(Reuters) – The indictment of former U.S. President Donald Trump and 18 others in Georgia includes charges against three alleged co-conspirators related to the harassment of election workers. The involvement of the trio – Trevian Kutti, Harrison Floyd and Stephen Cliffgard Lee – in efforts to keep Trump in power was first revealed by Reuters in a series of reports in 2021 and 2022.
THE CHARGES
Kutti, Floyd and Lee are charged with solicitation of false statements and influencing witnesses for their efforts to compel Ruby Freeman, an election worker in Georgia’s Fulton County, into making a bogus confession to voting fraud in January 2021.
All three did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
Trump has denied all the charges against him as a politicized effort to keep him from regaining the presidency.
THE BACKSTORY
Following the November 2020 vote, Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, were falsely accused by Trump and his campaign of illegally counting phony mail-in ballots after pulling them from mysterious suitcases while working on Election Day at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena. In fact, the “suitcases” were standard ballot containers, and the votes were properly counted, county and state officials quickly confirmed, refuting the fraud claims.
TREVIAN KUTTI
As Reuters reported, Trevian Kutti, a publicist, traveled to Georgia days before the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and showed up uninvited at Freeman’s door. Kutti told Freeman she was sent by a “high-profile individual,” whom she didn’t identify, to deliver Freeman a message: Freeman was in unspecified danger, “due to the election,” and had just 48 hours to “get ahead of the issue” before unknown people were going to show up at her home.
In an Instagram post after that article was published, Kutti denied pressuring Freeman to falsely admit fraud.
Kutti had been identifying herself publicly as a member of “the Young Black Leadership Council under President Donald Trump.” She also had claimed to work for Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, and that her clients included the Queen of Jordan. A spokesperson for the queen denied any involvement with Kutti; a representative for Ye said Kutti wasn’t associated with the rapper when she met Freeman.
HARRISON FLOYD
In a follow-up article, Reuters reported that Trump campaign aide Harrison Floyd, executive director of a group called Black Voices for Trump, told the news organization he had recruited Kutti to meet with Freeman. Floyd said he then participated by phone in a meeting Kutti held with Freeman at a police station in Georgia’s Cobb County.
Floyd told Reuters he was asked if he’d be willing to set up the meeting by a man he described as a chaplain with “connections” in federal law enforcement. He declined to name the clergyman or to detail his connections. Floyd said he arranged the meeting to help Freeman. Floyd said the chaplain, who is white, wanted him to approach Freeman, who is Black, to discuss an immunity deal for her, out of a belief that she would not trust a white stranger. Floyd and Kutti are Black.
STEPHEN LEE
In September 2022, Reuters identified Stephen Lee, an Illinois-based former police officer, as the man who sought Floyd’s help with Freeman, drawing on police bodycam footage and other reporting. In December 2020, Reuters reported, Lee had visited Freeman’s house himself but was turned away by the frightened election worker. Lee, in a brief interview at his home in Montgomery, Illinois, did not dispute that he visited Freeman but declined to discuss why or whether someone had sent him. Lee formerly worked as a police officer in California and later served as a chaplain comforting officers and others after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York.
The hounding of Freeman and Moss upended their lives, unleashing a wave of death threats against them and forcing Freeman to flee her home, as Reuters chronicled. They later described their ordeal in dramatic testimony before the U.S. House’s Jan. 6 committee.
(This Aug. 15 story has been corrected to read ‘All three’ instead of ‘The three men’, as Kutti is a woman, in paragraph 3)
(Reporting by Jason Szep and Lindo So; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
