GEOFF BENNETT: And for more on the indictment and what comes next, we're joined now by Stephen Fowler, who covers politics for Georgia Public Broadcasting, and Gwen Keyes Fleming, who previously served as district attorney in DeKalb County, Georgia.

Thank you both for being with us.

And, Gwen, this sweeping indictment captures the breathtaking number of ways in which Donald Trump and his associates allegedly tried to overturn the election results.

And, as we heard in Lisa's reporting, they are charged with engaging in a criminal enterprise under a Georgia racketeering law.

This RICO law was initially designed to prosecute mob bosses.

Help us understand why a RICO charge is an appropriate charge in this case.

GWEN KEYES FLEMING, Former Georgia District Attorney: Certainly.

So, Georgia RICO statute is one of the greatest tools that a prosecutor has to be able to tell the whole story when you have a long list of defendants, each of whom were operating in concert towards some sort of common goal, whether it's maintaining or obtaining a part of an enterprise.

And so, in this case, what the DA has done is identified several predicate acts.

Those are acts or crimes that are listed in the RICO statutes, such as things like false statements, false swearing, influencing witnesses, solicitation to commit forgery.

She only needs to successfully prosecute two of them, but she's listed several.

And then she has added several overt acts that are noncrimes, that are not criminal, but describe the ways in which the various defendants furthered the conspiracy.

And so, by doing so, these 161 enlisted - - or listed acts enables her to tell the whole story of what happened, so that a jury can understand it.

GEOFF BENNETT: Stephen Fowler, one of the lesser known aspects of this alleged conspiracy is the breach of a voting system in rural Coffee County, Georgia, that took place well after the 2020 election.

And we should say these images were taken from surveillance video on January 7, 2021, showing a woman who was posing as a fake elector escorting a team of Trump operatives to the county elections office the same day that voting system had been breached.

Tell us more about what transpired.

STEPHEN FOWLER, Georgia Public Broadcasting: Right.

So, Coffee County, Georgia, is one of 159 counties in Georgia, and it's a reliably Republican county.

So the results were not in question there.

But the woman you mentioned, Cathy Latham, who was the Republican county chairwoman down there and also one of Georgia's alternate electors, who falsely claimed that they were an official elector, was working with the elections supervisor to bring down a team of people to access voting data, and machines and equipment, because they felt that there was evidence in there that the machines were not counting things accurately, that they were manipulated, and they were somehow taking votes away from Donald Trump and giving them to Joe Biden.

None of that is true.

But what happened and what we see in this indictment is, this sweeping act was part of the larger scheme to keep Trump in office, and the data breach violated several parts of Georgia's computer trespass laws, and got the people that actually copied the data and were involved in accessing that data as well.

GEOFF BENNETT: Gwen, how do the special counsel case and this Georgia case intersect and potentially conflict, especially given that some of the 18 co-defendants overlap with the unindicted co-conspirators in Jack Smith's case?

GWEN KEYES FLEMING: So, there actually is no conflict.

The way that our judicial system is set up, you have various federal charges, each that have specific elements of the crimes that need to be charged, and then you have state charges also with their own separate elements.

And so while there may be some similarities in the individuals named, the burdens of proof and the requirements for each element of the crimes listed under the state statutes and under the federal statutes are very different.

And so, very often, you may see cases where a particular stream of conduct could qualify for a federal charge, but it also qualifies for the state charge.

And that's exactly what you see here.

And the district attorney was elected by the citizens and residents of Fulton County to protect them.

So she is going forward with the authority that she has under the Georgia laws.

GEOFF BENNETT: The DA said last night that she intends to try all 19 defendants together, and she hopes to do it within six months.

Is that even possible, given that she's going to have to deal with potentially 19 individual defense attorneys?

GWEN KEYES FLEMING: Well, I think it's early in the process to give that an honest assessment.

Let's see if some of the defendants listed may decide upon looking at evidence either after discovery or after various rulings on motions that they do not want to go to trial.

They may decide that it's more advantageous to take a plea deal.

There may be some rulings that cut against the district attorney, such that perhaps some counts are lost and some defendants are lost.

So it's really early to tell whether all 19 would be sitting at a table, but it's also possible.

Remember, this is a district attorney who has considerable experience handling complex multidefendant RICO cases.

And so, where there's a will, there's a way.

I'm sure the judge will help - - along with the sheriff, help find a suitable arena to be able to do whatever needs to be done with the defendants that are remaining at the time the trial is ready to go.

GEOFF BENNETT: Stephen Fowler, Georgia is a problem for Donald Trump legally, and you could argue politically too.

Brian Kemp, the popular Republican governor there who already defeated a Trump-backed primary challenger, is calling out Donald Trump's election lies.

Here's what he tweeted today: "The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen.

For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward under oath and prove anything in a court of law.

Our elections in Georgia are secure, accessible and fair and will continue to be as long as I am governor.

The future of our country is at stake in 2024.

And that must be our focus."

Republicans, as you well know, they lost the Georgia Senate run-off.

They lost the state in the last presidential election.

Donald Trump, if he's the Republican nominee, he's going to need Georgia to win back the White House.

How steep a challenge is that politically, given Georgia politics?

STEPHEN FOWLER: Well, sure, Geoff.

Well, the main problem right now is that Donald Trump is facing an uphill battle both in the courts and court of public opinion in Georgia, because, as you mentioned, he narrowly lost the state in 2020.

He proposed a bunch of primary challengers against popular Republicans in Georgia that got blown out of the water.

And then in the key Senate race against with Raphael Warnock running against Herschel Walker, the Trump-backed opponent, Warnock won and Democrats maintained control of the Senate.

So there's already a track record of Georgia voters willing to move on from Donald Trump.

And Brian Kemp is a case in point.

He's been beating the drum: Anybody who focuses on 2024, instead of 2024, is not going to have a good time.

And so with this trial, you have the potential for not just, in Georgia, but other states where Trump and his allies tried to overturn the election, looking at this televised trial of rehashing what happened when Trump tried to overturn the election heading before the 2024 election.

So you might see these other swing states not buying what Trump is selling based on a little bit of PTSD from the last election.

GEOFF BENNETT: Gwen, we have about 20 seconds left.

And I want to ask you about a late-breaking development here where Mark Meadows, the former White House, chief of staff, has filed a request to move this case to federal court.

What are the merits of that request, as you see it?

GWEN KEYES FLEMING: So, as I understand it, that is an argument where you have a former federal official who is attempting to say that their actions were done in accordance with their federal job or their federal role.

And so we were not surprised to see that that motion was filed.

We will wait and see what and if a federal judge decides.

But having looked at the issue very closely, there are no issues of immunity, arguably.

There also is sufficient evidence that these are purely state crimes involving actions that would have been outside that color of law or color of federal responsibility, and, therefore, the case should stay in Fulton state court.

GEOFF BENNETT: Gwen Keyes Fleming and Stephen Fowler, thank you both for your time this evening.

We appreciate it.

GWEN KEYES FLEMING: Thank you.

STEPHEN FOWLER: Thank you.