Timothy L. O'Brien, Columnist

Trump's Georgia Indictment Has a Smoking Gun

Fulton County DA Fani Willis’s indictment of Trump and his collaborators relies on an evidentiary trail that leaves little doubt about fraudulent conspiracy.

August 15, 2023 at 12:14 PM UTC

By Timothy L. O'Brien

Timothy L. O'Brien is senior executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion. A former editor and reporter for the New York Times, he is author of “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald.”

Another one.
Photographer: Mike Stobe/Getty Images North America

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As former US President Donald Trump would have it, he was merely exercising his free-speech rights when he phoned Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in early 2021 and asked him to manufacture more than 11,000 votes so he could claim victory in a presidential race he had just lost.

“So what are we going to do here folks?” Trump asked during the one-hour call. “I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes.” Trump still oversaw the Justice Department at the time and threatened Raffensperger with criminal charges if he failed to support the attempted coup.