Former President Donald Trump was indicted for the fourth time on Monday night, and this time he cant pin his hopes on escaping punishment with a presidential pardon.

Georgias Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charged Trump with more than a dozen felonies tied to his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state, ranging from conspiring to commit forgery to filing false documents to racketeering. Willis brought charges against him and 18 co-defendants under Georgias Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, or RICO.

The fact that Trump is being charged with state crimes, and specifically under Georgias RICO law, means that his ace in the hole to avoid prosecution winning the 2024 presidential election isnt likely to work in this case.

A presidents power to pardon people, including himself, doesnt extend to state crimes.

This case is a pardon insurance against Trump or another Republican winning and pardoning him out of the federal cases or just ordering the [Justice Department] to drop the cases, said Norm Eisen, an attorney who served as former President Barack Obamas ethics czar and as special counsel for House Democrats during Trumps 2019 impeachment trial over attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Biden family.

Most of the other GOP presidential contenders with a realistic shot at the nomination, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.), have declined to directly say whether they would pardon Trump.

And even if Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), the Trump ally turned nemesis, was inclined to pardon him, he couldnt. Unlike most states, Georgia law does not give the governor the direct power to pardon or commute sentences, though the governor does appoint a board with that power.

Beyond that, the sprawling nature of the Georgia indictment entangles Trump in a web of co-conspirators unlike any of his prior three indictments. It spans from the Oval Office to the backrooms of low-level Georgia political and election officials, implicating well-known Trump acolytes and little-known officials in the state. Willis was able to bring such a sweeping case against Trump, essentially accusing him of being a mob boss at the helm of a vast criminal conspiracy, under the states expansive RICO law. These laws were initially aimed at tackling organized crime, and Georgias happens to be much stronger than the federal RICO law.

The evidence of Trumps alleged conspiracy is most compelling in Georgia, said Eisen, pointing to the three smoking guns linked to the former presidents meddling: a recorded call of Trump urging Georgias secretary of state to alter the states presidential vote in the 2020 election, fake electoral certificates falsely declaring Trump the winner in Georgia and text messages connecting Trumps legal team to a January 2021 voting system breach in Coffee County.

All the details of Trumps alleged efforts to steal the 2020 election will be on full display, too, as Georgia state law requires that cameras be allowed during judicial proceedings. Its the only one of his trials that will be accessible to the public.

The reason that matters so much is because of this alleged conspiracy, Eisen said. This is the one case thats going to be televised. If you only get one shot at it, you kind of want to use your HBO miniseries on the programming block on the big story.