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Thursday, August 3, 2023
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TRUMP JAN. 6 CASE

 * Trump Pleads Not Guilty
 * The Indictment, Annotated
 * The Charges
 * The Judge
 * The 6 Co-Conspirators


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TRUMP INDICTMENTJAN. 6 RIOT WAS ‘FUELED BY LIES’ FROM TRUMP, SPECIAL COUNSEL
SAYS

Former President Donald J. Trump was charged with four counts in connection with
his efforts to subvert the will of voters in 2020. “Despite having lost, the
defendant was determined to remain in power,” prosecutors wrote.

Published Aug. 1, 2023Updated Aug. 3, 2023, 8:07 p.m. ET
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TRUMP INDICTED IN 2020 ELECTION INVESTIGATION

JACK SMITH, THE SPECIAL COUNSEL OVERSEEING THE INVESTIGATION, FILED CHARGES
AGAINST FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP IN CONNECTION WITH HIS EFFORTS TO
REMAIN IN POWER AFTER LOSING THE 2020 ELECTION.

Today, an indictment was unsealed, charging Donald J. Trump with conspiring to
defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring
and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. The attack on our nation’s
Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American
democracy. As described in the indictment, 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. In this case, my office will seek a speedy trial so that
our evidence can be tested in court and judged by a jury of citizens.

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Trump Indicted in 2020 Election Investigation

By The New York Times

0:51Trump Indicted in 2020 Election Investigation

Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the investigation, filed charges
against former President Donald J. Trump in connection with his efforts to
remain in power after losing the 2020 election.CreditCredit...Haiyun Jiang for
The New York Times
Pinned

Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman


THE SPECIAL COUNSEL ACCUSED TRUMP OF TAKING PART IN THREE CONSPIRACIES.

Image

In sweeping terms, the indictment described how former President Donald J. Trump
and six co-conspirators employed a variety of means to reverse his defeat in the
election almost from the moment that voting ended.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for
The New York Times


Former President Donald J. Trump was indicted on Tuesday in connection with his
widespread efforts to overturn the 2020 election following a sprawling federal
investigation into his attempts to cling to power after losing the presidency.

The indictment, filed by the special counsel Jack Smith in Federal District
Court in Washington, accuses Mr. Trump of three conspiracies: one to defraud the
United States; a second to obstruct an official government proceeding, the
certification of the Electoral College vote; and a third to deprive people of a
civil right, the right to have their votes counted. Mr. Trump was also charged
with a fourth count of obstructing or attempting to obstruct an official
proceeding.

“Each of these conspiracies — which built on the widespread mistrust the
defendant was creating through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election
fraud — 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,” the indictment said.

The charges signify an extraordinary moment in United States history: a former
president, in the midst of a campaign to return to the White House, being
charged over attempts to use the levers of government power to subvert democracy
and remain in office against the will of voters.

In sweeping terms, the indictment described how Mr. Trump and six
co-conspirators employed a variety of means to reverse his defeat in the
election almost from the moment that voting ended.

It depicted how Mr. Trump promoted false claims of fraud, sought to bend the
Justice Department toward supporting those claims and oversaw a scheme to create
false slates of electors pledged to him in states that were actually won by
Joseph R. Biden Jr. And it described how he ultimately pressured his vice
president, Mike Pence, to use the fake electors to subvert the certification of
the election at a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, that was cut short
by the violence at the Capitol.

The indictment did not name the alleged co-conspirators, but the descriptions of
their behavior match publicly known episodes involving prominent people around
Mr. Trump.

The behavior of “Co-conspirator 1” appears to align with that of Rudolph W.
Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer whom he put in charge of efforts to deny
the transfer of power after his main campaign lawyers made clear it was over.
Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert J. Costello, acknowledged in a statement that it
“appears that Mayor Giuliani is alleged to be co-conspirator No. 1.”

The description of “Co-conspirator 2” tracks closely with that of John Eastman,
a California law professor who served as the architect of the plan to pressure
Mr. Pence.

The co-conspirators could be charged at any point, and their inclusion in the
indictment — even unnamed — places pressure on them to cooperate with
investigators.

Many of the details in the charges were familiar, having appeared either in news
accounts or in the work of the House select committee investigating Jan. 6.
There were descriptions of Mr. Trump’s attempt to install a loyalist, Jeffrey
Clark, who appears to be a co-conspirator in the case, atop the Justice
Department and to strong-arm the secretary of state of Georgia into finding him
enough votes to win the election in that state.

There were also references to Mr. Trump posting a message on Twitter in
mid-December 2020 calling for a “wild” protest in Washington on Jan. 6, and to
him pressuring Mr. Pence to try to throw the election his way during the joint
session of Congress that day.

But the indictment also contained some snippets of new information, such as a
description of Mr. Trump telling Mr. Pence, “You’re too honest,” as the vice
president pushed back on Mr. Trump’s pressure to interfere in the certification
of Mr. Biden’s victory.

It also included an account of Mr. Trump telling someone who asked if he wanted
additional pressure put on Mr. Pence that “no one” else but him needed to speak
with the vice president.

Mr. Smith, in drafting his charging document, walked a cautious path in
connecting Mr. Trump to the mob attack on the Capitol. The indictment mentioned
Mr. Trump’s “exploitation of the violence and chaos” at the building that day,
but did not accuse him of inciting the riot.

It also laid out how Mr. Trump was repeatedly told by multiple people, including
top officials in his campaign and at the Justice Department, that he had lost
the election and that his claims that he had been cheated were false. That sort
of evidence could help prosecutors prove their accusations by establishing Mr.
Trump’s intent.

Mr. Trump’s constant claims of widespread election fraud “were false, and the
defendant knew they were false,” the indictment said, adding that he was told
repeatedly that his assertions were untrue.

“Despite having lost, the defendant was determined to remain in power,” the
indictment said.

Mr. Trump has been summoned for his initial court appearance in the case on
Thursday afternoon before a magistrate judge in Federal District Court in
Washington, the special counsel’s office said. Ultimately, a trial date and a
schedule for pretrial motions will be set, proceedings that are likely to extend
well into the presidential campaign.

Mr. Trump’s lead lawyer on the case, John Lauro, laid out what appeared to be
the beginning of his defense, telling Fox News, “I would like them to try to
prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump believed that these
allegations” about voter fraud “were false.”

The charges in the case came more than two and a half years after a pro-Trump
mob — egged on by incendiary speeches by Mr. Trump and his allies — stormed the
Capitol on Jan. 6 in the worst attack on the seat of Congress since the War of
1812.

They also came a little more than seven months after Attorney General Merrick B.
Garland appointed Mr. Smith, a career federal prosecutor, to oversee both the
election tampering and classified documents inquiries into Mr. Trump. They
followed a series of high-profile hearings last year by the House Jan. 6
committee, which laid out extensive evidence of Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse
the election results.

Mr. Garland moved to name Mr. Smith as special counsel in November, just days
after Mr. Trump declared that he was running for president again.

Image

Jack Smith, the special counsel, said at a news conference on Tuesday that the
Capitol riot was “fueled by lies.”Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

In a brief appearance before reporters, Mr. Smith set out what he said was the
former president’s moral, as well as legal, responsibility for violence at the
Capitol, saying the riot was “fueled by lies” — Mr. Trump’s lies.

Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, has incorporated
attacking the investigations into his campaign messaging and fund-raising. His
advisers have been blunt in private conversations that they see his winning the
election as crucial to undoing the charges against him.

In a statement, Mr. Trump denounced the indictment.

“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?” he said, calling it
“election interference” and comparing the Biden administration to Nazi Germany.

The judge assigned to Mr. Trump’s case, Tanya S. Chutkan, has been a tough
jurist in cases against Jan. 6 rioters — and in a case that involved Mr. Trump
directly. Appointed by President Barack Obama, she has routinely issued harsh
penalties against people who stormed the Capitol.

She also denied Mr. Trump’s attempt to avoid disclosing documents to the Jan. 6
committee, ordering him to turn over the material and writing, “Presidents are
not kings.”

Mr. Trump now faces two separate federal indictments. In June, Mr. Smith brought
charges in Florida accusing Mr. Trump of illegally holding on to a highly
sensitive trove of national defense documents and then obstructing the
government’s attempts to get them back.

The scheme charged by Mr. Smith on Tuesday in the election case played out
largely in the two months between Election Day in 2020 and the attack on the
Capitol. During that period, Mr. Trump took part in a range of efforts to retain
power despite having lost the presidential race.

In addition to federal charges in the election and documents cases, Mr. Trump
also faces legal troubles in state courts.

He has been charged by the Manhattan district attorney’s office in a case that
centers on hush money payments made to the porn actress Stormy Daniels in the
run-up to the 2016 election.

The efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to reverse his election loss are also
the focus of a separate investigation by the district attorney in Fulton County,
Ga. That inquiry appears likely to generate charges this month.

It seems likely that Mr. Trump will face the prospect of at least three criminal
trials next year, even as he is campaigning for the presidency. The Manhattan
trial is scheduled to begin in March, while the federal documents case in
Florida is set to go to trial in May.

Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.

Show more
Aug. 1, 2023, 10:21 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 10:21 p.m. ET

Jonathan Swan


FOUR TAKEAWAYS FROM THE INDICTMENT.

Image

Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the investigation, in Washington on
Tuesday after former President Donald J. Trump was indicted.Credit...Doug
Mills/The New York Times


Jack Smith made only his second televised appearance as special counsel on
Tuesday to explain his decision to charge former President Donald J. Trump with
leading a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.

He took no questions and urged viewers to read the 45-page indictment in its
entirety.

The indictment of the former president for trying to subvert democracy — an
episode that has no precedent in American history — was issued by a federal
grand jury in Washington and unsealed shortly before Mr. Smith gave his
statement.

Mr. Trump has been charged with four crimes, including conspiracies to defraud
the United States and to obstruct an official proceeding.

Here are four takeaways:


THE INDICTMENT PORTRAYS AN ATTACK ON AMERICAN DEMOCRACY.

Mr. Smith framed his case against Mr. Trump as one that cuts to a core function
of democracy: the peaceful transfer of power.

By underscoring this theme, which he also laid out in the indictment, Mr. Smith
cast his effort as not just an effort to hold Mr. Trump accountable but also to
defend the very core of democracy.

Mr. Smith said the former president’s efforts to overturn the election went well
beyond his First Amendment right to make claims about voter fraud. The
indictment details Mr. Trump’s efforts to use the machinery of government —
including his own Justice Department — to help him cling to power.


TRUMP WAS PLACED AT THE CENTER OF THE CONSPIRACY.

Mr. Smith puts Mr. Trump at the heart of three overlapping conspiracies.

These conspiracies culminated on Jan. 6, 2021, as an attempt to obstruct
Congress’s role in ratifying the Electoral College outcome.

Mr. Smith argued in the indictment that Mr. Trump knew his claims about a stolen
election were false. He cited a litany of episodes in which campaign advisers,
White House officials, top Justice Department lawyers, speakers of statehouses
and election administrators all told Mr. Trump his claims about
“outcome-determinative fraud” in the election were false. Mr. Trump nonetheless
kept repeating them.

Establishing that Mr. Trump knew he was lying could be important to convincing a
jury to convict him. A lawyer for Mr. Trump has already signaled that his
defense could rest in part on showing that he truly believed he had been cheated
out of re-election.


TRUMP DIDN’T DO IT ALONE.

The indictment lists six co-conspirators, without naming or indicting them.

Based on the descriptions provided of the co-conspirators, they match the
profiles of a crew of outside lawyers and advisers that Mr. Trump turned to
after his campaign and White House lawyers failed to turn up credible evidence
of fraud and had lost dozens of cases to challenge the election results in swing
states.

After many of his core advisers told him his claims of fraud weren’t bearing
out, Mr. Trump turned to lawyers who were willing to argue ever more outlandish
conspiracy and legal theories to keep him in power.

These advisers included Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York; the
constitutional lawyer John Eastman, who came up with the scheme to pressure Mr.
Pence to block the certification of election results on Jan. 6; and Sidney
Powell, the lawyer who pushed the theory that foreign nations had hacked into
voting machines. Even Mr. Trump told advisers at the time that Ms. Powell’s
theories sounded “crazy,” but he kept repeating them in public.

It’s unclear whether any or all of these co-conspirators will be indicted or
whether they now have a period in which there’s an opportunity for them to
decide to cooperate with prosecutors.


INDICTMENTS HAVE ONLY STRENGTHENED TRUMP’S HOLD ON THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

Mr. Trump may be on trial next year in three or four separate criminal cases —
and there’s no telling what effect that might have on his general election
prospects if he’s the Republican nominee. So far, the indictments appear to have
had nothing but political upside for the former president.

The criminal investigations have helped consolidate Mr. Trump’s position as his
party’s overwhelming front-runner in the presidential primaries.

The latest charges were Mr. Trump’s third indictment since early April. In the
four months since his first indictment in New York, Mr. Trump has gained nearly
10 percentage points, according to national polling averages. During that same
period, his closest rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, has seen his support
drop to the point where he now lags Mr. Trump nationally by more than 30
percentage points and is far behind in all the early voting states.

To understand the depths of frustration that Mr. Trump’s presidential rivals are
wallowing in as they helplessly watch a Republican electorate in thrall to the
former president, consider a single data point from this week’s New York
Times/Siena College poll.

“In a head-to-head contest with Mr. DeSantis,” The Times wrote, “Mr. Trump still
received 22 percent among voters who believe he has committed serious federal
crimes — a greater share than the 17 percent that Mr. DeSantis earned from the
entire G.O.P. electorate.”

If Mr. Trump does well among Republican voters who already think he’s a
criminal, what hope do his G.O.P. opponents have of exploiting this latest
indictment?

Show more


THE FOUR CHARGES IN THE DONALD TRUMP JANUARY 6 INDICTMENT

1 count
Conspiracy to defraud the United States

The charge against Mr. Trump details the various methods he and co-conspirators
used to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

2 counts
Related to efforts to obstruct the vote certification proceedings

Mr. Trump faces two charges involving the vote certification proceedings at the
Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021: one of obstructing that process and one of conspiring
to do so.

1 count
Conspiracy to violate civil rights

Related to Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse election results in states with close
elections in 2020.



The Donald Trump January 6 Indictment, Annotated ›

45 pages




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Aug. 1, 2023, 10:06 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 10:06 p.m. ET

Ben Protess and Maggie Haberman


THE FIVE WAYS TRUMP AND SIX CO-CONSPIRATORS TRIED TO CARRY OUT AN ELECTION
SCHEME.

Image

Former President Donald J. Trump on his plane flying to Columbia, S.C., for a
stop in his 2024 campaign earlier this year.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York
Times


Donald J. Trump did not act alone.

The indictment unveiled on Tuesday accused Mr. Trump of enlisting six
co-conspirators in “his criminal efforts to overturn the legitimate results of
the 2020 presidential election and retain power.”

It outlined five distinct ways in which Mr. Trump and his co-conspirators
carried out the “unlawful” scheme to overturn the election results, including
organizing a false slate of electors in seven swing states that Mr. Trump lost
to Joseph R. Biden. Those states included Wisconsin, Nevada and Georgia, where a
local prosecutor is also scrutinizing the fake slate of electors.

According to the indictment, Mr. Trump and his co-conspirators also used false
claims of election fraud to spur state lawmakers into action to “subvert the
legitimate” results of the election.

“On the pretext of baseless fraud claims, the Defendant pushed officials in
certain states to ignore the popular vote; disenfranchise millions of voters;
dismiss legitimate electors; and ultimately, cause the ascertainment of and
voting by illegitimate electors in favor of the Defendant,” the indictment said.

Mr. Trump and his co-conspirators also tried to use “the power and authority” of
the Justice Department to conduct “sham election crime investigations” and fuel
lies about the election. They also pressured Vice President Mike Pence to delay
the certification of the election on Jan. 6, essentially seeking to enlist him
in the conspiracy. (When he resisted, Mr. Trump at one point chided Mr. Pence
for being “too honest.”)

Finally, according to the indictment, Mr. Trump and some of his co-conspirators
stoked tension during the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The
co-conspirators “exploited the disruption by redoubling efforts to levy false
claims of election fraud,” the indictment said.

Although the special counsel Jack Smith did not announce charges against any of
the co-conspirators — nor are they named in the indictment — he could still be
investigating their role in the plot to overturn the election results.

Show more
Aug. 1, 2023, 9:48 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 9:48 p.m. ET

Glenn Thrush

Trump has been summoned to appear at the federal courthouse in Washington at 4
p.m. on Thursday, according to the special counsel’s office. Magistrate Judge
Moxila A. Upadhyaya will preside.

Aug. 1, 2023, 9:30 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 9:30 p.m. ET

Maggie Haberman


CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN TRUMP AND PENCE PROVIDED KEY EVIDENCE FOR PROSECUTORS.

Image

President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in April 2020.
Conversations between them provided information that prosecutors used to file
the charges against Mr. Trump announced on Tuesday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New
York Times


Some of the most specific and damning pieces of information laid out in the
indictment charging former President Donald J. Trump with conspiracy came from
conversations between Mr. Trump and his vice president, Mike Pence.

Mr. Pence, who met with federal prosecutors months ago, appears to have been
among the witnesses who provided recollections of his discussions with Mr.
Trump. Prosecutors also obtained contemporaneous notes that Mr. Pence took.

The indictment tells a lengthy narrative about Mr. Trump’s effort to force Mr.
Pence to thwart President Biden from being certified by Congress as the winner
in the Electoral College in the days leading up to Jan. 6, 2021. Mr. Pence had a
ceremonial role overseeing the certification of the election in Congress, and
Mr. Trump repeatedly urged him to use it to keep Mr. Trump in power.

Mr. Pence told him several times that doing so exceeded his authority.

In great detail and with specific dates, the indictment describes Mr. Trump as
using a series of routine interactions with Mr. Pence to try to coerce him into
doing what he wanted.

“On December 25, when the Vice President called the Defendant to wish him a
Merry Christmas, the Defendant quickly turned the conversation to January 6 and
his request that the Vice President reject electoral votes that day,”
prosecutors wrote in the indictment. “The Vice President pushed back, telling
the Defendant, as the Vice President already had in previous conversations, ‘You
know I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome.’”

Another instance, which Mr. Pence had in his notes, came on Dec. 29, when Mr.
Trump told Mr. Pence that the Justice Department had found “major infractions”
in the voting, which was false.

Then, three days later, on New Year’s Day, Mr. Trump called Mr. Pence and
berated him because he opposed a lawsuit asking a judge to rule that the vice
president had the authority to reject electoral votes.

“You’re too honest,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Pence, who described some of that
interaction in his book, “So Help Me God,” last year.

Mr. Trump tried again on Jan. 3, the indictment says. Again, Mr. Pence pushed
back.

The indictment lays out not just conversations that Mr. Trump had with Mr.
Pence, but talks he had with others about Mr. Pence.

“At the meeting in the Oval Office on the night of January 3, Co-Conspirator 4
suggested that the Justice Department should opine that the Vice President could
exceed his lawful authority during the certification proceeding and change the
election outcome,” the indictment says.

“When the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel began to
explain why the Justice Department should not do so, the Defendant said, ‘No one
here should be talking to the Vice President. I’m talking to the Vice
President,’ and ended the discussion,” the indictment says.

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Aug. 1, 2023, 9:17 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 9:17 p.m. ET

Charlie Savage


ONE CHALLENGE IN THE LEGAL CASES AGAINST TRUMP: SCHEDULING.

Image

Former President Donald J. Trump could be facing trials in Washington, New York
and Florida.Credit...Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images


As former President Donald J. Trump campaigns for the White House while multiple
criminal prosecutions against him play out, at least one thing is clear: Under
the laws of physics, he cannot be in two places at once.

Generally, criminal defendants must be present in the courtroom during their
trials. Not only will that force Mr. Trump to step away from the campaign trail,
possibly for weeks at a time, but the judges overseeing his trials must also
jostle for position in sequencing dates. The collision course is raising
extraordinary — and unprecedented — questions about the logistical, legal and
political challenges of various trials unfolding against the backdrop of a
presidential campaign.

“The courts will have to decide how to balance the public interest in having
expeditious trials against Trump’s interest and the public interest in his being
able to campaign so that the democratic process works,” said Bruce Green, a
Fordham University professor and former prosecutor. “That’s a type of complexity
that courts have never had to deal with before.”

The complications make plain another reality: Mr. Trump’s troubles are
entangling the campaign with the courts to a degree the nation has never
experienced — raising tensions around the ideal of keeping the justice system
separate from politics.

Already, Mr. Trump is facing a state trial on civil fraud accusations in New
York in October. Another trial on whether he defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll
is set to open on Jan. 15 — the same day as the Iowa caucuses. On Jan. 29, a
trial begins in yet another lawsuit, this one accusing Mr. Trump, his company
and three of his children of using the family name to entice vulnerable people
to invest in sham business opportunities.

Because those cases are civil, Mr. Trump could choose not to attend the trials,
just as he shunned an earlier lawsuit by Ms. Carroll, in which a jury found him
liable for sexual abuse.

But he will not have that option in a criminal case on charges in New York that
he falsified business records as part of covering up a sex scandal shortly
before the 2016 election. The opening date for that trial, which will most
likely last several weeks, is in late March, about three weeks after Super
Tuesday, when over a dozen states vote on March 5.

In the criminal inquiry into Mr. Trump’s hoarding of sensitive documents, the
federal judge overseeing the case set a trial date for May 20, 2024. That is
after the bulk of the primary contests and less than two months before the start
of the Republican National Convention in July.


Show more
Aug. 1, 2023, 9:00 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 9:00 p.m. ET

Adam Goldman


HERE ARE SOME KEY PARTS OF THE INDICTMENT.

Image

Former President Donald J. Trump at a rally for his 2024 presidential campaign
in Erie, Pa., on Saturday.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times


Jack Smith, the special counsel, charged former President Donald J. Trump with
four criminal counts, involving three conspiracies related to Mr. Trump’s
attempts to overturn the victory of Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the 2020 election.
Here are some things to know:


MR. TRUMP FACES A LITANY OF SERIOUS CHARGES.

Among the charges, prosecutors said that Mr. Trump tried to defraud the
government, deprive people of their right to vote and obstruct an official
proceeding. Each of the conspiracies were intended to target the collecting,
counting and certifying of the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Prosecutors wrote in the indictment that Mr. Trump was “determined to stay in
power" and created an “intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and
erode public faith” in the country’s democratic foundations.


MR. TRUMP HAD SIX CO-CONSPIRATORS, ACCORDING TO THE INDICTMENT.

The indictment does not name the co-conspirators but the descriptions of them
appear to match up with a number of people who were central to the investigation
into election tampering conducted by prosecutors working for Mr. Smith. Among
those people central to the inquiry were Rudolph W. Giuliani, a lawyer who
oversaw Mr. Trump’s attempts to claim the election was marred by widespread
fraud; John Eastman, a law professor who provided the legal basis to overturn
the election by manipulating the count of electors to the Electoral College;
Sidney Powell, a lawyer who pushed Mr. Trump to use the military to seize voting
machines and rerun the election; Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official at
the time; and Kenneth Chesebro and James Troupis, lawyers who helped flesh out
the plan to use fake electors pledged to Mr. Trump in states that were won by
President Biden.


PROSECUTORS SAY MR. TRUMP UNDERTOOK MANY SCHEMES TO STAY IN POWER.

The indictment points to several instances in which Mr. Trump plotted to
overturn the election and sow doubt about the votes that were cast in seven
states. Prosecutors said that Mr. Trump hatched his criminal scheme after the
election and along with his co-conspirators executed a strategy to use “deceit
in targeted states.” The indictment lists how Mr. Trump tried to sow doubt in
Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.


PROSECUTORS SAY MR. TRUMP KNEW HE WAS SPREADING ELECTIONS LIES.

Vice President Mike Pence said he saw no evidence of “outcome-determinative
fraud”; senior Justice Department officials said there was no evidence to
support the election fraud claims; and senior White House lawyers also told Mr.
Trump the same thing. Among others who delivered a similar message were state
legislators and officials as well as the courts that rejected every one of his
lawsuits. The courts, prosecutors said, provided “real-time notice that his
allegations were meritless.”


HOW MUCH IN THIS INDICTMENT IS NEW?

Much of what is in the indictment is already known because of the work of
journalists and the extensive investigation done by the Jan. 6 committee of the
House. Still, there appeared to be some new revelations, including the conduct
of Mr. Trump and Mr. Clark whom the former president tried to install as the
acting attorney general before that effort was thwarted by officials at the
Justice Department.

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Aug. 1, 2023, 8:40 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 8:40 p.m. ET

Charlie Savage

Reporting from Washington


WHAT IF TRUMP IS ELECTED WITH CRIMINAL CHARGES STILL LOOMING?

Image

Despite multiple criminal indictments, former President Donald J. Trump is still
the front-runner for the Republican nomination.Credit...Matt Roth for The New
York Times


If former President Donald J. Trump wins the presidency even as criminal charges
against him still loom, a series of extraordinary complications would ensue.

The indictment on Tuesday on federal charges stemming from his attempts to
remain in power after his 2020 election loss added to the mounting legal peril
Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican Party, faces as he campaigns for
a second term in the White House.

In New York, he is accused of falsifying business records in connection with a
hush money payment while the special counsel, Jack Smith, also previously
accused Mr. Trump of mishandling national security secrets.

Were a federal case to still be pending on Inauguration Day, Mr. Trump could
simply use his power as president to force the Justice Department to drop the
matter, as he has suggested he might do.

(It is not yet clear when a trial over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election
will start. The classified documents case, which will be tried in Florida, has a
date set for May, but that could change depending on how pretrial arguments
unfold.)

But the Constitution does not give presidents supervisory authority over state
prosecutors, so that would not work for the state inquiries in New York and
Georgia, where the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, has indicated
she is nearing a decision on charges in her own election-interference
investigation.

The most Mr. Trump could probably do is try to delay a trial over any state
charges that may be pending. In the past, the Justice Department has taken the
position that criminal legal proceedings against a president while he is in
office would be unconstitutional because it would interfere with his ability to
perform his duties.

There is no definitive Supreme Court ruling on the matter because the issue has
never arisen before. In 1997, the Supreme Court allowed a federal lawsuit
against President Bill Clinton to proceed while he was in office — but that was
a civil case, not a criminal one.

Mr. Trump’s trial in New York on charges of bookkeeping fraud is scheduled to
begin in March. The timing of any trial in Georgia is an open question.

If Mr. Trump were to be convicted in one or more cases, he is almost certain to
pursue appeals, delaying any sentencing and all but ensuring he is not
incarcerated by Inauguration Day. The question would then arise of what would
happen if he took office for a second term.

Should Mr. Trump be convicted in a federal case, he would likely then move to
pardon himself, a power he claimed in 2018 that he had the “absolute right” to
wield. It is not clear whether a self-pardon would be legitimate.

No text in the Constitution bars a president from doing so. But in 1974, the
Justice Department issued a terse legal opinion stating that President Richard
Nixon did not appear to have the authority to pardon himself “under the
fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case.”

But the opinion did not explain what transformed that principle into an
unwritten limit on the power the Constitution bestows on presidents. Legal
experts have disagreed on that question, but no president has ever claimed he
was pardoning himself, so it has never been tested in court.

In such a scenario, Mr. Trump is almost certain to use his control of the
Justice Department to ensure that it sides with him on whether a self-pardon is
legitimate. If prosecutors do not challenge a self-pardon, it is not clear who
else would have legal standing to pursue the matter.

Should Mr. Trump be convicted in New York or Georgia, he could not pardon
himself because the Constitution does not empower a president to forgive state
offenses. That is instead a power wielded by governors. If the relevant governor
did not pardon him, he could seek a federal court order delaying any
incarceration — or requiring his release from prison — while he is the sitting
president, on constitutional grounds.

Yet another possibility is that if he is incarcerated, upon the start of his
second term, he could be removed from office under the 25th Amendment as “unable
to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

But that outcome would require the majority of a president’s cabinet, along with
the vice president, to make such a determination. Among the questions that
possibility would raise is who would qualify as a cabinet member if the Senate
has not confirmed any new political appointees by Mr. Trump.

Show more
Aug. 1, 2023, 8:25 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 8:25 p.m. ET

Alan Feuer


MORE THAN 1,000 PEOPLE HAVE BEEN CHARGED IN CONNECTION WITH THE JAN. 6 ATTACK.

Image

Nearly 1,100 people have been charged in connection with the 2021 attack on the
Capitol.Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York Times


Even as the special counsel, Jack Smith, pursued an investigation of former
President Donald J. Trump for seeking to overturn the 2020 election, the Justice
Department did not slow its sweeping pursuit of pro-Trump rioters who attacked
the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

As of July, prosecutors have charged nearly 1,100 people in connection with the
attack. The Justice Department could ultimately bring indictments against as
many as 1,000 more in the months to come.

More than 350 people charged so far stand accused of assaulting police officers,
including about 110 who used a deadly or dangerous weapon. Another 310 people
have been charged with the obstruction of an official proceeding, the go-to
count that prosecutors have used to describe how members of the mob disrupted
the certification of the election that was taking place inside the Capitol at a
joint session of Congress.

More 100 rioters have gone to trial in Federal District Court in Washington,
starting with Guy Wesley Reffitt, a Texas militiaman who was convicted in March
2022 of helping to lead an advance against the police that resulted in the first
violent breach of the Capitol.

The vast majority of those who have faced trial have been found guilty of at
least one crime or another; only two people — a former government contractor
from New Mexico and a low-level member of the Oath Keepers militia — have been
acquitted of all the charges they faced.

About 560 defendants have been sentenced. Of those, more than 330 have been
ordered to serve some amount of time in prison.

The most serious and complex trials so far have involved the Oath Keepers and
the Proud Boys, another far-right organization. The leaders of the groups —
Stewart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio — were both convicted of seditious conspiracy
along with some of their lieutenants.

Mr. Rhodes, who founded the Oath Keepers in 2009, was sentenced in May to 18
years in prison — the longest sentence given so far in any Jan. 6 criminal case.

Mr. Tarrio is expected to be sentenced this summer.

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Aug. 1, 2023, 8:19 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 8:19 p.m. ET

Maggie Haberman


TRUMP HAS SPENT TWO YEARS LABELING THE CAPITOL ATTACK AS A ‘LOVE-FEST.’

Image

Former President Donald J. Trump listening to a song, “Justice for All,” which
he had recorded a with a group of prisoners called the J6 Choir, during a
campaign rally in Waco, Texas, in March.Credit...Evan Vucci/Associated Press


Despite ample video footage showing violence, hundreds of hours of testimony
given to a House select committee and his own lack of public action that day,
former President Donald J. Trump has spent two years recasting the history of
one of the worst days at the U.S. Capitol as a “love-fest” in which he did
nothing wrong.

In his initial months out of office, Mr. Trump was rarely quoted in the
mainstream media. And he had been kicked off Twitter and Facebook after the
violence of Jan. 6, 2021, giving him no outlet for making public statements
about what took place that day as a mob of his supporters stormed the building
and tried to disrupt the certification of President Biden’s victory.

Mr. Trump’s initial tweet as the rioters broke into the building was an attack
on Vice President Mike Pence for not rejecting the proceedings himself. And when
Mr. Trump finally did urge the mob to go home, the effort was seen as tepid at
best.

The day after the violence, after intense criticism that his initial actions had
not been enough, Mr. Trump released a video in which he said, “Like all
Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem.”

But starting two months after he left office, Mr. Trump gave interviews to book
authors in which he defended himself. And in his relatively few public comments
on what happened, Mr. Trump described the day in which a mob broke into the
Capitol and police officers were injured as a “love-fest.”

His main expression of concern was not for the Capitol Police officers working
that day, but for a woman named Ashli Babbitt, one of his supporters, who was
shot and killed as she tried to enter a locked area of the Capitol.

By early 2022, Mr. Trump had his own social-media site, Truth Social, on which
he regularly maintained that there was “love” among the crowd and tried to give
the violent day a patina of positivity.

As charges began mounting against hundreds of people accused of being part of
the mob that day, Mr. Trump began to publicly suggest he might pardon them if
won the presidency again. Eventually, he began helping to raise money for those
detained on charges related to the Capitol attack and criticized the conditions
under which they were held.

More recently, he recorded a song with a group of prisoners called the J6 Choir.

Show more
Aug. 1, 2023, 8:10 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 8:10 p.m. ET

Neil Vigdor


TRUMP HAS A LONG HISTORY OF CASTING THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT AS A VILLAIN.

Image

As criminal indictments against him pile up, former President Donald J. Trump
has characterized each one as an example of the Justice Department’s being
weaponized against him.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times


With former President Donald J. Trump facing his third indictment this year,
this time for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, his campaign unleashed
a fresh round of accusations on Tuesday, claiming that the Justice Department
was persecuting him because of political motivations.

Almost as soon as the news of the indictment broke, his campaign called the
latest charges the product of a “weaponized Department of Justice.”

“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,” the Trump campaign said in the statement.

The line of attack by Mr. Trump, the Republican front-runner for president, was
a familiar one. It dates back to at least 2017, when he began alluding to a
“deep state” plot by the Justice Department.

Back then, he was fixated on Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to
store classified material and questioned why his opponent in the 2016 election
had not been criminally charged.

“Why aren’t our deep State authorities looking at this?” Mr. Trump wrote in a
post on Twitter in November 2017, tagging Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity.
“Rigged & corrupt?”

The term “deep state” had appeared to be a riff on remarks that Stephen K.
Bannon, his chief strategist, made just after Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Mr.
Bannon, at a conservative gathering, said that the “deconstruction of the
administrative state” was underway.

But as Mr. Trump’s own grip on power became threatened — by his first
impeachment in 2019 and a two-year investigation into Russian election meddling
— he broadened the narrative. His campaign speeches became peppered with
accusations that career civil servants had conspired to undermine his
presidency. His rhetoric became more vitriolic, calling those officials
“absolute scum” and comparing them to Nazis. His campaign invoked “Nazi Germany”
again on Tuesday.

Mr. Trump was so consumed with conspiracy theories about the “deep state” that
his administration weeded out Cabinet members and career civil servants it
deemed to be disloyal at prolific rates. Scores left under their own volition.

By one account, the Trump administration had lost nearly 1,200 senior career
service employees in its first 18 months — roughly 40 percent more than during
President Barack Obama’s first 18 months in office.

He relied on the narrative again when he was impeached a second time after the
Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol.

And now, with criminal indictments against him piling up as he seeks to return
to the White House, he has further demonized the federal government. He has
characterized each successive indictment as examples of the Justice Department
being weaponized against him, pivoting from the broader “deep state” conspiracy
to one aimed squarely at the Democrats now in power.

His Republican rivals have largely echoed his narrative. “As President, I will
end the weaponization of government,” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Mr. Trump’s
top 2024 rival, said on Twitter moments after the third indictment was announced
on Tuesday.

And his allies in Congress and conservative media have always been quick to
adopt his talking points. At times, they also cast themselves as victims of the
“deep state.”

An example: In 2018, Representative Jim Jordan, the House Freedom Caucus
firebrand, blamed liberal bureaucrats in the government amid criticism that he
had failed to report sexual misconduct at Ohio State University while he was a
wrestling coach there.

Mr. Jordan is now chairman of a House subcommittee on the weaponization of the
federal government, which Republicans created this year.

Though none have gone as far as him, Mr. Trump is not the first politician who
has sought to discredit the Justice Department, which includes the F.B.I., often
as the walls of justice closed in on them.

 * As his presidency began to unravel in 1974, Richard M. Nixon warned the
   Justice Department to back off its investigation into Watergate, when a White
   House “plumbers” unit broke into the Democratic National Committee’s offices
   in Washington, D.C. He resigned about four months later.

 * Republicans cried foul when, four days before the 1992 presidential election,
   a special prosecutor brought an additional one-count indictment against
   Caspar W. Weinberger, the former defense secretary, accusing him of lying to
   Congress about the Iran-contra Affair. President George H.W. Bush’s G.O.P.
   allies blamed the timing of the indictment for his defeat by the Democratic
   challenger Bill Clinton. Mr. Bush had been vice president in the Reagan
   administration during the scandal.

 * Democrats and President Bill Clinton’s lawyer relentlessly attacked the
   impartiality of Ken Starr, the independent counsel who led the investigation
   into the president’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, during impeachment
   proceedings in 1998. They accused him of “overkill” and claimed he was
   leaking information to the news media. At the request of the Justice
   Department, his oversight role had been expanded from beyond his initial
   inquiry into the Whitewater deal. Mr. Clinton was impeached mostly along
   party lines in the House, but acquitted by the Senate.

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Aug. 1, 2023, 8:10 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 8:10 p.m. ET

Benjamin Protess

A lawyer for Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who led many of
Trump’s attempts to overturn his election defeat, acknowledged Tuesday night,
“It appears that Mayor Giuliani is alleged to be co-conspirator No. 1.” The
lawyer, Robert J. Costello, slammed the indictment, saying it amounted to
“election interference” and “eviscerates the First Amendment.” He added, “Every
fact that Mayor Giuliani possesses about this case establishes the good-faith
basis President Donald Trump had for the action that he took during the
two-month period charged in the indictment.”

Aug. 1, 2023, 7:48 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 7:48 p.m. ET

Anjali Huynh


DESANTIS SUGGESTS TRUMP CAN’T GET A FAIR TRIAL IN THE D.C. ‘SWAMP.’

Image

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida spoke in New Hampshire on Monday. On Tuesday, Mr.
DeSantis seemed to suggest that the former president could not get a fair trial
in the nation’s capital.Credit...David Degner for The New York Times


Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida raced to respond to news that former President
Donald J. Trump had been indicted a third time not by opining one way or the
other on the new federal charges, but by leveling an unusual attack at residents
of the District of Columbia, where the case is being prosecuted.

Suggesting that Mr. Trump could not get a fair trial if the jurors were
residents of the nation’s capital, an overwhelmingly Democratic city, Mr.
DeSantis called for enacting reforms to let Americans have the right to remove
cases from Washington, D.C. to their home districts.

“Washington, D.C. is a ‘swamp’ and it is unfair to have to stand trial before a
jury that is reflective of the swamp mentality,” Mr. DeSantis wrote on Twitter.
“One of the reasons our country is in decline is the politicization of the rule
of law. No more excuses — I will end the weaponization of the federal
government.”

The judge assigned to Mr. Trump, who was indicted on charges related to his
efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is Tanya S. Chutkan, a D.C. District
Court judge who has routinely issued harsh penalties in Jan. 6-related cases
against people who stormed the Capitol.

The Republican candidates, who have sought to overtake the former president’s
substantial lead in early polls with little success, have campaigned amid a
backdrop of Mr. Trump’s legal battles that have sucked up valuable airtime and
dominated media coverage. Here’s what the others said on Tuesday:

 * Former Vice President Mike Pence, who was present at the Capitol during the
   Jan. 6 attack and was the target of some rioters — and whom the indictment
   describes as a key target of Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign to overturn the
   2020 election — said that the indictment “serves as an important reminder:
   Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of
   the United States.”

 * Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, in a statement to The Times, echoed a
   common refrain among Republicans: that the Justice Department, under the
   Biden administration, had been weaponized against Mr. Biden’s political
   opponents. He referenced the case against Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s son, and
   said, “We’re watching Biden’s D.O.J. continue to hunt Republicans while
   protecting Democrats.”

 * Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur and one of Mr. Trump’s most vocal
   defenders in the 2024 field, called the indictment “un-American.” He sought
   to absolve Mr. Trump of any responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack on the
   Capitol and reiterated his previous promise that, if elected, he would pardon
   Mr. Trump. “The corrupt federal police just won’t stop until they’ve achieved
   their mission: eliminate Trump,” he said, and added: “Trump isn’t responsible
   for what happened on Jan 6. The real cause was systematic and pervasive
   censorship of citizens in the year leading up to it.”

 * Former Representative Will Hurd of Texas, who has refused to pledge his
   support to Mr. Trump if he is the eventual nominee, was the first candidate
   to respond to the new indictment. “Let me be crystal clear: Trump’s
   presidential bid is driven by an attempt to stay out of prison and scam his
   supporters into footing his legal bills,” Mr. Hurd wrote. “His denial of the
   2020 election results and actions on Jan. 6 show he’s unfit for office.”

 * Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, who is running an explicitly
   anti-Trump campaign, reiterated his earlier calls for Mr. Trump to quit his
   campaign, calling him “morally responsible for the attack on our democracy.”
   Mr. Hutchinson said that if Mr. Trump does not drop out of the race, “voters
   must choose a different path.”

Show more
Aug. 1, 2023, 7:48 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 7:48 p.m. ET

Glenn Thrush, Adam Goldman and Michael S. Schmidt

Glenn Thrush and Adam Goldman reported from Washington, and Michael S. Schmidt
from New York.


JACK SMITH HAS UNDERTAKEN TWO HISTORIC INVESTIGATIONS WITH REMARKABLE SPEED.

Image

Jack Smith sees himself as a ground-level prosecutor paid to make a series of
fish-or-cut-bait decisions.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times


Last fall, a largely unknown former prosecutor with a beard and a brisk gait
flew unnoticed to Washington from The Hague after being summoned to a secret
meeting by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.

Jack Smith’s job interview would remain unknown to all but a handful of
department officials until hours before he was appointed special counsel to
oversee two investigations into former President Donald J. Trump in
mid-November.

Over the past few months of frenetic activity, Mr. Smith’s anonymity has
vanished. He has now indicted Mr. Trump twice: in June, for risking national
security secrets by taking classified documents from the White House, and on
Tuesday, in connection with his widespread efforts to subvert democracy and
overturn an election in 2020 he clearly lost.

And he has taken these actions with remarkable speed, aggressiveness and
apparent indifference to collateral political consequences.

Image

Mr. Smith has now indicted former President Donald J. Trump
twice.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

“He’s going at a very fast clip — not letting the perfect be the enemy of the
good — to the point that I sometimes worry they might be going a little too fast
and haven’t buttoned everything up,” said Ryan Goodman, a professor at the New
York University School of Law, before the release of the indictment in the
election case.

Mr. Smith told reporters that the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was
“fueled by lies” — Mr. Trump’s lies — during brief remarks on Tuesday, after a
jury in Washington indicted the former president on four counts.

Mr. Smith is not the first special counsel to investigate Mr. Trump. From 2017
to 2019, Robert S. Mueller III examined ties between Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign
and Russia. In his final report, he laid out a frantic effort by Mr. Trump to
thwart a federal inquiry but ultimately cited a Justice Department policy in not
making a determination on whether the sitting president had committed a crime.
Mr. Smith, by contrast, faces no such limits, given that Mr. Trump is no longer
in office.

But where Mr. Mueller took two years to conclude his investigations into Mr.
Trump, Mr. Smith — who took over investigations into Mr. Trump that were several
months old — delivered his basic assessment in two criminal investigations in a
little over eight months.

Beyond the contrast in circumstances and timing, there are undeniable
differences between the two men, rooted in their respective ages, experiences,
management styles and prosecutorial philosophies, that have shaped their
divergent charging decisions.

“His disposition, compared to Mueller, seems very different — he’s working
against the clock, Mueller moved a lot more slowly,” said Mr. Goodman, who is a
co-founder of Just Security, an online publication that has closely monitored
the Trump investigations.

Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans have accused Mr. Smith, without
evidence, of pursuing a politically motivated investigation intended to destroy
Mr. Trump’s chances of retaking the White House, including by leaking details of
the case. But department officials have said Mr. Smith is committed to
conducting a fair investigation, and he has defended his own lawyers against
attacks from the Trump team, who accuse them of using unethical tactics.

The former president has taken to calling Mr. Smith “deranged,” and some of his
supporters have threatened the special counsel, his family and his team —
prompting the U.S. Marshals to spend $1.9 million to provide protection for
those who have been targeted, according to federal expense reports that cover
the first four months of his tenure. Mr. Smith was flanked by a three-person
security detail inside his own building when he delivered remarks to reporters
on Tuesday.

Mr. Mueller was an established and trusted national figure when he was appointed
special counsel, unlike Mr. Smith, who was virtually unknown outside the
department and drew a mixed record during his tenure. Mr. Mueller had already
solidified a reputation as the most important F.B.I. director since J. Edgar
Hoover, after protecting and reshaping the bureau at a time when some were
calling for breaking it up following the intelligence failures that preceded the
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Image

Robert S. Mueller III, the former special counsel, was an established and
trusted national figure when he was appointed.Credit...Anna Moneymaker/The New
York Times

But there was, at times, a gap between the perception of Mr. Mueller and his
ability to execute a difficult job under fire. Already in his mid-70s, he struck
many of those who working with him as a notably diminished figure who, in
testifying before Congress at the end of the investigation, was not entirely in
command of the facts of his complex investigation.

By comparison, Mr. Smith is someone who rose to the upper echelons of the
Justice Department but is not well known outside of law enforcement circles. At
54, Mr. Smith, a lifelong prosecutor, is leading the investigation at the height
of his career, not at the end of it.

Mr. Smith is fresh off a stint as a war crimes prosecutor in The Hague and took
over two investigations that were already well down the road. Mr. Smith sees
himself as a ground-level prosecutor paid to make a series of fast decisions. He
is determined to do everything he can to quickly strengthen a case (or end it) —
by squeezing witnesses and using prosecutorial tools, such as summoning
potential targets of prosecution before a grand jury to emphasize the
seriousness of his inquiries, people close to him have said.

When Mr. Smith took over as chief of the Justice Department’s public integrity
unit in 2010, the unit was reeling from the collapse of a criminal case against
former Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska. In his first few months on the
job, he closed several prominent investigations into members of Congress without
charges.

At the time, Mr. Smith brushed off the suggestion that he had lost his nerve.
“If I were the sort of person who could be cowed,” he said, “I would find
another line of work.”

Among his more notable corruption cases was a conviction of Robert McDonnell,
the Republican former governor of Virginia, that was later overturned by the
Supreme Court, and a conviction of former Representative Rick Renzi, Republican
of Arizona, whom Mr. Trump pardoned during his final hours as president.

Mr. Smith appears to be somewhat more involved than Mr. Mueller in the granular
details of his investigations. Even so, he seldom sits in personally on witness
interviews — and spoke only sparingly during two meetings with Mr. Trump’s
defense lawyers, delegating the discussions to subordinates, according to people
familiar with the situation.

Mr. Smith’s stony style, intentional or not, has the effect of sowing
considerable unease across a conference table or courtroom.

James Trusty, who quit the former president’s defense team a day after meeting
with Mr. Smith’s team in June, worked for years with Mr. Smith as a senior
criminal prosecutor at Justice Department headquarters and told associates he
was a “serious” adversary not to be underestimated. Other lawyers said Mr.
Smith’s team has fed the sense of mystery by describing him in veiled or cryptic
terms, with one calling him “the man behind the curtain.”

He has been more public-facing than Mr. Mueller in one critical respect —
delivering short, sober statements to the news media after each grand jury
indictment.

Mr. Mueller said little when faced with a barrage of falsehoods pushed publicly
by Mr. Trump and his allies about him and his investigative team. But at a news
conference after Mr. Trump was indicted in the documents case, Mr. Smith seemed
to be speaking with an added purpose: to rebut claims that one of his
prosecutors, Jay I. Bratt, had inappropriately pressured a defense lawyer
representing one of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants, according to a person with
knowledge of the situation.

“The prosecutors in my office are among the most talented and experienced in the
Department of Justice,” he said. “They have investigated this case hewing to the
highest ethical standards.”

While much attention has centered on Mr. Smith, most of the day-to-day work on
critical elements of the case has been done by several prosecutors known for
their aggressive approaches.

One of them is J.P. Cooney, the former leader of the public corruption division
of the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington. Mr. Cooney has worked on several
politically fraught trials and investigations that drew the ire of Republicans
and Democrats alike.

He unsuccessfully prosecuted two Democrats — Senator Robert Menendez of New
Jersey and Greg Craig, a former White House counsel during the Obama
administration — and investigated Andrew G. McCabe, the former F.B.I. deputy
director, who was vilified by Mr. Trump for the bureau’s Russia investigation.
(Mr. McCabe was never prosecuted.)

More recently, Mr. Cooney oversaw the lawyers prosecuting Roger J. Stone Jr., a
longtime political adviser to Mr. Trump. The lawyers quit in protest after the
Justice Department under William P. Barr intervened in his sentencing. (Mr.
Cooney was deeply upset by the intervention, but he said the case was “not the
hill worth dying on” according to Aaron Zelinsky, a career prosecutor, who
testified before the House Oversight Committee in 2020.)

A second key player is Thomas P. Windom, who was brought in nearly a year before
Mr. Smith’s appointment to coordinate the complicated Jan. 6 investigation that
had once been seated in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington.

Image

Mr. Smith had a stint as a war crimes prosecutor at The Hague, in the
Netherlands.Credit...Pool photo by Peter Dejong

Mr. Smith has relied on F.B.I. agents to perform investigative tasks, which is
not uncommon for special counsels. But the F.B.I. is not walled off from Mr.
Smith’s investigation, unlike the agents who were detailed to work for John H.
Durham, a special counsel who investigated the origins of the F.B.I.’s Russia
investigation.

In a letter to House Republicans in June, Carlos F. Uriarte, the Justice
Department’s legislative affairs director, disclosed that Mr. Smith employed
about 26 special agents, with additional agents being brought on from “time to
time” for specific tasks related to the investigations.

Mr. Smith, unlike many previous special counsels, did not hire most of the
staff: He inherited two existing Trump investigations and moved them from
Justice Department headquarters to his new office across town. Some of the
investigative legwork was also done by investigators with the U.S. Postal
Inspection Service and agents with the Justice Department’s inspector general
working alongside Mr. Windom at one point.

He has, however, exerted direct control over both inquiries, trying to keep even
the most quotidian information about his efforts away from the news media, and
been present, if sotto voce, at the most critical moments.

During Mr. Trump’s arraignment in Miami in June, Mr. Smith sat in the gallery,
closely watching the proceedings. Some in the courtroom suggested he stared at
Mr. Trump for much of the hearing, sizing him up.

But that was not really the case. He listened intently to the lawyers on both
sides, at times leaning in toward a colleague to make a whispered comment or ask
a question.

Alan Feuer contributed reporting.

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Aug. 1, 2023, 7:43 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 7:43 p.m. ET

Glenn Thrush


THE SPECIAL COUNSEL SAYS TRUMP TARGETED ‘A BEDROCK FUNCTION OF THE U.S.
GOVERNMENT.’

Image

Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the investigation, promised to offer
Mr. Trump “a speedy trial.”Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times


The special counsel overseeing the Justice Department investigation of Donald J.
Trump laid out the former president’s moral, as well as legal, responsibility
for violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, saying the riot was “fueled by
lies” — Mr. Trump’s lies.

Mr. Smith delivered a two-minute statement about an hour after a grand jury in
Washington returned a four-count indictment of the former president over his
efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He cast his decision to
charge Mr. Trump as necessary to uphold American democracy and hold the former
president accountable for the violence inflicted by his supporters.

Mr. Trump’s behavior after the election — including his attempt to install a
slate fake of electors, his efforts to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence
not to certify the election results and his refusal to call off the Capitol
rioters while they were rampaging — was “targeted at obstructing a bedrock
function of the U.S. government,” he said.

The indictment said Mr. Trump was aided by six unnamed co-conspirators and Mr.
Smith, who was appointed special counsel by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland
in November, said his investigation of “other individuals continues.”

Speaking in a voice so low that camera crews had trouble getting a suitable
volume, Mr. Smith promised to offer Mr. Trump — the clear front-runner for the
2024 Republican presidential nomination — “a speedy trial.”

He delivered a similar message in the same windowless conference room in June
when he announced the indictment of Mr. Trump for mishandling classified
documents at his resort and residence in Florida.

In both statements, Mr. Smith emphasized his responsibility to protect public
servants. In June, he said Mr. Trump’s handling of the country’s secrets posed a
danger to national security and the military. On Tuesday, he said he was helping
defend officers who put themselves at risk in their efforts to repel a mob that
eventually overran the Capitol complex.

“The men and women who defended the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 are heroes,” he said.
“They are patriots and they are the very best of us.”

Those officers, he said, put their lives on the line to “defend the very
institutions and principles that define the United States.”

His remarks over, Mr. Smith quickly exited the room, flanked by a three-member
security team. He refused to answer shouted questions, including, “How will this
affect the election?”

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Aug. 1, 2023, 7:30 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 7:30 p.m. ET

Ruth Igielnik

More than half of voters say Trump went so far after the 2020 election that he
threatened American democracy, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll
released this week, while 39 percent say he was just exercising his right to
contest the election.

Aug. 1, 2023, 7:31 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 7:31 p.m. ET

Ruth Igielnik

Unsurprisingly, voters are largely divided by party, with nearly all Democrats
saying Trump threatened democracy and three-quarters of Republicans saying he
didn’t. About one in 10 voters who intend to support Trump in 2024 say they
think his actions were a threat to democracy — but, as with voters who think he
committed serious crimes, there is little indication they are considering
changing their votes.

Aug. 1, 2023, 7:18 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 7:18 p.m. ET

Alan Feuer


THE INDICTMENT SAYS TRUMP HAD SIX CO-CONSPIRATORS IN HIS EFFORTS TO RETAIN
POWER.

Image

Rudolph W. Giuliani, center, was a member of the former president’s legal team
that oversaw attempts to claim the election was marred by widespread
fraud.Credit...Nicole Craine for The New York Times


The indictment of former President Donald J. Trump mentions — but does not
identify by name — six co-conspirators who prosecutors say worked with him in
seeking to overturn the 2020 election.

It is not clear why the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, decided to
seek only Mr. Trump’s indictment for now, though it is possible that some of the
co-conspirators could still face charges in the weeks ahead.

Here is how the indictment describes those conspirators. The identities of the
co-conspirators could not immediately be determined, but the descriptions of
them appear to match up with a number of people who were central to the
investigation into election tampering conducted by prosecutors working for Mr.
Smith.

Among those people central to the inquiry were Rudolph W. Giuliani, a lawyer who
oversaw Mr. Trump’s attempts to claim the election was marred by widespread
fraud; John Eastman, a law professor who provided the legal basis to overturn
the election by manipulating the count of electors to the Electoral College;
Sidney Powell, a lawyer who pushed Mr. Trump to use the military to seize voting
machines and rerun the election; Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official at
the time; and Kenneth Chesebro and James Troupis, lawyers who helped flesh out
the plan to use fake electors pledged to Mr. Trump in states that were won by
President Biden.

Co-conspirator 1 is described in the indictment as an “attorney who was willing
to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies that the defendant’s 2020
re-election campaign would not.”

In a statement, Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer acknowledged that it “appears that Mayor
Giuliani is alleged to be co-conspirator No. 1.” The lawyer, Robert J. Costello,
denounced the indictment, saying that it amounted to “election interference” and
“eviscerates the First Amendment.”

The final report by the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 detailed the
struggle between Mr. Giuliani, who was pushing Mr. Trump to promote allegations
of fraud, and other lawyers for the campaign who backed away from them.

The indictment describes co-conspirator 2 as a lawyer who came up and sought to
implement a plan to “leverage” Vice President Mike Pence’s “ceremonial role
overseeing the certification proceeding” that was taking place inside the
Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to “obstruct the certification of the presidential
election.”

That tracks closely with Mr. Eastman’s advice to Mr. Trump that he could
pressure Mr. Pence into either disrupting or delaying the certification process.
A lawyer for Mr. Eastman did not respond to a request for comment.

Co-conspirator 3 is described as another lawyer whose “unfounded claims of
election fraud” sounded “crazy” to Mr. Trump, the indictment said.

Ms. Powell was best known during the chaotic postelection period for filing four
lawsuits in key swing states claiming that a cabal of bad actors — including
Chinese software companies, Venezuelan officials and the liberal financier
George Soros conspired to hack into voting machines produced by Dominion Voting
Systems and flip votes from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden. A lawyer for Ms. Powell did
not respond to a request for comment.

The indictment says that co-conspirator 4 was a Justice Department official who
worked on civil matters and plotted with Mr. Trump to use the department to
“open sham election crime investigations” and “influence state legislatures with
knowingly false claims of election fraud.”

Mr. Trump almost installed Mr. Clark, a top official in the Justice Department’s
civil division, as the acting attorney general in the waning days of his
administration after Mr. Clark purportedly agreed to support his claims of
election fraud.

Mr. Clark also helped draft a letter to Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a
Republican, urging Mr. Kemp to call the state legislature into a special session
to create a slate of false pro-Trump electors. A lawyer for Mr. Clark did not
respond to a request for comment.

The indictment describes co-conspirator 5 as a lawyer who helped to craft and
try to implement “a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to
obstruct the certification proceeding.” That description could fit a handful of
lawyers who advised Mr. Trump.

Finally, co-conspirator 6 is described as a “political consultant” who helped to
devise and implement the fake elector scheme. It could apply to several people
who worked closely with Mr. Trump after the election.

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Aug. 1, 2023, 7:15 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 7:15 p.m. ET

Neil Vigdor

Mike Pence, Trump’s vice president and a target of the Jan. 6 rioters,
admonished his now-rival after his indictment on Tuesday, while saying that he
was entitled to a presumption of innocence. “Today’s indictment serves as an
important reminder: Anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never
be president of the United States,” he said.

Image

Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York Times
Aug. 1, 2023, 7:04 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 7:04 p.m. ET

Jeremy W. Peters

Trump’s defenders are framing his actions as a matter of free speech. “It’s a
terribly tragic day where political speech has been criminalized,” John Lauro, a
Trump lawyer, said on Fox News.

Aug. 1, 2023, 7:01 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 7:01 p.m. ET

Alan Feuer

The indictment walks a cautious path in connecting Trump to the attack on the
Capitol. It accuses him of “exploitation” of the violence and chaos, but does
not quite accuse him of inciting either one.

Aug. 1, 2023, 6:56 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 6:56 p.m. ET

Luke Broadwater

“In a lot of ways, the committee’s work provided this path,” said Soumya
Dayananda, a former senior investigator for the House Jan. 6 committee. “The
committee served as educating the country about what the former president did,
and this is finally accountability. The congressional committee wasn’t going to
be able to bring accountability. That was in the hands of the Department of
Justice.”

Image

Credit...J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press


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Aug. 1, 2023, 6:55 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 6:55 p.m. ET

Luke Broadwater

Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, and Hakeem Jeffries, the House
minority leader, said in a statement: “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. 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.”

Aug. 1, 2023, 6:53 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 6:53 p.m. ET

Charlie Savage

The indictment identifies, but does not charge or name, six people as
co-conspirators. One question this raises is whether Smith is giving them one
last opportunity to cooperate with prosecutors — while holding out the option of
bringing charges against them in a later indictment that could also include
additional evidence, as he recently did in the documents case. Because the
people are not identified, observers will try to match their descriptions
against prominent allies of Trump in his attempt to subvert the election, like
Rudolph W. Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark, Kenneth
Chesebro and others.

Aug. 1, 2023, 6:52 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 6:52 p.m. ET

Charlie Savage

In order to prove corrupt intent, Smith signaled in the indictment that he would
make the case to a jury that Trump was not delusional, but knew that he had lost
the election and that his claims were false. He lists numerous times Trump’s own
advisers told him that what he was saying was not true. That was also a theme in
the presentations and final report by the House committee that investigated the
Jan. 6. attack.

Aug. 1, 2023, 6:52 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 6:52 p.m. ET

Charlie Savage


FEDERAL CHARGES DO NOT BAR TRUMP FROM RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT.

Image

Former President Donald J. Trump at a campaign rally in Council Bluffs, Iowa,
this month.Credit...Jordan Gale for The New York Times


The third indictment of former President Donald J. Trump — this time over his
efforts to reverse his loss after the 2020 election — adds to the unusual
questions raised by the prospect of someone running for president while facing
charges.

The indictment, and any conviction, would not bar Mr. Trump from running. The
Constitution establishes criteria for eligibility for president, and a clean
criminal record is not one of them.

Nevertheless, it would be extraordinary for a person who is under indictment,
let alone convicted of a felony, to be a major party nominee.

There are only a few historical examples of somewhat serious candidates who even
come close.

They include the unsuccessful run in the 2016 Republican primary by Rick Perry,
the former governor of Texas, after he was indicted on charges of abuse of power
(the charges were dismissed months after he dropped out of the race), and the
1920 run by Eugene V. Debs as the Socialist Party nominee while he sat in prison
for an Espionage Act conviction.

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Aug. 1, 2023, 6:51 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 6:51 p.m. ET

Benjamin Protess

The indictment details Trump’s pressure campaign on Vice President Mike Pence to
use his role certifying the election on Jan. 6 to overturn the results. At one
point, according to the indictment, Trump told Pence, “You’re too honest.”

Image

Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Aug. 1, 2023, 6:50 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 6:50 p.m. ET

Charlie Savage

The indictment acknowledges that Trump had a First Amendment right to lie about
the election and to file lawsuits challenging its results. It seeks to draw a
clear line between those kinds of lawful efforts and the “unlawful means of
discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results” that are the
focus of the criminal case.


Aug. 1, 2023, 6:45 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 6:45 p.m. ET

Alan Feuer

The judge assigned to Trump’s case, Tanya S. Chutkan, has been a tough jurist in
cases against Jan. 6 rioters — and in a case that involved Trump directly. She
has routinely issued harsh penalties against people who stormed the Capitol. She
also denied Trump’s attempt to avoid disclosing documents to the House committee
investigating Jan. 6, ordering him to turn over the material and writing,
“Presidents are not kings.”

Aug. 1, 2023, 6:43 p.m. ETAug. 1, 2023
Aug. 1, 2023, 6:43 p.m. ET

Alan Feuer


THE NEXT STEP IN THE CASE AGAINST TRUMP IS AN ARRAIGNMENT. HERE’S HOW IT WILL
WORK.

Image

Former President Donald J. Trump entered a plea of not guilty in a state court
in Manhattan in April.Credit...Pool photo by Seth Wenig


Now that the extraordinary has happened and a grand jury has indicted former
President Donald J. Trump for seeking to overturn the 2020 election, the case
will likely settle into an ordinary rhythm.

At some point in the next few days, Mr. Trump will appear in Federal District
Court in Washington for an arraignment, usually a brief and highly formal
affair. He will most likely be asked to enter a plea to the charges he is facing
but may not say a word at the proceeding, instead letting his lawyers speak on
his behalf.

It will be Mr. Trump’s third arraignment this year.

In April, he entered a plea of not guilty in a state court in Manhattan to 34
felonies counts of falsifying business records in a case centered on money paid
to an adult-film actress.

Two months later, he entered another not guilty plea in Federal District Court
in Miami to charges of illegally retaining dozens of classified documents that
he took from the White House, and of conspiring with one of his personal aides,
Walt Nauta, to obstruct the government’s attempts to retrieve the materials.

At the state proceeding in New York, cameras were allowed in the courtroom and
images from that day showed Mr. Trump glowering at the defense table. Cameras
were not permitted for the federal arraignment in Miami and will almost
certainly be banned when Mr. Trump appears in court in Washington.

Mr. Trump hasn’t always been treated like a typical defendant. He did not have a
mug shot taken for the New York or Miami cases, but he was booked and
fingerprinted. That will probably hold true for his arraignment in Washington.

The judge presiding at Mr. Trump’s arraignment in Washington will also set the
conditions for his release, which are unlikely to be severe. The judge who
handled the proceeding in Miami made only one significant provision: He barred
Mr. Trump from discussing the facts of the classified documents case with either
Mr. Nauta or any of more than 80 witnesses who took part in the government’s
investigation.

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