‘Sounds rigged to me,’ says Donald Trump, slams fresh indictment in Georgia

Former US president Donald Trump on Tuesday slammed what he called a “rigged” indictment brought against him on racketeering charges in the state of Georgia.

“Sounds rigged to me!” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

“Why didn’t they indict 2.5 years ago? Because they wanted to do it right in the middle of my political campaign. Witch hunt!” he wrote.

Trump was hit with a fourth set of criminal charges when a Georgia grand jury issued a sweeping indictment accusing him of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

The charges, brought late on Monday by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, add to the legal woes facing Trump, the front-runner in the race for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.

The sprawling 98-page indictment listed 19 defendants and 41 criminal counts in all. All of the defendants were charged with racketeering, which is used to target members of organized crime groups and carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, and lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman were among those charged.

The case — relying on laws typically used to bring down mobsters — is the fourth targeting the 77-year-old Republican this year.

In a statement, Trump’s lawyers took issue with the “leak of a presumed and premature indictment before the witnesses had testified or the grand jurors had deliberated”, in what they say has been a “flawed and unconstitutional” process, a complaint Trump also alluded to in his post.