Read the entire 45-page Trump indictment over his alleged attempts to overturn 2020 election
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s federal indictment against former President Donald Trump charges the 45th president with conspiring with six others for months to knowingly spread lies that there had been widespread election fraud.
The indictment, the third criminal case against Trump, alleges that his unfounded claims that he had, in fact, actually defeated President Biden culminated in the violent riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“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,” the indictment claims.
“Each of these conspiracies — which built on the widespread mistrust the Defendant was creating through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud — targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election.”
Read the full indictment here:
A grand jury charged Trump, 77, on 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 rights.
The indictment lists six of Trump’s co-conspirators, some of whom were known to the grand jurors, that Trump “enlisted” for the scheme. None of them are named in the document.
“Co-conspirator number one,” who is likely Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, was listed as an attorney who was “willing to spread knowingly false information” about the election that Trump’s campaign would not.
Giuliani spoke voluntarily to prosecutors as part of a proffer agreement, in which a person’s statements can’t be used against them in any future criminal case that is brought.
Another attorney who “devised and attempted to implement a strategy to leverage” former President Mike Pence’s “ceremonial role overseeing the certification proceeding,” was also named as a co-conspirator in the document.
The third co-conspirator, also an attorney, also made claims of election fraud that were “embraced and amplified” by Trump, although he privately told others the claims were “crazy,” according to the indictment.
The fourth was a Department of Justice official who worked on civil matters and tried to use the DOJ to “open sham election crime investigations.”
Another attorney and a political consultant also brewed a plan to “submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the proceeding,” according to the indictment.
Between Nov. 14, 2020, and about Jan. 20, 2021, Trump urged local election officials to undo voting results in their states, pressured Pence to halt the certification of electoral votes and falsely claimed that the election had been stolen. Judges rejected the notion.
In addition to conspiring to defraud the US and obstruct an official proceeding, Trump is also charged with one count of conspiracy against rights.
Trump attempted “to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment” of the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted in a presidential election,” the indictment says.
An initial court appearance has been scheduled for Thursday at 4 p.m. in Washington, DC, federal court.
The federal indictment is Trump’s second from Smith. He separately faces 40 federal counts related to troves of national security documents he allegedly stashed at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. The trial begins in May.
Trump also faces an indictment in New York for alleged hush money payments he made ahead of the 2016 election. The trial begins in March.
Despite the legal troubles, Trump remains the dominant frontrunner in the 2024 Republican presidential race.
With Post wires
