An NAJ screen shot of the front page of The New York Times website on this historic day, Aug. 1, 2023
By Glynn Wilson –
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Finally, the day has arrived and the Department of Justice has issued a formal indictment of former President Donald Trump for all his efforts to try to overturn the 2020 presidential election and cling to power after clearly losing to Joe Biden by millions of votes and in the Electoral College.
Donald Trump: NAJ screen shot
The indictment was filed by the special counsel Jack Smith in Federal District Court in Washington, according to breaking news from the New York Times.
It accuses Trump of three conspiracies to defraud the United States, to obstruct an official government proceeding and to deprive people of civil rights provided by federal law and the Constitution.
“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,†the indictment reads.
It claims Trump had six co-conspirators, but does not name them.
The charges signify an extraordinary moment in United States history: a former president, in the midst of a campaign to return to the White House, being charged over attempts to use the levers of government power to subvert democracy and remain in office against the will of voters.
The indictment came more than two and a half years after a pro-Trump mob — egged on by incendiary speeches by Trump and his allies — stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in the worst attack on the seat of Congress since the War of 1812.
A federal grand jury returned the indictment a little more than eight months after Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed Smith, a career federal prosecutor, to oversee both the election tampering and classified documents inquiries into Trump. It came just over a year after a House select committee held high-profile hearings on the Jan. 6 attack and what led to it that laid out extensive evidence of Trump’s efforts to reverse the election results.
Garland moved to named Smith as special counsel just days after Trump declared that he was running for president again.
Trump now faces two separate federal indictments. In June, Smith brought charges in Florida accusing Trump — the current front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — of illegally holding on to a highly sensitive trove of national defense documents and then obstructing the government’s attempts to get them back. He is scheduled to go on trial in that case in May.
The scheme charged by Smith on Tuesday in the election case played out largely in the two months between Election Day in 2020 and the attack on the Capitol. During that period, Trump took part in a range of efforts to retain power despite having lost the presidential race to Biden.
Trump is expected to show up in person for his arraignment in Federal District Court in Washington on Thursday.
In addition to federal charges in the election and documents cases, Trump also faces legal troubles in state courts.
He has been charged by the Manhattan district attorney’s office in a case that centers on hush money payments made to the porn star Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 election.
The efforts by Trump and his allies to reverse his election loss are also the focus of a separate investigation by the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga. That inquiry appears likely to generate charges this month.
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