Who Are Trump’s Co-Defendants in the Georgia Case?

A Fulton County grand jury returned an indictment of former President Donald Trump Monday night, naming an additional 18 individuals as co-defendants over alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 Georgia election results.

Here’s a look at each co-defendant:

1. Rudy Giuliani: 13 counts

Giuliani—the former mayor of New York City and Trump’s personal lawyer—was the chief architect of efforts to overturn the 2020 election in swing states. He served as a high-profile surrogate for Trump after the election and personally argued a case on Trump’s behalf in Pennsylvania court. As part of a civil lawsuit, he also conceded to making false statements to the Georgia state senate, claiming election workers had used “suitcases” of unlawful ballots to commit fraud. Giuliani’s claims were resoundingly rejected in state and federal court, and he faces several defamation lawsuits. 

Giuliani criticized the charges and said the indictment does “permanent irrevocable harm to our justice system.”

He added, “It’s just the next chapter in a book of lies with the purpose of framing President Donald Trump and anyone willing to take on the ruling regime.”

2. John Eastman: 9 counts

A former constitutional law professor who once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Eastman promoted the notion that then-Vice President Mike Pence could single-handedly reject the electoral count on Jan. 6, 2021. He also asserted without evidence that Joe Biden won in Georgia because 66,000 underage people and thousands of felons voted illegally there.

Eastman unsuccessfully advanced the fringe “independent state legislature” theory to lobby state legislators in swing states to appoint alternate, pro-Trump slates of electors. The State Bar of California is seeking to revoke Eastman’s license.

A former constitutional law professor who once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Eastman promoted the notion that then-Vice President Mike Pence could single-handedly reject the electoral count on Jan. 6, 2021. He also asserted without evidence that Joe Biden won in Georgia because 66,000 underage people and thousands of felons voted illegally there.

Eastman unsuccessfully advanced the fringe “independent state legislature” theory to lobby state legislators in swing states to appoint alternate, pro-Trump slates of electors. The State Bar of California is seeking to revoke Eastman’s license.

Harry Silvergate, a lawyer for Eastman, blasted the case in a statement.

“Lawyers everywhere should be sleepless over this latest stunt to criminalize their advocacy,” the statement said. “This is a legal cluster-bomb that leaves unexploded ordinances for lawyers to navigate in perpetuity.”

3. Mark Meadows: 2 counts

Meadows is a former North Carolina congressman and former White House chief of staff. Testimony during the hearings of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol indicated he had some knowledge of the potential for violence before the attack, having been informed that the crowd outside possessed weapons. His text messages, turned over to the panel, contained details of Trump’s alleged effort to overturn the election. Meadows refused to testify before the Jan. 6 panel and refused to testify in Georgia until a state judge ordered him to. 

4. Kenneth Chesebro: 7 counts

Chesebro, a lawyer and Trump campaign adviser, was the original architect of the fake-elector plan. His memo to GOP party officials in his home state of Wisconsin on Nov. 18, 2020, is the earliest known proposal to nominate fake electors, which he then worked to replicate nationwide with Giuliani and others. Republicans from seven Biden-won states eventually met on Dec. 14, 2020, to cast fake electoral votes for Trump, which Trump allies then attempted to deliver to Capitol Hill. Chesebro has been the subject of a complaint to the New York Bar and a subpoena by a Georgia grand jury related to his efforts.

5. Jeffrey Clark: 2 counts

Clark, a Justice Department lawyer during the Trump presidency, proposed sending letters to officials in swing states asking them to send slates of Trump-supporting electors, Justice Department officials testified at a hearing held by the House Jan. 6 panel. A former environmental lawyer, Clark later promised to use the DOJ’s power to help Trump pressure state officials and open election investigations if Trump removed the then-acting attorney general and nominated Clark to lead the Justice Department instead. The plan failed when DOJ officials threatened to resign en masse.

“Willis is exceeding her powers by inserting herself into the operations of the federal government to go after Jeff,” said Rachel Cauley, a spokeswoman for the Center for Renewing America, the conservative think tank where Clark works. “Jeff Clark was simply doing his job in 2020, and he doesn’t deserve to be subjected to this naked political lawfare, especially not by a publicity hound like Willis.”

6. Jenna Ellis: 2 counts

Ellis, a member of an “elite strike force” working to overturn the election, was the youngest member of Trump’s legal team. The 36-year-old identifies as a constitutional law specialist and appeared regularly on cable news to promulgate allegations of voter irregularities. Ellis was censured by legal officials in Colorado and acknowledged making 10 “misrepresentations” on television, including that 500,000 votes in Arizona had been cast illegally.

7. Ray Stallings Smith: 12 counts

An Atlanta-area lawyer, Smith filed an unsuccessful lawsuit challenging Biden’s Georgia victory. He was later the subject of a complaint from a legal watchdog group to the state bar seeking disciplinary measures. 

8. Robert Cheeley: 10 counts

A personal-injury lawyer, Cheeley presented Georgia state senators with video clips that he claimed showed election workers at a downtown Atlanta precinct double- and triple-counting votes. 

9. Mike Roman: 7 counts

Roman served as the director of Election Day operations for Trump’s 2020 campaign. Communications that surfaced during the House Jan. 6 panel’s probe show Roman worked with other Trump operatives to create slates of fake Trump electors in seven states, including Georgia. Separately, Roman reportedly spoke with prosecutors in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the 2020 election. 

10. David Shafer: 8 counts

Shafer was the chair of the Georgia Republican Party in 2020. Under his direction, the party filed an unsuccessful lawsuit contesting Biden’s victory in the state. Shafer, who helped cast doubt on Georgia vote-counting procedures, presided over a Dec. 14, 2020, meeting of fake GOP electors and cast a fraudulent electoral vote himself. The longtime Republican served in the state senate for nearly two decades and has run unsuccessfully for secretary of state and lieutenant governor. 

Lawyer Craig Gillen said his firm will “vigorously defend” Shafer.

“[Shafer’s] conduct regarding the 2020 Presidential election was lawful, appropriate and specifically authorized by the U.S. Constitution, federal and state law and long standing legal precedent,” Gillen said in a statement.

11. Shawn Still: 7 counts

The president of a pool-contracting company, Still served as the secretary for the 16 Republicans who met behind closed doors to cast fake electoral votes for Trump. In 2022, the state GOP backed Still for a state senate seat in exurban Atlanta, which he won with about 57% of the vote. His current two-year term ends in 2025. He didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

12. Stephen Lee: 5 counts

Lee, a police chaplain, was one of three defendants who worked to pressure Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman—accused by Giuliani and others of producing suitcases full of fraudulent ballots—to falsely admit to election fraud. The effort failed, and Freeman filed a suit against Giuliani in which he conceded making false claims about her.

13. Harrison William Prescott Floyd: 3 counts

A mixed-martial-arts fighter who once led the group Black Voices for Trump, Floyd allegedly worked with Lee to pressure Freeman to falsely admit to election fraud. 

14. Trevian Kutti: 3 counts

Kutti is a celebrity stylist and publicist who allegedly worked with Lee and Floyd to pressure Freeman to falsely admit to election fraud.

15. Sidney Powell: 7 counts

Powell, a former Trump legal adviser, helped direct efforts in Georgia to investigate election results—a probe that prosecutors allege amounted to a security breach in Coffee County, in the state’s rural southeast. She was briefly named as part of Trump’s legal team soon after Election Day and quickly became the public face of efforts to cast doubt on the results.

Even after Trump’s operation distanced itself from her, Powell continued to file separate lawsuits to reverse the election in several states on his behalf. In Georgia, her failed suit alleged that the state’s Republican governor and secretary of state had allowed systematic voter fraud to benefit Biden.

Powell was also part of a group that met in South Carolina to make plans to contest election results in Georgia. A lawyer licensed in Georgia said during a television interview that Powell had enlisted him to find Georgia residents who could serve as plaintiffs in an election lawsuit.

16. Cathy Latham: 11 counts

Latham was a member of the Georgia Republican Party’s executive committee and chairwoman of the party’s arm in rural Coffee County. Voting-rights activists alleged in a suit that Latham breached the state’s voting system by giving a computer-forensics firm access to sensitive records in her county, despite her testimony denying any involvement. Latham was also one of 16 Republicans in Georgia who served as fake electors.

17. Scott Hall: 7 counts

Hall, owner of a bail-bonds business and a pro-Trump operative in Fulton County, was caught on tape in a voting-systems breach in Coffee County. During grand-jury testimony, he acknowledged gaining full access to a voting machine, spending hours setting up computers near election records in an attempt to investigate supposed voter fraud.

18. Misty Hampton: 7 counts

Hampton, another fake elector and a party official in Coffee County, made a viral video claiming that Dominion Voting Systems machines, including those in her county, could “very easily” be manipulated. Hampton questioned election results in her county, where Trump won more than 70% of the vote, and sent an invitation to Trump lawyers including Giuliani to examine the voting machines. She also provided several people, including local businessman Scott Hall, access to sensitive records in her office.

—Sadie Gurman contributed to this article.

Write to Isaac Yu at [email protected] and Byron Tau at [email protected]

Corrections & Amplifications
An earlier version of this article contained quotations attributed to a text message from Trevian Kutti. The Wall Street Journal now believes that it was communicating with someone other than Kutti, and those quotations have been removed from the article. (Corrected on Aug. 15)