From Trump's 'big lie' to Hunter Biden: What are all these allegations about? An explainer.

Former President Donald Trump got his wish when he was indicted for a fourth time.

On Aug. 4, Trump told a dinner audience he welcomed more criminal charges.

“Any time they file an indictment, we go way up in the polls,” Trump said. “We need one more indictment to close out this election. One more indictment and this election is closed out. Nobody has even a chance.”

The chief prosecutor in Georgia's Fulton County has now matched the former president's bravado by filing 41 counts against Trump and some of his allies for trying to steal Georgia's electoral votes from President Joe Biden after the 2020 election. They are the fourth set of criminal charges against Trump.

They follow those in New York state over an alleged hush money payment to a porn star as well as federal charges in South Florida and Washington, D.C. related to his possession of government classified documents and efforts to overturn the 2020 election results that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, violence at the U.S. Capitol.

The Georgia case is expected to be the final set of criminal charges against Trump. So, what's it all about? Here is a scorecard.

Trump indictment Former POTUS the latest Florida man charged in Jan. 6 attack

1. Trump's so-called 'big lie' at the center of Washington and Atlanta prosecutions. So, was the 2020 election stolen?

The answer is no.

"2020 was the most secure presidential election that we've ever had in American history. Period," said David Becker, executive director and founder of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research. "There is no way to argue rationally otherwise."

He said that, ahead of the vote, there was more pre-election litigation than ever before to clarify the rules. As has been amply reported, more than 60 post-election court actions challenging the votes were filed with state and federal courts in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

All but one of them, on a technical matter, were tossed by judges. Some of those judges were appointed by Trump. In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up a legal challenge filed by GOP state attorneys general.

But the proof of the 2020 vote's veracity, Becker said, is that more than 95% of ballots were cast on paper, including all of the ones in the contested states.

"That's the highest percentage since computers were introduced," he said, adding that this made the process of manually verifying each ballot easy and credible.

"Those ballots were audited so we know the machines have counted them right; that they haven't malfunctioned or been hacked," he said. "If a machine were hacked or if it malfunctioned, thanks to the paper and the audits we would discover it and we would be able to go back to the paper and see how the people actually voted and get a real count. Now that's never happened in American history, but we have that ability."

In addition, Becker said there were "many checks on who got a ballot either by mail or at a polling place" plus "so many checks on the mail ballots when they came in, more than ever before and observed by bipartisan election watchers."

"It's not that any part of this process is perfect; no one can ever suggest that," Becker added. "It's just that there are so many checks and balances and redundancies and bipartisan observations that if a problem did occur it's virtually guaranteed to be discovered early on in the process and there is a mitigation that will fix it. There really is no way to steal a national election in the United States as we have it today."

2. OK, that's Trump's opinion. So why is that criminal? Democrat Al Gore challenged the 2000 election and he wasn't arrested

According to criminal law and First Amendment experts, it's not Trump's opinions that are alleged to have violated the law. It was his suspected actions to overturn the election results, as spelled out in the four-count federal indictment, that is said to have violated the law.

The indictment itself said as much. It reads: "The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud and that he had won."

What the indictment charges is that Trump broke federal law in seeking to overturn the election. In this event, the Gore example is a good reference.

Gore, his attorneys and Democratic Party officials aggressively and vociferously challenged the 2000 vote count in Florida. But when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against him, Gore accepted the results.

Then, on Jan. 6, 2001, Gore, as the sitting vice president, presided over the electoral vote count in Congress and did not, as Trump called on his vice president, Mike Pence, to do, wrongly discard electoral votes from certain states.

3. The 'big lie' has nonetheless been fruitful for Trump, politically and for fundraising

The so-called "big lie" has turned legally perilous for Trump, but he has nonetheless profited politically and financially from it.

Trump has wrongly convinced tens of millions of Americans — overwhelmingly Republicans — that he should have been credited with 270-plus electoral votes and the majority of popular votes cast in the 2020 election presidential election.

That reality, political observers say, is a reason surveys of Republican voters show him leading other rivals for the 2024 GOP nomination. A poll conducted by pollsters at CNN showed nearly 70% of Republican and GOP-leaning voters said they do not believe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election.

Moreover, Trump has used the nearly 80 felony charges so far lodged against him to raise millions of dollars. Media reports cited Federal Election Commission filings to show Trump raised $4 million immediately after he was indicted in March in a case related to an alleged hush money payment to a porn star in 2016. Other reviews of fundraising filings have said Trump raised $53 million in the first half of the year, which also included the indictment on federal charges related to his handling and concealing of classified and other documents.

4. What do Americans think of the charges?

It's too early to tell about the Georgia case.

But following Trump's indictment in Washington on the four federal felony counts stemming from Trump's false allegations about the 2020 election, an ABC News/Ipsos poll released Aug. 4 showed that 65% of those asked said they believe the charges are serious, including 51% who said they are very serious and 14% who said they are somewhat serious.

Only 24% said they are not serious, including 17% who said they are not serious at all.

In April, an AP-NORC poll found a majority of respondents — 53% — said they believed Trump committed an illegal act related to his "alleged interference in Georgia's 2020 vote count." Another 12% said his actions were unethical but not illegal while 17% said it was not illegal.

In an ongoing barometer, the FiveThirtyEight website has shown Trump's overall favorability among Americans dropping again. As of Aug. 14, Trump had a 39.7% favorable rating, down from 41.7% in late May. His unfavorable rating stood at 55.9%, up from 53.7% in late May.

5. What about Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden's son?

Although unrelated to Trump's charges, the legal woes of the president's son have become inextricably linked with President Joe Biden in GOP campaign trail speeches, Republican congressional rhetoric and conservative media.

Essentially, Hunter Biden faces legal exposure in at least two areas related to his taxes and possession of a weapon. He reached a plea agreement in June but it was scuttled last month. Hunter Biden has subsequently pleaded not guilty to the tax charges.

The larger picture that has surged forth on conservative media and in GOP-led congressional investigations focuses on Hunter Biden's business relationships at the time his father was the sitting vice president. Republican members of Congress, and proponents on conservative media, have alleged without evidence that the elder Biden accepted bribes.

One source of the allegations was a verbal tip from an FBI informant, but that claim has not been substantiated. In June, NBC News reported that a "senior law enforcement official" told the network that the FBI and a prosecutor "reviewed the allegation" at the time three years ago, "but it wasn't substantiated."

Another source of the so far unfounded corruption allegation is testimony by a former Hunter Biden business associate, Devon Archer. In testimony, Republicans claim, Archer said then-Vice President Biden was "the brand" that the younger Biden promoted presumably to enrich the family.

But Archer stopped far short of claiming that Joe Biden conspired to fix policy for financial gain, or that Hunter Biden asked his father to take official measures in support of his business initiatives.

The White House has belittled the accusations saying the claims were "debunked" in past years.

Congressional Republicans acknowledge the paucity of evidence to support the accusations, the use of the "Biden crime family" rhetoric or even suggesting impeachment.

"It's too early for a formal impeachment inquiry," Congressman Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican, has said. "We should have more confidence that actual high crimes and misdemeanors occurred before starting a formal impeachment inquiry."

Ohio Congressman David Joyce, a Republican, added that there is "a lot of rumor and innuendo," but "that's not fact" to him.

"As a former prosecutor, I think there has to be facts, and I think there has to be due process that we follow, and I've not seen any of that today," he told a television reporter.

Still, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, said his committee is preparing to subpoena the Biden family.

Evidence or not, Florida political watcher Susan MacManus said the focus on the Bidens has proved damaging, especially as many GOP voters perceive there is unequal treatment. More precisely, Trump faces a series of criminal cases while Hunter Biden was offered what many Republicans viewed as a soft plea deal.

"I agree that there is that carryover that Trump was wronged and now they think he is being wronged again because of what they perceive is a double standard in terms of how penalties are meted out to the Bidens versus Trump," she said.

But rather than help Trump's standing, it may simply be souring less-than-overtly-partisan voters on both the president and the former president, MacManus added.

"In every single poll that I've looked at for months on end, people don't want a Trump-Biden rematch. They don't," she said. "But they feel like this is what they are destined to have. "

Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at afins@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Trump indicted: Explainer on charges, allegations against Trump, Biden