Special Counsel Jack Smith announced Tuesday evening that a grand jury in Washington, D.C., had indicted former President Donald Trump on charges relating to the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The indictment was announced the day after President Joe Biden had been implicated in a long-running influence peddling-scheme by his son Hunter’s former business partner, Devon Archer, in testimony before the House Oversight Committee.
Trump was indicted on four counts: one on conspiracy to defraud the U.S.; one on conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; one of obstruction and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and one of conspiracy against rights.
The indictment declares:
Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to stay in power. So for more than two months following Election Day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election that he actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew they were false.
The indictment does not indicate how prosecutors were able to establish what Trump himself believed, other than the fact that he had been informed by others that his suspicions of fraud were false; nor does it distinguish the case from the “Russia collusion” hoax spread by Trump’s opponents, including within the Department of Justice, after he won the 2016 presidential election.
There are several unnamed, unindicted co-conspirators in the indictment as well. These are four attorneys, a Department of Justice official, and a political consultant who worked on Trump’s strategy to challenge the result.
The former president shared the news on his own social media platform, Truth Social, that he expected to be indicted, and claimed that federal prosecutors had delayed doing so for more than two years to keep him out of the presidential race.
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