Trump indicted by Jan. 6 grand jury on 4 federal counts related to election interference
Donald Trump was indicted on federal criminal charges Tuesday for his role in interfering with the 2020 presidential election, the third indictment facing the former president as he mounts another campaign for the White House.
Special Counsel Jack Smith secured an indictment in the case from a grand jury in Washington, D.C., describing over 45 pages a broad conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election that was marked by a violent riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Smith charged the former president with four counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against the rights of voters, referring to those who supported Trump’s opponent in the election, President Joe Biden.
“The attack on our nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” Smith said in a statement to the press. “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.”
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“My office will seek a speedy trial,” he added, indicating his intent to take Trump to trial well before the November 2024 presidential election. He also noted that the investigation is ongoing, suggesting others who assisted Trump could be charged for their roles in the conspiracies.
Trump, whose campaign derided the new charges while attacking the Biden administration, was summoned to appear at a Washington, D.C., federal court hearing on Thursday, when he is expected to enter his plea.
The indictment, released on Tuesday evening, notes that the president collaborated with six unnamed “co-conspirators.”
Trump is accused of enlisting four attorneys, a Justice Department official and a political consultant to spread false claims about fraud in the 2020 presidential election vote, leverage Vice President Mike Pence in an effort to obstruct the certification of the Electoral College results, attempt to use the U.S. government to open sham election crime investigations, and implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors — all to obstruct Congress’ official proceeding.
“The defendant, Donald Trump, was the forty-fifth president of the United States and a candidate for reelection in 2020. The defendant lost the 2020 presidential election,” the indictment reads in its first sentences. “Despite having lost, the defendant was determined to remain in power.”
So, the indictment states, Trump “spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and [Trump] knew that they were false.”
Throughout the detailed 45-page indictment, the special counsel’s office repeatedly asserts that Trump knew that he had lost the election and pursued a conspiracy to overturn the results anyway — characterizing Trump’s scheme as a threat to American democracy.
“The defendant’s knowingly false statements were integral to his criminal plans” to obstruct Congress’ certification of the vote on January 6, the indictment reads, and “interfere with others’ right to vote and have their votes counted.”
In seven battleground states, the indictment alleges, Trump schemed to name false slates of presidential electors: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Before Trump was going to deliver a speech to thousands of his supporters on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, Trump called Vice President Pence that morning to pressure him into altering the Electoral College results in those seven states that he had lost, according to the indictment.
“At 11:15 a.m., [Trump] called the Vice President and again pressured him to fraudulently reject or return Biden’s legitimate electoral votes,” the indictment states. “The Vice President again refused.
“Immediately after the call, [Trump] decided to single out the Vice President in public remarks he would make within the hour [to his supporters], reinserting language that he had personally drafted earlier that morning — falsely claiming that the Vice President had authority to send electoral votes to the states — but that [Trump’s] advisors had previously successfully advocated be removed.”
After his speech on the Ellipse, a mob of Trump’s supporters breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, disrupting the certification of the Electoral College, the president “exploited” the violence to call lawmakers and attempt to convince them to delay the procedure, the indictment alleges.
“On the evening of January 6, the defendant and Co-Conspirator 1 attempted to exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol by calling lawmakers to convince them, based knowingly on false claims of election fraud, to delay the certification,” the indictment reads. On 7:01 pm that evening, as the riot subsided, Trump was still refusing to allow White House lawyers to drop objections to Congress’ certification of the vote.
Public statements referenced in the indictment indicate that Co-Conspirator 1 is former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, then a close aide to Trump. No other indictments are known to have been returned in the case.
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The former president “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 four-count indictment states, nodding to Trump’s right to free speech under the First Amendment.
But “shortly after election day,” the indictment reads, Trump “pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.”
Several parts of the indictment assert that Trump, along with his inner circle of senior lawyers and campaign advisors, knew the allegations he was making about election fraud were lies.
The indictment states that In a Dec. 8, 2020 email, a top Trump campaign advisor warned, “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 sh*t beamed down from the mothership.”
In a statement issued through his campaign, Trump derided the charges as “fake” and said he was being indicted again because polls show him as the clear frontrunner to win the GOP presidential nomination for a third consecutive time.
“This is nothing more than the latest corrupt chapter in the continued pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election, in which President Trump is the undisputed frontrunner, and leading by substantial margins,” the former president said.
Within minutes, the Trump campaign sent out another email, this time soliciting donations, which are helping him pay millions in attorneys’ fees to fight charges in three jurisdictions.
In addition to the latest charges, Trump faces a second federal indictment accusing him and two others of conspiring to obstruct the U.S. government’s efforts to retrieve classified records from his Palm Beach estate, and he is accused by the Manhattan district attorney’s office of paying hush money to a porn actress to prevent her story of their reported affair from being published during the 2016 presidential campaign.
This story was originally published August 1, 2023 at 5:27 PM with the headline "Trump indicted by Jan. 6 grand jury on 4 federal counts related to election interference."
