Last week, former President Donald Trump was indicted for the third time.
This latest indictment includes four charges
- Conspiracy to defraud the US
- Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding
- Obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding
- Conspiracy against rights
“The defendant lost the 2020 presidential election,” the 45-page document states. “Despite having lost, the defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the defendant spread lies … that he had actually won.”
The indictment alleges that Trump repeated false claims of election fraud, despite warnings from people in his circle, including Former Vice President Mike Pence and senior attorneys. Pence told him that “he had seen no evidence of outcome-determinative fraud”.
“The attack on our nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” said Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, whose office has spent months investigating Trump. “It was fueled by lies, lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.”
The charges could be tricky considering the prosecution would likely have to prove that Trump knew that he was lying when he said that the election was stolen, not just that he was informed by his circle that he wasn’t the legitimate winner but still believed that he was.
There likely would have to be a recording of Trump claiming that he knows that he lost the election but he’s going to contest it anyways, which so far no such recording has been revealed.
“I think this is very winnable, but it’s not the slam dunk that the documents case is,” Neama Rahmani, the president of West Coast Trial Lawyers and a former federal prosecutor, said, referring to one of Trump’s other federal indictments.
“The question is not just whether the claims themselves were false but whether the defendant knew they were false,” Anna Cominsky, an associate professor of law and the director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at New York Law School, told Insider.
“If they fail to show any criminal intent, that could certainly undermine their case,” said Sarah Krissoff, a former federal prosecutor with the Southern District of New York and a current defense attorney with the firm Cozen O’Connor.
Donald Trump took to his social media site, Truth Social, to dismiss the charges and question why it took so long to charge him of this if they really believed he was guilty.
“I hear that Deranged Jack Smith, in order to interfere with the Presidential Election of 2024, will be putting out yet another Fake Indictment of your favorite President, me, at 5:00 P.M. Why didn’t they do this 2.5 years ago? Why did they wait so long? Because they wanted to put it right in the middle of my campaign. Prosecutorial Misconduct!” Trump’s post reads.
