Co-authored with Amy Lee Copeland in the N.Y. Times,, a useful comparison to Jack Smith’s federal indictment of Trump:
“The large cast of defendants populates a complete conspiracy chain of command and features the famous (Mr. Trump, his chief of staff Mark Meadows and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani), the infamous (the Trump attorneys John Eastman, Ken Chesebro and Jeffrey Clark) and the unknown (including Georgia state false electors and local Trump campaign allies without whom the plot would have stalled). …
“The overall charge includes four core schemes. The first was to pressure government officials to advance the objective of securing Georgia’s electoral votes for Mr. Trump, even though he lost. For the evidence here, in addition to Mr. Trump’s call to Mr. Raffensperger, Ms. Willis details other efforts by Mr. Trump and his co-defendants, ranging from Mr. Giuliani’s pressuring of state legislators to Mr. Meadows’s pressure on election authorities to the co-conspirators’ lies and intimidation targeting the ballot counters Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Moss, who goes by Shaye. This also includes efforts in Washington that impacted Georgia, such as the D.O.J. lawyer Jeffrey Clark’s preparation of an allegedly fraudulent draft letter targeting the state.
“The second scheme was the organization of electors falsely proclaiming that Mr. Trump was the winner in Georgia. Here Ms. Willis alleges that Mr. Trump personally participated in this effort — for example, he called the Republican National Committee with Mr. Eastman from the White House to organize the fake slates of electors, including in Georgia. And she charges a great deal of other activity in and outside of Georgia.
“The third scheme was the allegedly unlawful accessing of voting machines in Coffee County, a rural county southeast of Atlanta. The indictment asserts that, following a White House conversation about getting access to actual election machines to prove supposed vote theft, Sidney Powell, a lawyer tied to Mr. Trump, along with Trump campaign allies and computer consultants conspired to illegally access voting equipment in Coffee County. …
“The fourth and final scheme is what has become a trademark allegation against Mr. Trump and his circle — obstruction and cover-up. Ms. Willis alleges that members of the conspiracy filed false documents, made false statements to government investigators and committed perjury during the Fulton County judicial proceedings. …
“That all of this is likely to play out on television only deepens the historic nature of the indictment. Georgia law makes generous allowance for court proceedings to be broadcast, with the state rightly considering “open courtrooms” to be “an indispensable element of an effective and respected judicial system.” Assuming that rules against televising federal trials stand, the Georgia trial will be the only one that the public can watch as it unfolds. We know from the Jan. 6 hearings — as well as, in an earlier era, the Watergate hearings — the power of seeing and hearing these events firsthand. And they will remain for viewing in posterity as a lesson in the rule of law.”