«Charging co-defendants or co-conspirators in an indictment puts more pressure on them to flip on the target of your investigation.»
Since the text of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ indictments against former President Donald Trump and 18 of his associates first dropped online, internet sleuths and legal analysts alike have scrambled to figure out which allies of the former president were among the 30 unnamed and unindicted co-conspirators named on the indictment.
For the internet, the pursuit was likely out of a morbid curiosity around who in Trump’s inner circle—whether the more than one dozen fake electors his campaign recruited or the politicians who acted on his behalf—were likely to escape culpability in his efforts to overturn his loss in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election.
For Trump, however, the dozen-and-a-half co-conspirators named in the indictment could be cause to worry—namely, whether Willis is going to get something out of them in return for information.
In the Georgia case, that’s likely a challenge. Unlike the federal case brought against him by special counsel Jack Smith on charges of trying to overturn the result of the 2020 election, Trump would be unable to pardon himself at the state level, like he theoretically would in a federal case.
