A New Trump Indictment (2020 Election)

Special counsel informs Trump he is target in probe of efforts to overturn 2020 election
KATHERINE FAULDERS, JOHN SANTUCCI, ALEXANDER MALLIN and LUKE BARR
Tue, July 18, 2023 at 7:27 AM MDT

Special counsel Jack Smith has informed former President Donald Trump by letter that he is a target in his investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

Trump also confirmed the development in a post on his Truth Social platform.

The letter, which sources said was transmitted to Trump's attorneys in recent days, indicates that yet another indictment of the former president could be imminent -- though it is not immediately clear what kind of charges he could ultimately face.

Target letters are typically given to subjects in a criminal investigation to put them on notice that they are facing the prospect of indictment.

Trump similarly received a target letter from Smith before he was indicted by a grand jury in Florida for his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House and his alleged efforts to obstruct the government's investigation.

Smith took control of the sprawling Justice Department investigation into the failed efforts by Trump and his allies to thwart his election loss upon his appointment as special counsel in November of last year, and in recent months dozens of witnesses have appeared to testify before a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C.

According to sources, prosecutors have questioned witnesses specifically about the efforts to put forward false slates of so-called false electors that were to have cast electoral college votes during the certification for Trump in key swing states that he lost to President Joe Biden.

Investigators have also sought information on Trump's actions and his state of mind in the days leading up to and on Jan. 6, 2021, when thousands of Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol, temporarily disrupting the certification and causing lawmakers and former Vice President Pence to flee the building.

Trump was indicted last month on 37 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials, after Smith's prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information ranging from U.S. nuclear secrets to the nation's defense capabilities. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The former president has also pleaded not guilty to a 34-count indictment from the Manhattan district attorney charging him with falsifying business records in connection with a hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels days before the 2016 presidential election.

Special counsel informs Trump he is target in probe of efforts to overturn 2020 election originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

JUST IN: Jack Smith To Charge Trump With Civil War-Era Violation Used For J6 Prosecutions
By Mark Steffen, July 20, 2023, Updated:July 21, 2023

A leaked letter recently sent to former President Donald Trump indicates that special counsel Jack Smith intends to charge him with a number of crimes related to the January 6, 2021 riots, including a section from U.S. Code dating back to Reconstruction that was used to prosecute J6 defendants and in other modern-era voter rights cases.

The New York Times received a copy of the letter in which Smith refers to three criminal statutes under consideration as the Justice Department weighs its prosecution of the former president and Republican frontrunner for next year’s elections. Two potential charges — conspiracy to defraud the government and obstruction of an official proceeding — were previously known, but the latest revelation indicates that Smith intends to prosecute Trump no differently than the J6 prisoners who he claims were operating under the president’s guidance when they illegally entered the Capitol building during efforts to certify the election in favor of President Joe Biden.

U.S. Code Title 18 Section 241 makes it a crime to “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person” in the “free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” The statute was enacted by Congress following the Civil War in a bid to prevent the Ku Klux Klan and other groups from preventing newly-freed slaves from exercising their right to vote.

Smith will likely rely on previous cases in 1950 and 1974 which successfully utilized the law to prosecute instances of ballot box tampering, though on a much larger scale. The special counsel would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump took similar steps to overturn the results of the 2020 elections in several states including Georgia where he is facing a separate investigation. Aides to the former president, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and attorney John Eastman, confirmed to the Times that they have not received similar letters intimating prosecution.

From the Times:

The corrupt obstruction of a proceeding charge has been used against hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters and has served as the Justice Department’s go-to count in describing the central event that day: the disruption of the Electoral College certification process that was taking place inside the Capitol during a joint session of Congress.

The law was originally passed as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a measure meant to curb corporate malfeasance. Defense lawyers for several rioters have challenged its use against their client, saying it was meant to stop crimes like witness tampering or document destruction and had been unfairly stretched to include the chaos at the Capitol.

But in April, a federal appeals court upheld the viability of applying that charge to participants in the Capitol attack. Still, unlike ordinary rioters, Mr. Trump did not physically participate in the storming of the Capitol, although he had summoned supporters to Washington that day and railed about the unwillingness of Vice President Mike Pence, who was presiding over the proceedings in Congress, to stop them.

Since prosecution, many J6 prisoners have gone on to regret pleading guilty and raised the specter of having their convictions overturned should President Trump retake the White House next year. Congressional Republicans including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have spoken out on the deplorable conditions faced by J6 prisoners awaiting trial. Should he be indicted relating to J6, which he predicted would happen, President Trump would again need to travel to D.C. for an arraignment, though it is unlikely he would be held without bail as many J6 prisoners were forced to do.

Trump pleads not guilty to 4 felony charges in 2020 election case
LA Times
SARAH D. WIRE
August 3, 2023 at 7:00 AM

Former President Trump pleaded not guilty Thursday to four federal charges in connection with accusations that he engaged in a multi-part conspiracy to overturn the will of voters and stay in power despite losing the 2020 election, resulting in an unprecedented attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump appeared before Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya at the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington, about a quarter-mile from where rioters first attacked police officers and pushed down barriers on the west lawn of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Upadhyaya informed Trump of the maximum sentences for each of the four counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy against rights, and obstruction of or attempting to obstruct an official proceeding.

Trump, who traveled from Bedminster, N.J., shortly before his court appearance, wore a blue suit and red tie. He was flanked by his legal counsel, John Lauro and Todd Blanche, to whom he spoke occasionally. But mostly the former president sat quietly, hands folded, while waiting for the short proceedings to begin in the cavernous Courtroom 22. He shook his head when the case name was read aloud.

Special counsel Jack Smith sat in the first row of three benches that held reporters, staff and members of the public.

When he arrived at the courthouse, Trump did not have a mugshot taken.

Trump said on social media at noon Eastern time that he was on his way to the nation's capital "TO BE ARRESTED FOR HAVING CHALLENGED A CORRUPT, RIGGED, & STOLEN ELECTION. IT IS A GREAT HONOR, BECAUSE I AM BEING ARRESTED FOR YOU. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!"

The area around the courthouse was quiet early Thursday, with Metropolitan Police and Homeland Security officers outnumbering the dozens of reporters waiting to enter the building or setting up cameras along the sidewalk. The day before, the Capitol spent hours on lockdown after a 911 call suggested there was an active shooter in a Senate office building. Law enforcement later reported no such incident had occurred after clearing the area.

By midday about a dozen protesters had gathered outside the courthouse, which is about a block from the U.S. Capitol, and the crowd slowly grew. One person waved a long pole with two large flags attached that said, “Finish the Wall Trump 24 Save America” and “Trump for President 24.” Another wore an inflatable costume of Trump in a diaper. City dump trucks lined the street in front of the main entrance to the building, ready to block streets if needed.

Trump has attempted to cast the indictment and other legal challenges he faces as attempts to interfere with his 2024 presidential election campaign, complaining that he is being forced to spend time and money defending himself rather than campaigning.

"The Dems don’t want to run against me or they would not be doing this unprecedented weaponization of 'Justice.' BUT SOON, IN 2024, IT WILL BE OUR TURN. MAGA!" he posted on Truth Social on Thursday morning.

The indictment alleges that after Trump lost the 2020 election, he and his allies concocted a variety of schemes to try to keep him in office, including one to pressure officials in states that voted against him to overturn their results on the basis of false claims of fraud.

Trump is also accused in the indictment of using the power of the Justice Department in an attempt to overturn the election by pushing the agency to “conduct sham election crime investigations” and to wield its authority to “falsely” buttress the legitimacy of his schemes. The former president also solicited false slates of electoral votes from dozens of Trump-supporting electors in seven states, according to the indictment.

Trump is also alleged to have used false election fraud claims and the fake electoral slates to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to stop the Jan. 6, 2021, congressional certification of Joe Biden's victory by either throwing out results for the Democrat in certain states or by delaying the official electoral vote count.

When Pence refused on the morning of Jan. 6 to comply, the indictment states, Trump took advantage of the violence at the Capitol “by redoubling efforts to levy false claims of election fraud and convince Members of Congress to further delay certification based on those claims.”

The former president was one of three defendants Thursday facing charges related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The two others, a former Chicago police officer and a former voice actor on the television show "Bob's Burgers," are among the more than 1,000 people charged.

Additional charges could be possible as Trump's case progresses. The indictment refers to six unnamed co-conspirators with enough detail, such as dates of conversations, to provide strong indications as to their identities.

Smith said Tuesday that his team’s “investigation of other individuals continues.”

The new charges against Trump are just the latest developments in the legal peril the former president faces as he campaigns for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

In March, he is scheduled to stand trial in New York on allegations that he paid an adult film star through an intermediary so she would not disclose information about an alleged affair she had with Trump shortly before the 2016 election, and that he covered up the payment while in office. In May, Trump is scheduled to face federal charges of willfully retaining classified government records after leaving office in 2020 and obstructing the investigation into the matter.

And more is expected. Fulton County, Ga., Dist. Atty. Fani Willis in Atlanta has said she will make a decision on an indictment by Sept. 1 following a lengthy investigation into Trump's efforts to pressure state election officials to “find” the votes needed for him to reverse his loss in the key state in 2020.
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