Trump Faces Federal Charges For Attempting to Rig 2020 Election

The third time in four months that Donald Trump has been legally charged while running for president again next year, he was indicted on Tuesday, August 1 for his extensive efforts to rig the 2020 election.

The 45-page, four-count indictment accuses Republican Trump of plotting to defraud the US by interfering with Congress' ability to recognize Democrat Joe Biden's win and denying voters their right to a fair election.

In a last-ditch effort to undermine American democracy and hold on to power, then-President Trump promoted fraud claims he knew to be false, put pressure on state and federal officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, to change the results, and finally instigated a violent attack on the US Capitol, according to prosecutors.

Trump was told to appear in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. Tanya Chutkan, a US District Judge selected by Trump's predecessor Barack Obama, has been given the case.

The accusations are the result of a thorough examination by Special Counsel Jack Smith into claims that Trump tried to overturn his defeat by Biden. According to public opinion polls, Trump has cemented his position as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination despite a bewildering and expanding variety of legal issues.

On January 6, 2021, when Congress convened to certify the results, Trump delivered a heated address after weeks of allegations that the election had been rigged. In an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Biden's victory, his supporters quickly stormed the US Capitol.

In a brief statement to reporters, Smith placed the blame for the violence squarely on Trump's shoulders.

"The attack on our nation's Capitol on 6 January, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy. As described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies - lies by the defendant, targeted at obstructing the bedrock function of the US government," Smith said.

More than 1,000 people have been arrested in connection with the attack.

Trump and others organised fraudulent slates of electors in seven states, all of which he lost, to be certified as official by Congress on 6 January, the indictment said.

The indictment lays out numerous examples of Trump's election falsehoods and notes that close advisers, including senior intelligence officials, told him repeatedly that the results were legitimate.

"These claims were false, and the defendant knew that they were false," prosecutors wrote.

When the push to certify the fake electors failed, Trump sought to pressure Vice President Mike Pence not to allow certification of the election to go forward and took advantage of the chaos outside the Capitol to do so, according to prosecutors. During the violence, Trump rebuffed calls from his advisers to issue a calming message.

"The Defendant attempted to use a crowd of supporters that he had gathered in Washington, DC to pressure the Vice President to fraudulently alter the election results," the indictment reads.

In a statement, the Trump campaign said he had always followed the law and characterised the indictment as a "persecution" reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

"President Trump will not be deterred by disgraceful and unprecedented political targeting!" it added.

The indictment also includes six unnamed co-conspirators who have not been charged.

Based on the descriptions, they appear to include Trump's former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who called state lawmakers in the weeks following the 2020 election to pressure them not to certify their states' results; former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who tried to get himself installed as attorney general so he could launch voter fraud investigations in Georgia and other swing states; and attorney John Eastman, who advanced the erroneous legal theory that Pence could block the electoral certification.

"Every statement that Mayor Giuliani made was truthful and expressing his beliefs," his attorney Robert Costello told Reuters. "He believed there was proof of election fraud, and I have seen the affidavits that back that up."

Eastman and Clark did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump faces a potential sentence of 20 years in jail for the most serious accusation, but the judge's discretion and a number of other criteria will determine the actual sentence.

Trump was already the first former US president to be charged with a crime. He has claimed that each and every one of the cases is a part of a political witch hunt designed to keep him from regaining power.

Tuesday's indictments mark Smith's second wave of criminal accusations since US Attorney General Merrick Garland named him a special counsel in November.

Trump pleaded not guilty after a federal grand jury in Miami convened by the special counsel charged him in June in a 37-count indictment over his unlawful retention of classified government documents after leaving office in 2021 and obstructing justice. Prosecutors accused him of risking some of the most sensitive US national security secrets.

Last Thursday, prosecutors added three more criminal counts against Trump, accusing him of ordering employees to delete security videos as he was under investigation for retaining the documents.

In March, a grand jury convened by Manhattan's district attorney indicted him for falsifying business records to hide hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she said she had with him. Trump pleaded not guilty and has denied the encounter.

Trump, 77, leads a crowded field of Republican presidential candidates as he seeks a rematch with Biden, 80, next year.

Trump, who served as president from 2017 to 2021, has shown an ability to survive legal troubles, political controversies and personal behaviour that might sink other politicians. Many Republicans - elected officials and voters - have rallied behind Trump, portraying the charges against him as selective prosecution and a Democratic plot to destroy him politically.

That pattern largely held on Tuesday, as most Republicans pivoted to attacks on Biden. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in Congress, said on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, that the indictment was an attempt to "attack the frontrunner for the Republican nomination."

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump's leading rival for the Republican nomination, said on X that he had yet to read the indictment. But he vowed to "end the weaponisation of the federal government," suggesting that the Biden administration was using the charges to target a political enemy.

Strategists said that while the indictments could help Trump solidify support within his base and win the Republican nomination, his ability to capitalise on them may be more limited in next year's general election when he will have to win over more sceptical moderate Republicans and independents.

Meanwhile, Trump's legal woes are growing. In addition to the three indictments, Trump faces a fourth criminal investigation by a county prosecutor in Georgia into accusations he sought to undo his 2020 election loss in that state.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has indicated she plans to bring charges in that case within the next three weeks.

Special counsels are sometimes appointed to investigate politically sensitive cases, and they do their jobs with a degree of independence from the Justice Department leadership.

Before being appointed by Garland to take over the two Trump-related investigations, Smith had served as the chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague, assigned to prosecuting war crimes in Kosovo, oversaw the Justice Department's public integrity section and worked as a federal and state prosecutor in New York.

Source: Reuters