Trump Indicted Over Efforts to Overturn 2020 Election Results

On Tuesday, former U.S. President Donald Trump confronted his third criminal indictment this year in a Justice Department investigation over his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, as he seeks to reclaim the White House in 2024.

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Trump was charged with three criminal conspiracies: a conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function; a conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the Jan. 6 congressional proceeding to certify the results of the presidential election; and a conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one's vote counted, says the indictment. He was summoned to appear at a Washington, D.C., courthouse on Thursday, Aug. 3.

MORE DETAILS

"Despite having lost, the Defendant (Trump) was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on Nov. 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won," reads the 45-page indictment.

"These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election," prosecutors say in the indictment.

With plenty of examples of alledged election falsehoods and frauds, the indictment highlights Trump's "exploitation of the violence and chaos," and discloses that Trump privately realized his loss to President Joe Biden, as he agreed after the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff urged him not to take action on a national security issue.

Nevertheless, the former president kept tweeting and encouraging his supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6. He also pushed then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject the 2020 electoral votes, as shown in several conversations between the two published in the indictment.

"The Defendant attempted to use a crowd of supporters that he had gathered in Washington, D.C. to pressure the Vice President to fraudulently alter the election results," it pointed out.

Six "Co-Conspirators" who allegedly colluded with Trump in the attempts to overturn the 2020 election results are revealed in the indictment. It does not specify the names of the six people, but provides details to help identify some of them.

Also included is one unnamed Justice Department official who "attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud," and an unnamed political consultant "who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding."

The latest charges are the second round of federal charges put forward by special counsel Jack Smith, whom the Justice Department appointed to oversee an independent probe into Trump and investigate the classified documents case, which Trump later pleaded not guilty.

Previously in June, Trump was indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. In the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, he faced 40 charges, including obstruction and willful retention of national defense information.

Among the charges, one is about Trump discussing on an audio recording of a classified document in his possession. In the conversation allegedly at his golf club and summer residence in New Jersey in July 2021, Trump said: "As president I could have declassified it. ... Now I can't, you know, but this is still secret."

DIVIDED REACTIONS

Responses to Trump's indictment from the U.S. Congress were divided along partisan lines. Calling Jan. 6 "one of the saddest and most infamous days in American history, personally orchestrated by Trump and fueled by his insidious Big Lie," Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Tuesday in a statement that the third indictment of Trump illustrates, "in shocking detail," that the violence of Jan. 6 was "the culmination of a months-long criminal plot led by the former president to defy democracy and overturn the will of the American people."

In contrast, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy indicated that the latest indictment was designed to shift attention from a corruption investigation involving President Biden's son Hunter Biden.

"Everyone in America could see what was going to come next: DOJ's attempt to distract from the news and attack the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, President Trump," he wrote on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Much of the evidence in the latest indictment can be sourced from the U.S. House select committee investigating the Capitol riot, which disbanded in January after 18 months of investigation, a process interpreted sharply along partisan and ideological lines in the U.S.

The committee's final report, released in December last year, affirmed that Trump refused to accept the 2020 election results and plotted to overturn the election outcome. Trump, who launched a third bid for the White House in 2022, has repeatedly blasted the committee and described the investigation and other inquiries related to him as politically motivated.

In March, Trump was indicted on New York state charges of falsifying business records in connection with hush-money payments to an adult film actress ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

According to an Associated Press analysis of recent fundraising disclosures, Trump's political committees have paid out at least US$59.2 million to more than 100 lawyers and law firms since January 2021. Trump's attorney John Lauro called the latest indictment of the former president "an attack on free speech and political advocacy."

As the first former U.S. president who has been criminally charged, Trump could face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison given the three conspiracies in the indictment, according to U.S. media.