Former president Donald Trump was indicted for a third time for alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump, a frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, was charged with four counts related to efforts to subvert the will of voters in 2020.
These include obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding during the Jan. 6 count of the electoral college ballots at Capitol Hill, and three conspiracies: defrauding the US by spreading lies; obstructing an official proceeding; and depriving people of a civil right to have their votes counted.
“Despite having lost, the defendant was determined to remain in power,” read the indictment released yesterday (Aug. 1), which details repeated attempts to pressure vice president Mike Pence to alter the election result during the Jan. 6 vote certification.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s filing accuses Trump and six co-conspirators of employing various tactics to dismiss the legitimate Nov. 3, 2020 election results between Nov. 14 that year and Jan. 20, 2021—the date Joe Biden took office.
Trump has been summoned for an initial court appearance in the case on Thursday (Aug. 3) afternoon before a magistrate judge in Federal District Court in Washington, DC. A trial date is yet to be set.
Quotable: Trump pushed back on latest indictment
“Why did they wait two and a half years to bring these fake charges, right in the middle of President Trump’s winning campaign for 2024? ..... The answer is, election interference! ... These un-American witch hunts will fail and President Trump will be re-elected to the White House.”—The Trump campaign’s response to the indictment on Aug. 1, which was echoed by several other Republic Congressman who repeatedly accuse the Biden administration of “weaponizing” the justice system
People of interest: Donald Trump’s co-conspirators in the attempt to subvert the 2020 elections
The indictment does not name Trump’s co-conspirators, but the New York Times was able to match some of the descriptions to Trump’s aides.
Co-conspirator 1: Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani was “willing to spread knowingly false claims”to deny the transfer of power. Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert J. Costello, told the NYT that it “appears that Mayor Giuliani is alleged to be co-conspirator No. 1.”
Co-conspirator 2: John Eastman, a California law professor, who came up with a plan to then-vice president Mike Pence’s “ceremonial role overseeing the certification proceeding” that was taking place inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to “obstruct the certification of the presidential election.”
Co-conspirator 3: Sidney Powell, the “kraken” conspiracy theorist, is described as another lawyer whose “unfounded claims of election fraud”—they reportedly sounded “crazy” even to Trump.
Co-conspirator 4: Former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who was appointed as acting attorney general in the last days of Trump’s presidency, conspired with the ex-president to “open sham election crime investigations” and “influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.”
Co-conspirator 5: A lawyer who helped craft “a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding”—and co-conspirator 6—a “political consultant who helped implement the fake elector scheme”—are harder to identify. Both of those descriptions could apply to several people.
Is Trump to blame for the Jan. 6 insurrection?
The indictment mentioned Trump’s “exploitation of the violence and chaos” at Capitol Hill that day, and also says that once the violence broke out, he and his co-conspirators “exploited the disruption by redoubling efforts to levy false claims of election fraud and convince Members of Congress to further delay the certification based on those claims.”
However, the indictment stops short of explicitly accusing the 45th US president of inciting the riot.
Person of interest: Special counsel Jack Smith
Fresh off a stint as a war crimes prosecutor in The Hague, Jack Smith was appointed special counsel to oversee Trump’s cases by attorney general Merrick Garland last November. Put in charge just days after Trump declared that he was running for president again, he has been aggressive and speedy in bringing indictments against Trump.
A few months before yesterday’s indictment, Smith indicted Trump with risking national security secrets by taking classified documents from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago resident.
The former president and his followers have taken note of Smith’s moves. Trump has called Smith “a deranged lunatic” in a social media tirade. Meanwhile, some of his supporters have threatened the special counsel, his family, and his team, which prompted tight security measures. In the first four months of his Mar-a-Lago probe, Smith spent more than $9 million, of which $1.9 million was spent on a security detail from the US Marshals Service.
Case of interest: Trump’s hush money indictment in New York
Trump became the first former US president in history to face criminal charges in March when he was indicted for his role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Before the 2016 election, the GOP nominee had allegedly tried to bury allegations of extramarital sexual encounters between the two.
One big number: Trump’s legal fees bite into White House bid
$21 million: How much Trump’s PAC, Save America, spent on legal fees to more than 40 different law firms this year for Trump and his advisers in the first six months of this year, according to new campaign finance reports filed Monday (July 31) with the Federal Election Commission. It had spent $16 million for the same purpose between 2020 and 2022.
Calendar: Trump’s trials
March 25, 2024: Scheduled date for the hush payments trial.
May 20, 2024: The trial date set for the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.
TBD: A trial date is yet to be set in the election overturning efforts case. The judge assigned to Trump’s case, Barack Obama-appointee Tanya S Chutkan, has been a tough on Jan. 6 rioters—she has sentenced 38 of them with sentences ranging from 10 days to five years. She also denied Trump’s 2021 motion to avoid disclosing documents to the Jan. 6 committee, ordering him to turn over the material and writing, “Presidents are not kings, and plaintiff is not president.”
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