By Joe Miller in London
US prosecutors have filed a revised set of charges against Donald Trump over his alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, thrusting his legal woes back into the spotlight with just over two months to go in the White House race.
The superseding indictment, filed by special counsel Jack Smith in the Washington federal court on Tuesday, is an attempt to comply with a Supreme Court decision that recognised broad immunity from criminal prosecution for president.
Smith’s move comes weeks after the high court ruled that the case would have to be examined by a federal judge to determine what elements were “official acts” for which Trump could not be charged.
It contains the same four core charges that Smith filed against the former president last year in connection with the aftermath of the 2020 election and the lead-up to the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol by a mob of his supporters.
However, the indictment no longer includes certain allegations that Trump instructed his Department of Justice to declare the election results corrupt, or his conversations with DoJ official Jeffrey Clark, whom Trump tried to make attorney-general.
The case was “presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case” and “reflects the government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings”, Smith wrote to the court on Tuesday.
Democrats had hoped that a series of criminal indictments brought against Trump in the past year would put a dent in his political standing. But they have done little to affect his approval rating with Republican voters, who have overwhelmingly backed him as their candidate in the 2024 election.
His conviction on 34 felony counts in Manhattan this year also had little discernible impact on the polls. All of Trump’s remaining cases have run into hurdles that have in effect erased the chances that they will conclude before the November election.
Trump called the new indictment “ridiculous” and claimed it still had the same legal problems as the old one. “The people of our country will see what is happening with all of these corrupt lawsuits against me, and will REJECT them by giving me an overwhelming victory on November 5th,” he wrote in a statement on his Truth Social platform.
Smith, who was appointed to oversee DoJ probes of Trump, has brought two federal criminal cases against the former president.
Trump’s team had asked the Supreme Court to find that he was shielded from prosecution in the 2020 election case for his acts while president. In July, the US high court’s conservative majority ruled that “certain allegations — such as those involving Trump’s discussions with the acting attorney-general — are readily categorised in light of the nature of the president’s official relationship to the office held by that individual” and should be stripped from the indictment.
The Supreme Court urged Tanya Chutkan, the judge overseeing the case, to parse the indictment and ban the inclusion of “official acts” before any trial could proceed, hinting that they expected the process not to be rushed.
Smith’s team is also attempting to resurrect its other federal criminal case against Trump, over the alleged retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. The judge overseeing that case, Aileen Cannon, summarily dismissed the charges after agreeing with Trump’s lawyers that the appointment of Smith without the explicit approval of Congress was unconstitutional.
Only one of the four criminal indictments filed against Trump last year has gone to trial: a case brought by the Manhattan district attorney over whether he had falsified business records to conceal payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.
Trump is due to be sentenced in that case in September. However, it may be further postponed as the judge decides whether the Supreme Court’s ruling affects the verdict.
Last week, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg did not oppose the defence’s request for a delay while they challenged prosecutors’ introduction of alleged “official acts” at trial.
If the delay is successful, Trump could face no further criminal proceedings before November’s election. He is narrowly trailing Democratic vice-president Kamala Harris in polls tracking the race.
Separately, a New York appeals court is set to hear arguments next month over whether Trump must pay more than $450mn after being found liable for fraud in a civil trial brought by the state’s attorney-general.
Source: Financial Times
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