Rudy Giuliani, who served as a personal attorney for President Donald Trump, said the indictment handed up on Monday evening amounted to "an affront to American Democracy."

The indictment would do "permanent, irrevocable harm to our justice system," Giuliani, who was charged as an alleged co-conspirator of the former president, said in a statement.

He added, "It's just the next chapter in a book of lies with the purpose of framing President Donald Trump and anyone willing to take on the ruling regime. They lied about Russian collusion, they lied about Joe Biden's foreign bribery scheme, and they lied about Hunter Biden's laptop hard drive proving 30 years of criminal activity. The real criminals here are the people who have brought this case forward both directly and indirectly."

-ABC News' Aaron Katersky

The 98-page indictment centers on racketeering charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

It charges 41 counts, 13 of which Trump faces, and alleges that Trump made 13 false statements in his effort to overturn the election results.

In addition to Trump, those charged include his one-time personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, attorney John Eastman, former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorney Kenneth Chesebro, former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark, attorney Jenna Ellis and attorney Sidney Powell.

The remaining defendants are Ray Smith III, Robert Cheeley, Michael Roman, David Shafer, Shawn Still, Stephen Lee, Harrison Floyd, Trevian Kutti, Cathleen Latham, Scott Hall and Misty Hampton aka Emily Misty Hayes.

The indictment alleges 161 acts as part of the efforts to overturn the state's election results. They include press conferences and social media posts that themselves might not be crimes, but are being charged as part of the overarching enterprise.

As an upstart chief prosecutor in perhaps the most prestigious legal office in the country, Rudy Giuliani in the mid-1980s made use of a novel way to quell the scourge of New York organized crime -- leveraging a brand new, little-known federal statute called Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations.

Using RICO, as it's known, Giuliani managed to charge dozens of mobsters with seemingly unrelated crimes, all under the umbrella of one overarching scheme. At the time, it was a revolutionary use of federal law and it later served as a model for state and federal prosecutors around the country.

As U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Giuliani's successful prosecutions of New York's storied crime families made him a media darling and launched Giuliani's political career. But now, four decades later, Giuliani finds himself on the other side of his own legal legacy -- facing Georgia state criminal RICO charges in the Fulton County district attorney's case against his longtime boss, former President Donald Trump, and 18 of his allies.

"This is perfect, perfect irony," said Anthony Cardinale, a veteran defense attorney who represented "Fat Tony" Salerno, the former head of the Genovese crime family, in 1986. "Giuliani is going to be sitting in a courtroom, pray to God ... 40 years after he started bringing these exact types of cases."

To read more about Giuliani's winding road to prosecution, click here.

-ABC News' Lucien Bruggeman