Donald Trump was issued a felony indictment on Tuesday for his efforts to invalidate the 2020 election results, leading up to the violent rampage instigated by his followers at the U.S. Capitol. The Justice Department aims to hold him liable for an unparalleled attempt to impede the orderly transition of presidential power and endanger American democratic norms.
This four-count indictment marks the third criminal case against Trump. It provides a deeper understanding of a sinister chapter already extensively investigated by federal agencies and detailed through gripping public inquiries. It records a months-long crusade of untruths about the election outcome. It indicates that, despite these fabrications inciting a tumultuous revolt at the Capitol, Trump used the unrest as a pretext to delay further the vote counting that confirmed his loss.
In a year filled with successive legal challenges for Trump, Tuesday’s indictment, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government he once headed, is striking for its claims that a past president attacked the very foundation of democracy. This is the first instance of the former president, currently a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination next year, confronting legal ramifications for his desperate yet futile endeavour to maintain power.
“The January 6, 2021, assault on our national Capitol was a never-before-seen attack on the cornerstone of American democracy,” said special counsel Jack Smith from the Justice Department, who has spent months scrutinizing Trump’s actions. “Falsehoods instigated it, lies by the accused aimed at hampering a fundamental operation of the U.S. government: the procedure of gathering, tallying, and ratifying the presidential election results.”
The Trump campaign denounced the charges as “fabricated” and questioned the two-and-a-half-year delay in their issuance.
Trump is the sole individual charged in Tuesday’s indictment. However, the prosecution subtly referenced half a dozen collaborators, including government and private attorneys allegedly cooperating with Trump to invalidate the election results. They also proposed questionable strategies to employ decoy electors in swing states that Biden won, falsely asserting that Trump was the victor.
The indictment alleges that the ousted president and his associates tried to “capitalize on the turmoil and confusion” by lobbying lawmakers late into the evening of January 6 to postpone the certification of Biden’s triumph.
It further quotes handwritten notes from former Vice President Mike Pence that underscore Trump’s relentless urging to dismiss the electoral votes. Pence, challenging Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, avoided appeals from a House panel that investigated the revolt and sought to evade giving evidence before the special counsel. He appeared only after losing a legal battle, leading prosecutors to discover that Trump had scorned him in one conversation as being “too honest” to halt the certification.
Trump is scheduled to appear in court on Thursday, marking the beginning of a legal process in a courthouse between the White House he once inhabited and the Capitol his followers once besieged. The ex-president and his supporters are already dismissing the case — and even some of his adversaries — as merely another politically charged prosecution.
Still, the case originates from one of the gravest threats to modern American democracy.
The indictment focuses on the tumultuous two months following the November 2020 election, during which Trump declined to acknowledge his defeat and propagated false claims that the victory had been robbed. This upheaval culminated in the Capitol riot, during which Trump loyalists forcibly entered the building, assaulted law enforcement officers, and disrupted the congressional tallying of electoral votes.
Between the election and the riot, Trump urged local election officials to reverse their states’ voting results, pressured Pence to obstruct the certification of electoral votes, and falsely asserted that the election was rigged — an idea consistently dismissed by judges. According to prosecutors, these false claims were allegations that more than 10,000 deceased voters had cast ballots in Georgia, along with thousands of double votes in Nevada. As the indictment highlights, each assertion has been debunked by courts or state or federal officials.
Prosecutors argue that Trump was aware his assertions of election victory were false but still “publicized and broadly spread them anyway — to make his knowingly false claims seem valid, to generate an intense national atmosphere of distrust and rage, and to undermine public confidence in the election administration.”
The document meticulously outlines Trump’s defences to justify his behaviour, that he had every right to contest the results, to resort to legal proceedings, and even to lie in the process. However, the indictment vividly depicts how the former president resorted to illegal measures to overturn the clear decision made by voters.
Trump had anticipated the indictment since he announced in mid-July that the Justice Department had informed him he was a target of their investigation. A bipartisan House committee that spent months probing the lead-up to the Capitol revolt also recommended indicting Trump on charges including inciting an insurrection and obstructing an official proceeding.
The indictment lists charges of conspiring to defraud the U.S., conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing an official proceeding, and infringing a post-Civil War Reconstruction Era civil rights statute that criminalizes conspiracies to violate constitutionally guaranteed rights — in this case, the right to vote.
These escalating criminal cases are unfolding amidst the frenzy of the 2024 race. A conviction in this case, or any other, would not bar Trump from vying for the presidency or holding the office. However, Trump as president, could hypothetically appoint an attorney general to dismiss the charges or even attempt to pardon himself.
State prosecutors have accused Trump of falsifying business records in New York concerning a hush money payout to an adult film actor before the 2016 election. The trial is scheduled to start in March.
In Florida, the Justice Department has levelled over three dozen felony charges against him, alleging illegal possession of classified documents after his White House departure and their concealment from investigators. This trial is set to commence in May.
Prosecutors in Georgia are also probing Trump and his allies’ attempts to overturn his electoral defeat to Biden there. The district attorney of Fulton County is expected to reveal charging decisions within the coming weeks.
Smith’s team has cast a wide net as part of their federal investigation, with senior Trump administration officials, including Pence, questioned before a grand jury in Washington. Prosecutors have also interviewed election officials in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and other swing states won by Biden who were pressured by the Trump team to alter voting results.
Rudy Giuliani, a Trump lawyer who pursued post-election legal challenges, voluntarily spoke with prosecutors. While not named in the indictment, Giuliani appears to align with the description of one of the collaborators. A representative for Giuliani stated Tuesday night that Trump had a “good-faith basis” for his actions.
Last year, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith, a former international war crimes prosecutor who led the Justice Department’s public corruption division, as special counsel to investigate efforts to reverse the election and Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Florida home, Mar-a-Lago. Despite Trump dismissing him as “unhinged” and politically biased, Smith’s previous experience includes overseeing significant prosecutions against prominent Democrats.
The Justice Department’s investigations had begun long before Smith’s appointment, proceeding in parallel with separate criminal inquiries into the rioters. Over 1,000 individuals have been charged with the insurrection, including some for seditious conspiracy.
The ongoing investigation and legal battle surrounding Trump’s actions during and after the 2020 election has brought unprecedented scrutiny to a former president’s actions. The repercussions of Trump’s claims and efforts to overturn the election results will continue to reverberate in the American political landscape, regardless of the outcome of these trials. The events underscore the critical need for safeguarding the democratic process and peaceful power transfer, a cornerstone of American democracy. The eventual results of these legal proceedings will undeniably be instrumental in shaping future political narratives and norms in the U.S.
