Donald Trump indicted on charges related to efforts to overturn 2020 election
Former President Donald Trump was indicted for a third time on criminal charges related to his efforts to retain power in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.
Read the indictment here.
He was charged on four counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.
Trump had already signaled that he faced charges brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith, rallying his congressional allies to claim that the justice system has been weaponized against him.
The charges stem from his efforts, in the weeks leading up to January 6, 2021, to block the certification of electoral votes in favor of Joe Biden, who won the election.
“The defendant, Donald Trump, was the forty-fifth president of the United States and a candidate for re-election in 2020,” the indictment read. “The defendant lost the 2020 election.”
“Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated then anyway — to make his knowingly false claims legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.”
In a brief statement after the indictment was unsealed, Smith said, “The attack on our nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021 was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy. As described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies, lies by the defendant, targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government — the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.”
Trump predicted also that he would be indicted, posting on his Truth Social media site that “deranged” Jack Smith would move to charge him at 5 p.m. ET. As it turned out, he was not far off the mark, as the Grand Jury handed down its indictment during the hour, with it unsealed at about 5:30 p.m.
As it became clear that the indictment was imminent, cable news networks went to nonstop coverage and commentary. “I feel kind of sick,” CNN commentator Van Jones said after the news broke. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow returned to anchor coverage through the evening. On Fox News, as former federal prosecutor Brett Tolman weighed in, the chyron read, “Free speech has been indicted.” Network personalities continued to align with Trump team talking points.
The indictment referred to six unnamed co-conspirators who Trump enlisted “to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election and retain power.” The indictment referred to an attorney “who was willing to knowingly spread false claims and pursue strategies that the Defendants 2020 re-election campaign attorneys would not.” There is widespread belief that it referred to Rudy Giuliani. Other conspirators are identified as those who attempted to submit false slates of electors and to “leverage the Vice President’s ceremonial role overseeing the certification proceeding to obstruct the certification of the presidential election.”
Smith said that “our investigation of other individuals continues,” but he declined to answer reporters’ questions of whether additional indictments will be handed down.
The indictment referred to multiple instances where Trump was told that his claims were false. “As early as mid-November,” the indictment claimed, a senior campaign adviser told Trump that his allegations of “a large number of dead voters in Georgia were untrue.” Another false claim was the security footage captured evidence of fraud as votes were being counted at State Farm Arena in Georgia. On Dec. 8, the senior campaign adviser wrote in an email, “When our research and campaign legal team can’t back up any of the claims made by our Elite Strike Force Legal Team, you can see why we’re 0-32 on our cases. I’ll obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but it’s tough to own any of this when it’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.”
The 45-page indictment covered much of the same ground of the January 6th Committee last year, which ended its proceedings in December with a recommendation that Trump be criminally charged. Prosecutors claim that Trump knew that his claims that the election was rigged “were false,” citing instances where Vice President Mike Pence, Justice Department officials, White House attorneys and staffers, and state and federal courts found the allegations meritless.
In one instance cited, when Pence told Trump on January 1, 2021 that he did not have the authority to block the certification of the electoral vote, the then-president told him, “You’re too honest.” Pence testified to the grand jury in April, and the indictment referred to his “contemporaneous notes.”
The judge who received the case was U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, an appointee of President Barack Obama. Smith said that he would seek a “speedy trial,” raising the prospect that a trial will take place in the midst of the 2024 presidential campaign.
Trump bashed the pending indictment before it was officially handed down, writing on Truth Social, “Why didn’t they do this 2.5 years ago? Why did they wait so long? Because they wanted to put it right in the middle of my campaign. Prosecutorial Misconduct!”
Trump’s campaign later issued a statement comparing the indictment to “Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union, and other authoritarian, dictatorial regimes. President Trump has always followed the law and the Constitution, with advice from highly accomplished attorneys.”
In the indictment, prosecutors address what is likely to be another Trump defense: That he has a First Amendment right to make the election claims.
“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 during the election and that he had won,” the indictment stated. Trump, though, pursued “unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.”
There has been some criticism of Attorney General Merrick Garland for not moving sooner on the investigation of Trump and his allies in the aftermath of January 6th. Instead, prosecutors focused on charging those involved in storming the Capitol, many of whom said that they acted on the president’s characterization of election results and invite to come to Washington on that date. Garland last year appointed Smith to serve as special counsel to investigate Trump’s role in the events that led to the attack on the Capitol. Smith also was tasked with investigating Trump’s handling of classified material after he left the White House. In June, prosecutors charged the former president with 37 counts related to that investigation, and added three additional charges last week.
Trump’s criminal indictments have not diminished his standing in the race for the Republican nomination. In fact, there is polling evidence that GOP voters have rallied around him, as he has pulled way ahead of his closest rival, Ron DeSantis. His initial court appearance is scheduled for Thursday.
The indictment went into Trump’s conduct on January 6th, including remarks he made to supporters at a rally at the Ellipse, when he urged those in the crowd to “fight like hell” and that he would march with them to the Capitol. He did not, and instead returned to the White House. But as the violence unfolded, Trump refused to make a calming message. Instead, he tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
The indictment noted that one minute later, at 2:24 p.m., “the United States Secret Service was forced to evacuate the Vice President to a secure location.” According to the indictment, Trump’s co-conspirators continued to contact senators to try to block the electoral vote count and still sought out and aid to Pence to try to convince him to delay the certification.
Pence, who is running against Trump in the GOP presidential primary, said in a statement after the indictment, “Our country is more important than one man. Our Constitution is more important than any one man’s career.”
“On January 6th, Former President Trump demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution. I chose the Constitution and always will.”
The White House has avoided commenting on any of Trump’s indictments, other than to defend the independence of the Justice Department against attacks from the former president that Joe Biden was orchestrating an effort to take down a political opponent. On Tuesday, as the latest indictment dominated news coverage, Biden was in Rehoboth Beach, DE, at theater to watch Oppenheimer.
