Trump indicted on four counts, accused of making ‘knowingly false’ claims in bid to overturn 2020 election results

Former President Donald Trump was indicted Tuesday in connection with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election result, with federal prosecutors charging he made “knowingly false” claims of voter fraud in a desperate bid to stay in power after his defeat by Joe Biden.

The third indictment brought in four months against Trump, 77, consists of 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 45th president faces up to 55 years in prison if convicted on all charges.

However, even if found guilty, Trump can still contest the 2024 presidential election, in which he’s the frontrunner for the Republican nomination and polling neck-and-neck with Biden in general-election matchups.

The indictment does not specifically charge Trump with the crime of inciting a riot through his defiant Jan. 6 speech in which he told thousands of supporters to descend on Congress or with specifically conspiring with rioters who pillaged the Capitol to disrupt certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the Electoral College.

Six alleged co-conspirators are described but not named in the document and it’s unclear if they ultimately will face criminal charges. Context included in the indictment makes clear that five of the co-conspirators are former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Trump attorneys John Eastman and Sidney Powell, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and another Trump-linked attorney, Kenneth Chesebro.

Six co-conspirators are described but not named in the document and it’s unclear if they ultimately will face criminal charges. Context included in the charging files indicate they include Trump’s former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and former Trump-allied attorney Sidney Powell.

“The attack on our nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” special counsel Jack Smith said in a brief statement to reporters, after which he took no questions.

“As described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies — lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the US government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.”

Trump, whose campaign immediately blasted the charges as politically motivated, has an initial court appearance set for Thursday at 4 p.m. in Washington, DC, federal court at the base of Capitol Hill.

Smith said he intended to “seek a speedy trial so that our evidence can be tested in court and judged by a jury of citizens.”

According to the indictment, Trump enlisted Giuliani to overturn the election result on Nov. 14, 2020, one day after lawyers for his campaign acknowledged in court that the Republican had lost the crucial state of Arizona to Biden. 

From that point on, prosecutors say, largely with the help of Giuliani and Powell, Trump disseminated increasingly wild claims about the veracity of the results — culminating in allegations that more than 10,000 votes had been cast by dead people in Georgia, that 205,000 more votes had been cast in Pennsylvania than there were registered voters in the state, and that more than 30,000 non-citizens had voted in Arizona.

The entire time, Smith’s prosecutors said, Trump’s allegations “were false and [he] knew 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.”

Meanwhile, prosecutors say, a parallel operation meant to throw out the results of the vote in battleground states emerged. This was purportedly initiated by Chesebro, whose so-called “Wisconsin Memo” of Nov. 18, 2020, advocated that pro-Trump electors in the Badger State should present themselves as the proper slate if the incumbent won the ongoing recount there. 

The following month, as it became clear that Trump had lost the election, Chesebro’s strategy evolved to have the president’s electors present themselves as the legitimate slate and have their votes counted by then-Vice President Mike Pence during the joint session of Congress that would certify the election results on Jan. 6.Opinions on the feasibility of Chesebro’s plan varied. One Arizona attorney briefed on the scheme called it “[k]ind of wild/creative,” while Trump deputy campaign manager Justin Clark called it “a crazy play.”

A senior legal adviser, Eric Herschmann, was more blunt in response, saying it amounted to “certifying illegal votes.” 

At points, the indictment says, Trump recognized he had lost the election, before proceeding to pressure Pence and Republican members of Congress to reject swing-state electors for Biden.

On the night of Jan. 3, 2021, for example, Trump met with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, and other advisers to discuss an unspecified national security issue.

When Milley, with whom Trump has since feuded, recommended that Trump  “take no action because Inauguration Day was only seventeen days away,” Trump allegedly agreed and said, “Yeah, you’re right, it’s too late for us. We’re going to give that to the next guy.”

Moments later, the then-president attended a contentious meeting at which Clark presented his own plan to overturn the election results, which involved notifying battleground state legislatures of potential fraud and asking them to call a special session to consider who “won the most legal votes.”

When the possibility of Pence overturning the electoral count emerged, Trump announced: “No one here should be talking to the Vice President. I’m talking to the Vice President.”

In fact, the indictment says, Trump had nagged Pence about the possibility of throwing out results in key states since Christmas, a suggestion Pence had resisted — prompting the president on Jan. 1 to tell his second-in-command: “You’re too honest”.

On Jan. 4, Pence met with Trump, Eastman, Pence chief of staff Marc Short and the veep’s legal counsel Gregory Jacob.

According to the indictment, Pence took notes of the meeting, writing that Trump claimed to have “won every state by 100,000s of votes” before he and Eastman asked Pence to either unilaterally reject the results from seven battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — or send both slates of electors back to their legislatures to decide who had won.

When Pence asked Eastman whether the second idea was defensible, the Trump lawyer allegedly responded: “Well, nobody’s tested it before.”

“Did you hear that?” Pence told Trump, according to the indictment. “Even your own counsel is not saying I have that authority.”

“That’s OK,” Trump allegedly answered. “I prefer the other suggestion,” referring to the plan for Pence to reject the electoral votes himself, which most experts agree would have triggered a constitutional crisis.

The next day, Jan. 5, prosecutors say, Eastman tried one more time to persuade the Pence team to throw out the results. During that meeting, Eastman allegedly acknowledged to Jacob that he hoped to prevent judicial review of his proposal, since it would have been unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court.

After that admission, the indictment says, Jacob told Eastman that his idea would trigger a “disastrous situation” where the fate of the presidency may “have to be decided in the streets.”

That same day, prosecutors say, Trump and Pence met alone. After Pence refused yet again to block the result certification, the president allegedly became “frustrated” and told Pence he would “have to publicly criticize him.” Trump’s statement allegedly alarmed Short enough that he alerted the head of Pence’s Secret Service detail when he learned about it. 

Meanwhile, Trump urged supporters in tweets to travel to DC before delivering his now-infamous remarks on the Ellipse Jan. 6, urging his backers to march on the Capitol to champion his claims that the election was “stolen.”

The grand jury investigating the former president met for several hours at the DC federal courthouse Tuesday, but broke up a couple of hours before the indictment was handed up.

“This is nothing more than the latest corrupt chapter in the continued pathetic attempt by the Biden crime family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 presidential election, in which President Trump is the undisputed frontrunner, and leading by substantial margins,” the Trump campaign said in a statement.

“But why did they wait two and a half years to bring these fake charges, right in the middle of President Trump’s winning campaign for 2024?” it added.

Trump himself had announced on Truth Social that the indictment was coming under an hour before the news broke.

“I hear that Deranged Jack Smith, in order to interfere with the Presidential Election of 2024, will be putting out yet another Fake Indictment of your favorite President, me, at 5:00 P.M.,” he wrote . “Why didn’t they do this 2.5 years ago? Why did they wait so long? Because they wanted to put it right in the middle of my campaign. Prosecutorial Misconduct!”

“Also, why are they putting out another Fake Indictment the day after the Crooked Joe Biden SCANDAL, one of the biggest in American history, broke out in the Halls of Congress???” he wrote, an apparent reference to former Hunter Biden’s business partner Devon Archer’s Monday deposition before the House Oversight Committee. “A Nation In Decline!”