters manipulated digital voting machines.
The 2 instances, nevertheless, have vital variations. The obvious is the indictment of Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former chief of workers, in Georgia. A central determine within the occasions main as much as the assault on the Capitol, Mr. Meadows is conspicuously absent from the federal indictment as both a witness or defendant.
One other doubtlessly stark distinction: Whereas Mr. Smith imposed lenient bond situations for Mr. Trump in Washington, and for the previous president and his two co-defendants within the case involving his retention of nationwide safety secrets and techniques, Fulton County officers have instructed they’ll course of these charged as typical prison defendants, requiring mug pictures and probably even money bond.
Even when the 2 prosecutorial groups don’t look like on a collision course, they’ve veered into one another’s lanes every now and then.
Ms. Willis and her workers took appreciable curiosity within the conduct of Mr. Clark, a former Justice Division official who defied his superiors in an effort to throw the federal government’s status behind false election claims. The division blocked that effort — and Mr. Clark performs a distinguished function within the authorities’s case, illustrating the previous president’s dedication to defy his personal advisers to raise somebody who shared his aim of retaining energy.
One of many components which may have spurred Mr. Smith to carry his expenses earlier than Ms. Willis indicted Mr. Trump was a want to “get his foot in the door” earlier than Ms. Willis, based on an individual with data of the state of affairs.
And it’s doubtless — if not assured — that Mr. Smith will proceed first, given the truth that his case includes just one defendant. The choose overseeing the trial, Tanya S. Chutkan, has additionally signaled her intention to maneuver rapidly, notably if Mr. Trump retains up his assaults on the court docket and prosecutors, which she stated might taint the pool of potential jurors.
If the Georgia case “went first, it would be a problem for Jack Smith,” stated John P. Fishwick Jr., who served as U.S. lawyer for the Western District of Virginia from 2015 to 2017. “But there is no way the Georgia case goes to trial before the 2024 election, so short term, this overlap will not matter much.”
Justice Division prosecutors have a repute for appearing aggressively with native officers investigating the identical occasions. However Fulton County prosecutors had a virtually two-year head begin, in order that they have been far alongside of their investigation lengthy earlier than Mr. Smith, constructing on an investigation that started within the U.S. lawyer’s workplace in Washington, took over as particular counsel in late 2022.
To the extent that the places of work have communicated in any respect, they’ve completed so minimally, and sometimes by the U.S. lawyer’s workplace in Atlanta, based on legislation enforcement officers.
However which may change: In earlier instances wherein such overlap existed, Justice Division legal professionals have requested to see proof that native prosecutors turned over to the protection legal professionals through the discovery course of to keep away from any surprises that might jeopardize their very own case. Native officers aren’t legally required to conform, however typically do, typically in trade for data collected by the federal government.
Mr. Trump and his allies have attacked each Ms. Willis and Mr. Smith and instructed that they’ve been secretly working in tandem to destroy Mr. Trump personally and politically.
Ms. Willis didn’t tackle the problem in her information convention shortly after the indictment was launched, however her earlier public statements appear to point that they don’t actually have a lot of a relationship in any respect.
“I don’t know what Jack Smith is doing, and Jack Smith doesn’t know what I’m doing,” Ms. Willis lately informed an area radio station. “In all honesty, if Jack Smith was standing next to me, I’m not sure I would know who he was. My guess is he probably can’t pronounce my name correctly.”
