ATLANTA – The indictment of Donald J. Trump in New York for hush money payments to a porn star was a global spectacle. The former president somberly returned to his old Manhattan stomping grounds while TV stations closely followed his procession of black SUVs as they made their way to the courthouse.
But if you put the big drama aside, the actual indictment document in the case was far less grand — 34 felonies of a fairly narrow and common accounting charge that Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney, described as the “bread and butter” of white collar crime cases his office.
In Georgia, however, another criminal investigation into Mr. Trump, also led by a local prosecutor, Fani T. Willis of Fulton County, is nearing completion. While nothing is certain, there are numerous signs it could be getting big, with a more kaleidoscopic indictment blaming not just Mr Trump but perhaps a dozen or more of his allies.
Their investigation targeted a broad spectrum of behaviors centered on efforts to undermine the democratic process and reverse Mr. Trump’s 2020 election defeat. It is already known that nearly 20 people have been told they are targets who could be charged, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr Trump’s former personal attorney, and David Shafer, the leader of the Georgia Republican Party.
For Mr. Trump, the possibility of a second and potentially more complex indictment in another state underscores the blizzard of legal challenges he faces, even as he emerges as the clear front-runner among Republican presidential nominees.
For Ms. Willis, the decision to bring a narrowly focused indictment or a broader indictment — a classic prosecutor’s dilemma — carries potential risks and benefits for both sides. And American history offers few examples where the stakes are so high.
“Certainly, prosecutors would have this conversation about what is in the best interests of the judiciary and what is strategically preferable in a case,” said Barbara McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor and former federal prosecutor. A tight case can be easier for a jury to understand. But it’s also possible to “go too narrowly,” Ms McQuade said, denying a jury the ability to see the full extent of an accused’s criminal conduct.
On the other hand, if a wide-ranging scheme is indicted, “allow them to see the full extent of the criminal behavior,” she said. But a big move could result in lost jurors amid a wealth of evidence, with a lengthy trial increasing the possibility of a mistrial.
In Georgia, the investigation focuses on myriad efforts to reverse Mr Trump’s narrow loss in Georgia following his 2020 election defeat, including his January 2021 phone call with Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State, in which he pressured Mr Raffensperger, fellow Republicans, to act recalculate the results and “find” him enough votes to win.
Mr. Trump is also being investigated by Jack Smith, a special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, for his role in the events leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and his decision to keep sensitive government documents at his home in Florida.
If Ms Willis decides to press charges in the Georgia case, she can do so after a new grand jury begins work in the second week of May, although nothing is set in stone. Typically, the presentation of such cases to a regular grand jury is a short process, lasting a day or two.
The broad scope of the investigation has been apparent for months, and Ms. Willis said indictment under the state’s RICO statute is one option she is considering. Like similar federal law, Georgia’s RICO statute allows prosecutors to combine seemingly unrelated crimes committed by a variety of different individuals when those crimes are viewed as furthering a common goal.
Ms. Willis has extensive extortion experience, including a case she won involving a group of public school educators who were accused of altering students’ standardized tests. Her office is currently pursuing indictments against two gangs linked to the hip-hop world, including one led by Atlanta rapper Jeffery Williams, who poses as Young Thug.
“I think the jury is very, very intelligent,” Ms. Willis said at an August news conference announcing a racketeering case against a third Atlanta-area gang known as Drug Rich. “RICO is a tool that allows a prosecutor or law enforcement agency to tell the full story. And that’s why we use it as a tool so they have all the information they need to make a smart decision.”
After the Trump investigation began in February 2021, Ms. Willis’ office sought the help of a special grand jury to gather and review evidence. In Georgia, such juries have no prosecutorial powers but can issue subpoenas in lengthy investigations. The panel convened last spring and completed its work in January after hearing testimony from 75 witnesses behind closed doors, although its recommendations remained largely classified.
Emily Kohrs, the forewoman of that particular grand jury, in a February interview with The New York Times, pointed out that Mr. Trump was among more than a dozen people who had been recommended for indictment. “You won’t be shocked,” she said when asked if Mr. Trump was named in the report. “It’s not rocket science.”
Court records show that a special grand jury sought testimony including Mark Meadows, who served as White House chief of staff under Mr. Trump; Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, an ally of the former president; and Trevian Kutti, a former self-proclaimed publicist for rapper Kanye West who prosecutors say was involved in a conspiracy to coerce a Fulton County poll worker into making a false admission of voter fraud.
Documents also show that Georgia prosecutors are following numerous narrative threads involving either Mr. Trump or his allies. These include Mr. Trump’s phone calls with Georgia officials, including the one with Mr. Raffensperger; flimsy testimony of voter fraud by Mr. Giuliani and others at state hearings; the convocation of pro-Trump electoral college electors at the Georgia State Capitol; Ms Kutti’s bizarre meeting with poll worker Ruby Freeman, two days after Mr Trump’s call to Mr Raffensperger, in which Mr Trump falsely accused Ms Freeman of being an “election cheater”; and a conspiracy by Mr. Trump’s allies to copy sensitive voting software in rural Coffee County, Georgia.
The battle lines have already been drawn. Mr. Trump has steadfastly maintained his innocence and attacked prosecutors in Georgia and New York with inflammatory language. And last month, his Georgia legal team filed a 52-page filing with more than 400 additional pages of exhibits to challenge a pending case. Legal experts saw it as a sign of what is to come.
“This is indicative of the type of motions that you will see when there is an indictment,” said Melissa D. Redmon, a law professor at the University of Georgia who was a prosecutor for Fulton and Clayton counties. “Every single step is questioned from the start.”
In New York, Mr. Bragg said he, too, was focusing on crimes that thwarted the democratic process, although they stemmed from the 2016 election campaign. In a statement, he said Mr Trump “repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to cover up crimes that hid harmful information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election.” He is accused of covering up a possible sex scandal involving porn star Stormy Daniels.
Mr. Trump has more than once compared his legal troubles to those of notorious Chicago mob boss Al Capone. As late as February, he said on social media that he had more lawyers working for him than Capone, who was famously found guilty in 1931 and sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax evasion — hardly the most glaring or disturbing of his many misdeeds.
Mr. Bragg’s decision in New York drew strong criticism from Republicans, who called the charges flimsy and politically motivated, and called the alleged offenses insufficient to justify the nation’s first indictment against a former president. Even some Democrats are noting that the New York indictments seem mundane compared to the allegations emerging against Mr. Trump elsewhere.
“Is it as problematic as January 6 or what happened in Mar-a-Lago? No,” David Pepper, former Ohio Democratic Party leader, said recently, citing federal investigations into Mr Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t investigate it.”
If Ms. Willis brings up a sprawling RICO case, it could present her own problems, said Michael J. Moore, a former US Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia. Asking a jury to consider multiple acts not directly related to Mr Trump could make it harder to “point the finger at him with the force you could have achieved in a simpler case,” he said.
Mr. Moore also wondered how far a trial involving Mr. Trump would extend into the upcoming presidential election season. He noted that the jury selection process in the multi-criminal Young Thug racketeering case has been going on for about four months and that the judge in the case had estimated the trial could last up to nine months.
“We just have to face the reality that we have to deal with it,” he said.
