On Tuesday, Former President Donald Trump was indicted on charges of trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election after he lost, The Associated Press reports.
A federal grand jury indicted Trump 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. These charges now mark the third criminal case against the former president.
In announcing the charges on Tuesday, Special Counsel Jack Smith called what happened on January 6, 2021, an “unprecedented assault” on democracy. “It was fueled by lies: lies by the defendant aimed at obstructing a bedrock function of the United States government — the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying presidential election results.”
According to CBS News, The indictment says that despite having lost the election, Trump “was determined to remain in power. “So, for over two months after the election,” Trump “spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won,” the indictment states, and adds, “These claims were false, and the defendant knew they were false,” but “repeated and widely disseminated them anyway.”
According to the indictment, six unnamed co-conspirators were allegedly enlisted to help Trump “overturn” the election “and retain power.
Trump and his co-conspirators reportedly “pushed officials to ignore the popular vote” and “organized fraudulent slates of electors” in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The indictment charges Trump and his co-conspirators with using “knowingly false claims of election fraud” in creating the fake slates of electors.
Trump and his associates also allegedly used the Justice Department’s authority to launch “sham election crime investigations,” and they allegedly tried to recruit Mike Pence, who was vice president at the time, to use his official position to confirm the electoral vote total on January 6 to “fraudulently alter the election results.” Additionally, according to the indictment, Trump repeatedly allegedly put pressure on Pence to erroneously reject or return Mr. Biden’s electoral votes.
“After it became public on the afternoon of January 6 that the vice president would not fraudulently alter the election results, a large and angry crowd — including many individuals whom the defendant had deceived into believing the vice president could and might change the election results — violently attacked the Capitol and halted the proceeding,” the indictment says.
In response to charges, the Trump campaign said the indictment was the “latest corrupt chapter in the continuously pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2020 presidential election.” The former president’s campaign questioned why it took “two and a half years” to bring the charges during the presidential campaign.
The indictment claims that the former president watched the violence unfold on that day but did nothing to condemn it. Trump has been summoned to appear before Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya at the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.