Trump Special Counsel Presses Ahead With 2020 Election Case (3)

The US special counsel investigating Donald Trump is pressing ahead with prosecuting the former president on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election after facing a recent setback from the US Supreme Court.

Special Counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday filed an updated indictmentthat removes several pages of allegations following the high court’s blockbuster decisionfinding Trump at least partially immune from prosecution related to his official acts as president. Smith has decided against pursuing a major court hearing to present evidence before the Nov. 5 election.

Jack Smith and Donald Trump

Photographer: Chip Somodevilla and Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The new indictment cuts certain claims related to Trump’s communications with government officials — including the section alleging he tried to involve the Justice Department — but features the same four charges accusing him of conspiring to reverse his election loss to President Joe Biden.

The action by a new federal grand jury in Washington comes less than three months before the presidential election, as Trump makes another run for the White House. The move from Smith’s office is expected to kick off a fresh round of legal wrangling between prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers over whether the updated indictment can survive under the Supreme Court’s more expansive definition of presidential immunity from criminal charges.

Trump said in a campaign post on X that Jack Smith “brought a ridiculous new indictment against me, which has all the problems of the old indictment and should be dismissed IMMEDIATELY.” He blamed Kamala Harris for pushing it rather than calling for it to be dismissed.

It wasn’t immediately clear how quickly US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who has been overseeing the election case, would move to the next phase of the proceedings. In a notice filed with Chutkan on Tuesday afternoon, prosecutors said the revised indictment “reflects the government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings.”

The parties are set to file a report with Chutkan later this week with proposals for next steps in the case.

Trump will have to be arraigned again on the new indictment, but prosecutors said they wouldn’t oppose him not appearing in person to do so.

Clark, Pence

The updated indictment removes one of the six unindicted co-conspirators who wasn’t named, but whose description matched former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark. It also has a new line noting that the remaining five co-conspirators were not government officials and “were acting in a private capacity.” An attorney for Clark did not immediately return a request for comment.

Jeffrey Clark

Photographer: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg

The indictment still includes an allegation about efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to intervene on his behalf and stop or delay Congress from certifying Biden’s win. The justices had suggested Trump might have immunity from that allegation.

Other changes were more subtle. Smith attempts to shift the focus away from Trump’s role as president at the time. The original indictment began by describing Trump as “the forty-fifth President of the United States and a candidate for reelection in 2020.” The new indictment moves down the reference to his position, describing him first only as a candidate for office at the time. A later paragraph has new language calling him “a candidate and a citizen.”

The updated indictment also cut paragraphs that referenced high-ranking government officials and White House lawyers who repeatedly told Trump that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.

To prove that Trump knew the fraud claims were false, prosecutors kept in references to statements made by his campaign staff and state officials and rulings from dozens of state and federal courts rejecting challenges to the vote counts in swing states.

The indictment also still features allegations related to the slates of pro-Trump electors in swing states who signed certifications falsely certifying him as the winner and what prosecutors described as Trump’s efforts to exploit the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.

As Smith presses ahead with the case in Washington, his team is separately fighting to revive a separate indictment in federal court in Florida accusing Trump of illegally keeping classified documents and obstruction. Trump is also facing state charges in Georgia related to the 2020 election, but that case has been on hold amid a controversy over the district attorney’s conduct.

Meanwhile, Trump is due to be sentenced Sept. 18 in Manhattan in his hush money criminal case. Justice Juan Merchan is expected to rule soon on a last-ditch request by Trump to delay sentencing until after the election, in part because he wants more time to press his argument that the trial was tainted by testimony and other evidence that wouldn’t have been allowed under the Supreme Court’s new immunity standard.

(Updates with Trump statement in social media post.)

--With assistance from Erik Larson and Stephanie Lai.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Zoe Tillman in Washington at ztillman2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

Elizabeth Wasserman

© 2024 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Used with permission.