Trump has 10 days to turn himself in as Georgia governor says 2020 election ‘not stolen’

Donald Trump has been given less than two weeks to hand himself in after an arrest warrant was issued in Georgia.

Former US President Donald Trump has been given just 10 days to hand himself in after he was hit with more criminal charges.

Mr Trump faces a mandatory jail term of at least five years on new charges laid against him and 18 alleged accomplices under racketeering laws used to bring down mobsters.

The explosive indictment – the former president’s fourth in five months as he campaigns to return to the White House – was given the green light after a marathon grand jury hearing in Georgia on Tuesday over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state.

It spells out 161 alleged acts of racketeering by Mr Trump and his allies including forgery, issuing false statements, stealing computers, impersonating public officials and perjury.

“The indictment alleges … the defendants engaged in a criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia’s presidential election result,” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said at a press conference just before midnight in Atlanta.

Arrest warrants have been issued for Mr Trump and his alleged co-conspirators, who have until August 25 to surrender. Ms Willis said she was seeking a trial within six months of all 19 defendants.

Police locked down the Atlanta courthouse ahead of the expected indictment. Picture: Getty Images

The former president, the leading candidate to take on Joe Biden in a rematch next year, hit back through a spokesman who blasted Ms Willis as a “rabid partisan” and claimed she was trying to “maximally interfere with the 2024 presidential election race” with “bogus” charges.

But Ms Willis said: “I make decisions in this office based on the facts and the law.”

If Mr Trump is convicted in the unprecedented case, he faces at least five years in prison and would not be able to pardon himself of the state charges if he is re-elected next year.

Meanwhile, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who famously lost to Donald Trump during the 2016 election, has admitted it was a “terrible moment” for the US.

She 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.”

“He set out to defraud the United States of America and the citizens of our nation,” Mrs Clinton said.

Former US attorney for the Southern District Rudy Giuliani has also been indicted under the same statutes in Georgia for alleged election tampering. Picture: AFP

“(I 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.”

Others named in the 98-page indictment include Mr Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and several of his lawyers such as Rudy Giuliani, who once took on mobsters while leading New York and was hailed as “America’s Mayor” after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Another 30 co-conspirators were identified by prosecutors but are yet to be charged.

The sprawling racketeering charge laid out eight ways the defendants allegedly tried to subvert the election results in Georgia, including lying to the state legislature, intimidating election workers, unlawfully breaching voting equipment, and soliciting vice president Mike Pence to overturn the final outcome in Congress.

Ms Willis had been investigating the former president for more than two years, including over what he claimed was a “perfect” phone call in which he told Georgia’s secretary of state to “find 11,780” votes to help him overtake Mr Biden in the state.

Mr Trump also faces 12 other charges including conspiracy to commit forgery, filing false documents, and soliciting a public official to violate their oath.

On a day of drama, the former president had earlier sought to pressure a witness from giving evidence to the grand jury before it voted on the sprawling indictment, and a document was mistakenly released which appeared to list the charges he was facing.

The Georgia indictment comes on top of federal charges laid against Mr Trump this month over his bid to subvert the 2020 election results, as well as separate charges over his handling of classified documents and hush money paid to a porn star.

The former president facing court in New York earlier this year. Picture: AFP

As the grand jury was hearing evidence on Tuesday, Mr Trump raged in an all-caps social media post that Ms Willis “wants desperately to indict me” in an “election interference” plot.

He said Georgia’s former lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan – who had publicly dismissed his claims of election fraud – should not give evidence, describing him a “nasty disaster for those looking into the election fraud that took place in Georgia”.

But Mr Duncan defied the former president to testify, later telling reporters the case needed to be “a pivot point (for Republicans) that we’re either going to wake up or we’re not”.

“My hope is that Americans believe us, my hope is that Republicans believe us – that this election was fair and legal,” he said outside court.

Mr Trump has repeatedly attacked Ms Willis as a “racist” and last week even claimed without evidence that she had an affair with a gang member. The District Attorney privately urged her colleagues not to respond but told them his allegation was “derogatory and false”.

His fiery rhetoric came as law enforcement authorities locked down the Atlanta courthouse for days prior to the indictment, closing roads and putting extra officers on high alert.

Originally published as Trump has 10 days to turn himself in as Georgia governor says 2020 election ‘not stolen’