Trump faces four criminal counts as six co-conspirators listed in January 6 indictment – live

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Here’s some more reactions.

Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker:

“The charges alleged in this indictment are very serious, and they must play out through the legal process, peacefully and without any outside interference. Like every criminal defendant, the former President is innocent until proven guilty. Our Founders made clear that, in the United States of America, no one is above the law – not even the former President of the United States.

Michael Fanone, the former DC Police officer injured in the January 6 insurrection:

“I saw the Trump-fueled MAGA attack before my eyes. It was calculated, premeditated, and malicious. It disgusts me that House Republicans are heinously coming to the defense of Trump’s criminal behavior while putting up the foundation of our democracy as collateral.”

Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, and Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, issued a joint statement characterizing this indictment as “the most serious and most consequential thus far”.

“The third indictment of Mr. Trump illustrates in shocking detail that the violence of that day was the culmination of a months-long criminal plot led by the former president to defy democracy and overturn the will of the American people,” they said. “This indictment is the most serious and most consequential thus far and will stand as a stark reminder to generations of Americans that no one, including a president of the United States, is above the law.”

Mike Pence, Trump’s vice president who was targeted by rioters on January 6 and is now running for president himself, said Trump candidacy would “distract” from other issues.

“Today’s indictment serves as an important reminder: Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” Pence said.

The court filing describes a conversation between “defendant” Trump and Pence during which the former president called his vice president “too honest” for suggesting that interfering in the certification of the election would be illegal.

Trump’s indictments will not disqualify him from running for office, nor will any conviction.

However, it would highly unusual for a thrice-indicted candidate to win the Republican presidential nomination. The only other presidential nominee to run under indictment in recent history is former Texas governor Rick Perry, who sought the 2016 Republican nomination after he was indicted for abuse of power. Another candidate, the Socialist party candidate Eugene Debs, ran while imprisoned.

Trump has three indictments so far – the special counsel Jack Smith, who indicted him in the the January 6 case, has also charged him with the illegal retention of classified documents. Trump also was criminally charged in New York, over hush money payments, and in a civil trial over business practices. In Georgia, the attorney general has been investigating Trump and his allies’ alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 results – and is expected to announce charging decisions this month.

Trump’s rivals in the 2024 Republican primary have offered a range of responses to news of the indictment.

Ron DeSantis, who has tried to displace Trump as the frontrunner while trying to woo the former president’s far-right voter base, said, “As President, I will end the weaponization of government, replace the FBI Director, and ensure a single standard of justice for all Americans.

“While I’ve seen reports, I have not read the indictment. I do, though, believe we need to enact reforms so that Americans have the right to remove cases from Washington, DC to their home districts. Washington, DC is a ‘swamp’ and it is unfair to have to stand trial before a jury that is reflective of the swamp mentality,” he tweeted.

Meanwhile, the long-shot candidate Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, called for Trump to end his candidacy. “The latest indictment reaffirms my earlier call that Donald Trump should step away from the campaign for the good of the country,” he said. “If not, the voters must choose a different path.”

Trump indicted in 2020 election interference probe – summary

Léonie Chao-Fong

A grand jury has indicted Donald Trump for multiple alleged crimes in connection with his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The indictment was filed by the special counsel Jack Smith in federal district court in Washington DC. It accuses the former president of charges including conspiring to defraud the United States government, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiring against rights and obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding.

The 45-page indictment lays out in stark detail how Trump knowingly spread false allegations about fraud, convened false slates of electors and attempted to block the certification of the election on January 6.

Federal prosecutors said Trump was “determined to remain in power” in conspiracies that targeted a “bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election”.

Prosecutors said that for two months after his election loss, Trump spread lies to create an “intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger” and “erode public faith in the administration of the election”. They cited an example in Georgia, where Trump claimed more than 10,000 dead people voted in four days even after the state’s top elections official told him that was not true.

The indictment included six un-indicted co-conspirators as part of Smith’s probe, including four unnamed attorneys who allegedly aided Trump in his effort to subvert the 2020 election results, as well as an unnamed justice department official and an unnamed political consultant.

While unnamed in the document, the details in the indictment show that those people include Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Jeff Clark, a former Department of Justice employee.

The indictment filed this evening is the third criminal case filed against the former president and current frontrunner in the 2024 GOP presidential race.

In a lengthy statement issued as the indictment was released, Trump’s campaign called the indictment “nothing more than the latest corrupt chapter” in what it characterized as a politically motivated “witch hunt”.

Special counsel Jack Smith to seek a 'speedy trial' and says January 6 'fueled by lies'

Special counsel Jack Smith has delivered remarks regarding his investigation into Donald Trump and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Smith encouraged everyone to read the full indictment and said the department of justice has “remained committed to ensuring accountability for those criminally responsible for what happened” on 6 January 2021.

He described the January 6 insurrection as “an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy” that was “fueled by lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing the bedrock function of the US government admissions process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election”.

The men and women of law enforcement who defended the US Capitol that day “are heroes, they’re patriots and they’re the very best of us”, Smith said.

He said his office will seek a speedy trial so that the evidence can be tested in court and judged by a jury of citizens.

Smith added:

I must emphasize that the indictment is only an allegation and that the defendant must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, in a court of law.

The Trump case has been assigned to US district judge Tanya S Chutkan, according to the court docket.

Chutkan, an Obama appointee, is the only federal judge in Washington who has sentenced January 6 defendants to sentences longer than the government had requested, according to NBC.

Special counsel Jack Smith is scheduled to give a statement at 6pm EST at his office in Washington, according to a Department of Justice news release.

Read the full indictment

Indictment includes six co-conspirators

The indictment lists six co-conspirators but does not name them. They are:

• Co-Conspirator 1: An attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies that the Defendant’s 2020 re-election campaign attorneys would not.

• Co-Conspirator 2: An attorney who devised and attempted to implement a strategy to leverage the Vice President’s ceremonial role overseeing certification proceeding to obstruct the certification of the presidential election.

• Co-Conspirator 3: An attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud the Defendant privately acknowledged to others sounded “crazy.” Nonetheless, the Defendant embraced and publicly amplified Co-Conspirator 3’s disinformation.

• Co-Conspirator 4: A Justice Department official who worked on civil matters and who, with the Defendant, attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.

• Co-Conspirator 5: An attorney who assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.

• Co-Conspirator 6: A political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins writes that the co-conspirator 1 will likely be Rudy Giuliani, who served as Trump’s attorney at the time in the wake of his 2020 presidential election loss.

Politico’s Kyle Cheney writes that the second co-conspirator appears to be John Eastman, who was in the vanguard of lawyers plotting schemes involving “fake electors” and other ploys to help Trump thwart Joe Biden’s win in 2020.

Trump summoned to appear in court on Thursday

Donald Trump has been summoned to appear before a federal magistrate judge on Thursday in Washington, after the former president was charged by the justice department for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Trump is expected to be arraigned at the DC district court before magistrate judge Moxila A Upadhyaya.

Trump indicted on four charges

Donald Trump has been indicted on four counts involved with trying to overturn the 2020 election by special counsel Jack Smith.

The former president faces the charges:

1. Conspiracy to Defraud the United States

2. Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding

3. Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding

4. Conspiracy Against Rights

The indictment lists six co-conspirators but does not name them: four attorneys, a justice department official and a political consultant.

You can read the full indictment here.

Donald Trump indicted over efforts to overturn 2020 presidential election

A federal grand jury hearing evidence in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election has voted to indict the former president, according to a court document.

Smith has been looking into Trump’s efforts to remain in office following his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden, including the deadly 6 January 2021 riot in which his supporters overran the Capitol building in Washington DC.

Trump is already facing criminal charges in Florida for illegally hoarding classified documents from his presidency, and prosecution in New York for a hush-money payment to an adult movie star. He is also expected to face state charges in Georgia over Trump’s efforts there to reverse his defeat to Biden in the 2020 election.

Trump currently leads in polling for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination by a wide margin.

Donald Trump has been informed he has been indicted by a federal grand jury regarding the special counsel’s probe into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, sources with direct knowledge have told ABC News.

The Trump campaign released a statement on the indictment returned by the federal grand jury hearing evidence in the special counsel’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The indictment does not include the number of defendants or the identity of any defendant, as we have already reported.

This is nothing more than the latest corrupt chapter in the continued pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election, in which President Trump is the undisputed frontrunner, and leading by substantial margins.

But why did they wait two and a half years to bring these fake charges, right in the middle of President Trump’s winning campaign for 2024? Why was it announced the day after the big Crooked Joe Biden scandal broke out from the Halls of Congress?

The answer is, election interference! The lawlessness of these persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union, and other authoritarian, dictatorial regimes. President Trump has always followed the law and the Constitution, with advice from many highly accomplished attorneys.

These un-American witch hunts will fail and President Trump will be re-elected to the White House so he can save our Country from the abuse, incompetence, and corruption that is running through the veins of our Country at levels never seen before.

Three years ago we had strong borders, energy independence, no inflation, and a great economy. Today, we are a nation in decline. President Trump will not be deterred by disgraceful and unprecedented political targeting!