Former President Donald Trump was indicted Tuesday for his alleged plot to overturn the 2020 election, an effort that culminated with the violent Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
A Washington, D.C., grand jury filed the four-count indictment shortly after 5 p.m., minutes after Trump predicted on his social media site that he would be indicted momentarily.
“The attack on our nation’s capital on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” special counsel Jack Smith said. “It was fueled by lies, lies by the defendant.”
The case was assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, an appointee of former President Barack Obama who has sentenced numerous Jan. 6 defendants to prison time.
The 45-page indictment said six unnamed co-conspirators worked along with Trump to overturn the election.
“[Trump] lost the 2020 election. Despite having lost, the defendant was determined to stay in power,” the indictment reads. “For more than two months … [Trump] spread lies that there was outcome-determining fraud and that he had actually won.”
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland praised Smith and his team as “principled” and nonpartisan.
Trump quickly derided the entire probe as an effort to derail his White House comeback campaign.
“This is nothing more than the latest corrupt chapter in the continued pathetic attempt … to interfere with the 2024 presidential election,” Trump wrote on his social media site.
The indictment, the third for Trump in recent months, had been expected since Trump was hit on July 16 with a target letter by Smith’s prosecutors. Last Thursday, Trump’s top lawyers met with Smith and his team in a failed effort to convince them not to indict Trump.
Trump faces a Thursday arraignment where he will have to appear before Chutkan in the nation’s capital. The hearing will take place just a stone’s throw from the Capitol building where thousands of his violent supporters tried to prevent Congress from certifying President Biden’s win on Jan. 6.
The powerful charging document focuses in great detail on Trump’s plot to spread lies about the election and his effort to enlist phony slates of pro-Trump electors from states he lost.
It also drills down hard on Trump’s effort to bully ex-Vice President Mike Pence into joining his scheme. When Pence refused, Trump sicced his extremist supporters on him, forcing the veep to flee for his life.
“[Trump] repeatedly refused to approve a message directing rioters to leave the Capitol,” the indictment said.
Pence, who may wind up having to testify at Trump’s trial, said the document is a harsh political, as well as legal, indictment of Trump.
“Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States,” Pence said. “Our country is more important than one man.”
The White House did not comment on the indictment. Trump’s main GOP presidential challenger, Fla. Gov. Ron DeSantis, predicted the former president wouldn’t get a fair shake from a Washington, D.C., jury.
While the co-conspirators are not named, the indictment suggests Rudy Giuliani is Co-conspirator 1. Several quotes attributed to Co-conspirator 1 in the indictment have previously been attributed to Giuliani.
The former mayor and Trump personal lawyer appeared before Smith’s team to answer questions in an effort to avoid being charged.
John Eastman, a right-wing law professor who hatched the scheme to overturn the election, confirmed that he is Co-conspirator 2.
All six of the co-conspirators could eventually be indicted themselves or could wind up agreeing to cooperate with Smith to escape prosecution.
The blockbuster indictment mirrors the possible charges mentioned in the target letter, which focus more on Trump’s alleged scheme to overturn the 2020 election as opposed to inciting the attack on the Capitol itself.
It includes conspiracy to defraud the U.S. focused on the sprawling effort to overturn the 2020 election, including bogus claims of supposed fraud and obstructing an official proceeding refers to the effort to prevent Congress from certifying President Biden’s win on Jan. 6, 2021.
Depriving someone of their rights under the color of the law is a charge often used in civil rights cases. In the Trump case, it seeks to hold him accountable for seeking to block the will of American voters to elect Biden.
The latest indictment is the second time Trump has been charged with federal crimes.
Trump pleaded not guilty in June to a 37-count indictment in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, which prosecutors say centers around him taking top secret documents when he left office and defying government efforts to get them back.
Last Thursday, Trump was hit with a superseding indictment in the documents case, a development that added significant new weight to the charges.
He is accused in the new indictment of ordering employees to delete security footage from Mar-a-Lago in an effort to cover up his alleged obstruction. The feds also now say he flashed one of the documents — a top secret Iran war plan — to researchers in a 2021 meeting.
U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon set a May 2024 trial date in the documents case, rejecting Trump’s demand that the case be suspended until after the presidential election but giving the defense more time than Smith’s team had hoped.
The judge could delay the case even further now that the superseding indictment adds a second low-level Trump employee accused of aiding his alleged coverup after valet Walt Nauta was initially charged.
Trump could also soon face state charges in Georgia. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has suggested she plans to seek indictments in her election interference probe that was launched after Trump demanded officials “find” just enough votes to allow him to beat Biden in the Peach State.
The ex-president is also facing a March 2024 trial on New York State charges stemming from hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels in the runup to the 2016 election.
Check back for updates.
