Donald Trump
Trump charged to overturn 2020 presidential election results. Former US President Donald Trump was indicted on Tuesday in a Justice Department investigation for his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Trump was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.
The indictment is the third criminal case brought against the former president as he seeks to reclaim the White House in 2024.
Prosecutors had been investigating Trump’s efforts to undermine President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, and the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
He was summoned to appear at a Washington, D.C., courthouse on Thursday, Aug. 3.
“Despite having lost, the Defendant (Trump) was determined to remain in power.
“So for more than two months following election day on Nov. 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won,” reads the 45-page indictment.
“These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that 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,” it says.
Shortly after election day, Trump also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.
According to the indictment, Trump committed three criminal conspiracies: one to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function; one to corruptly obstruct and impede the Jan. 6 congressional proceeding to certify the results of the presidential election; and one to violate the right to vote and have one’s vote counted.
Each of these conspiracies, which grew out of Trump’s pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud, targeted a fundamental function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election, it adds.
The indictment included six unindicted co-conspirators, including four anonymous attorneys who allegedly assisted Trump in his attempt to overturn the election results.
One anonymous Justice Department official is also featured, who “attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.”
Another unindicted co-conspirator is an anonymous political consultant “who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors in order to obstruct the certification proceeding.”
Trump was accused in June with mishandling confidential information at his Palm Beach, Florida, club, Mar-a-Lago.
Both the classified documents case and the election interference case were investigated by special counsel Jack Smith.
In March, Trump was indicted on New York state charges of falsifying business records in connection with hush-money payments to an adult film actress ahead of the 2016 presidential election.