Good news travels fast. Trump’s fourth indictment on criminal charges. Unlike what came before, the Georgia indictment is a very, very big deal. 

First of all, it’s a state, not a federal inditement, which means anyone in a Trump federal government has no jurisdiction over it, so Trump and his co-defendants couldn’t be pardoned or otherwise pampered into Trump-friendly areas outside Fulton County. Georgia law is more focused than federal statues, which is why Fulton County DA Fani Willis has spent months bringing every molecule of evidence into bedrock, making it extremely difficult if not impossible for defense lawyers to poke holes in any of it.

The easiest way to think about the Georgia inditements is that it’s an examination of lies.  Donald Trump has been lying continuously for over eight years and until January 6, 2022, he’s pretty much gotten away with it. The Georgia case is now come to a head about lying, conspiring to lie, and attempting to coerce others into lying.  Special counsel Jack Smith has brought a rather limited indictment on Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Fani Willis is bringing a case about the entire Trump conspiracy from A to Z and targeting all the co-conspirators. 

The breadth of the Georgia indictment is now centered on the very scary issue of RICO (racketeering). In addition to other criminal charges, Georgia’s racketeering statute allows prosecutors to charge conspirators with lying to government officials.  Rather than marking each discrete lie on its own, those lies can also be collected into a larger whole: a racketeering enterprise designed to alter the results of the Georgia presidential election. A very, very big deal and plenty scary for those accused. If I were facing Fani Willis in a court of law, I’d be quaking in my boots.

As I have mentioned before, I don’t believe prospective voters care much about Trump hoarding “secret” documents, although technically it is a felony. Voters, especially Trump’s true believers, care even less that he paid off a busty female to keep her mouth shut about an extramarital tryst before the election. If every such guilty politician was identified, Washington DC, would be a ghost town. The Georgia allegations are a different universe. Anyone can lie to the public in Georgia or even lie to public officials on matters outside the scope of their official duties. However, if you lie to state officials relating to their official actions, you risk prosecution and that’s exactly what Trump and his confederates allegedly did, over and over, throughout the election.

When you peruse the list of Trump’s lies, they’re incredible. His declarations aren’t merely false; they’re incandescently boneheaded. This was not a sophisticated effort to overturn the election. It was a blast of simpleminded stupidity with a ridiculously simple trail to follow. To meet federal law requirements, Jack Smith’s charges must connect Trump to a larger criminal scheme. In Georgia, Willis has only to prove that Trump willfully lied to a government official about a matter in that official’s jurisdiction. Once you prove that simpler case, you’ve laid the foundation for the larger racketeering claims that SERIOUSLY ratchets up Trump’s legal jeopardy. 

And yet these issues will ultimately be resolved not by the courts but by the electorate. Republican primary voters will be presented with an opportunity to consider the real value of his leadership and the further damage he could do if rewarded with another four years in power.