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A new indictment against the former president claims that Donald Trump engaged in a conspiracy to defraud the US by attempting to rig the results of the 2020 presidential election, a conspiracy to obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional hearing to verify the outcome, and a conspiracy against the right of citizens to vote and have their votes counted.
Even though the former president has established himself as the undisputed front-runner to be the Republican nominee for president in 2024, Jack Smith, a special counsel for the Department of Justice (DOJ), filed the indictment on Tuesday in a federal district court in Washington, DC. This is the third indictment that Trump is currently facing.Â
Trump has already faced charges in Florida and New York for handling secret documents improperly and paying hush money to an adult film actress in violation of the Espionage Act.
A thorough account of Trump's actions from November 2020 to January 2021 is provided in the most recent indictment, which also accuses him of disseminating "lies" about "outcome-determinative fraud" in the presidential elections. The indictment claims that the conspiracies Trump participated in "targeted a bedrock function" of the US federal government: "the nation's process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election." This is while conceding his right to deliberately spread untruths and pursue legal action.
Trump vehemently denied the accusation and asserted that he was the target of a political witch hunt. The former president's campaign described the indictment as the "latest corrupt chapter in the continued pathetic attempt by the Biden crime family and their weaponized Department of Justice" to meddle in the 2024 election in a statement posted on Truth Social, Trump's preferred social media platform. The campaign referred to it as "election interference" and linked Trump's "persecution" to events that took place under autocratic, dictatorial governments like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and others.
Trump did "knowingly combine, conspire, confederate, and agree with co-conspirators...to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the federal government," according to the indictment's second charge, which is expanded upon in the first. The conspiracy's goal was to use willfully false allegations of election fraud to annul the valid election results.
To "ignore the popular vote; disenfranchise millions of voters; dismiss legitimate electors; cause the ascertainment of and voting by illegitimate electors" in his favor, Trump urged state legislators and election authorities. In particular, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania saw a "fraudulent set of electors" organized by Trump and his staff. They subsequently forwarded the vice president (VP) and other federal officials these fake certificates so that they could be taken into account during the certification hearing on January 6.
