Former President Donald Trump was indicted by federal prosecutors on Tuesday — his third indictment in as many months. A fourth grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia is also expected to indict Trump in the next few weeks.
In a sprawling indictment, federal prosecutors paint the former president as desperate to cling to power.
Trump has said he did nothing wrong, and has accused special counsel Jack Smith and the Justice Department of trying to harm his 2024 campaign.
The 45th president is the only defendant charged in the indictment, which mentions six co-conspirators. The six people are not explicitly named, but the indictment includes details that make it possible to identify five of them. It’s unclear why they weren’t charged or whether they will be added to the indictment at a later date.
Lawyers for former Trump attorney John Eastman and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani have confirmed they’re two of those people unnamed. Evidence strongly suggests former Department of Justice Jeffrey Clark, lawyer Sidney Powell, and lawyer Kenneth Chesebro are the other three.
The identity of the sixth alleged co-conspirator, however, remains a mystery.
Trump is charged with four counts: obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., and conspiracy to prevent others from carrying out their constitutional rights.
The case was filed in Washington’s federal court, where Trump is expected to make his first appearance on Thursday.
Trump has signaled that his defense may rest, at least in part, on the idea that he truly believed the election was stolen, saying in a recent social media post, “I have the right to protest an Election that I am fully convinced was Rigged and Stolen, just as the Democrats have done against me in 2016, and many others have done over the ages.”
Prosecutors claim to have evidence showing that Trump was repeatedly told he had lost.
Trump ”was notified repeatedly that his claims were untrue — often by the people on whom he relied for candid advice on important matters, and who were best positioned to know the facts and he deliberately disregarded the truth,” the indictment says.
Trump is already scheduled to stand trial in March in the New York case stemming from hush-money payments made during the 2016 campaign and in May in the federal case in Florida stemming from classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Smith said prosecutors will seek “a speedy trial” in the latest case.
“The Biden Justice Department has had three years to investigate this. To take President Trump to trial in 90 days, of course, is absurd,” Trump’s lawyer, John Lauro, said Wednesday.
“Right now [prosecutors] want to go to trial so that instead of debating the issues against Joe Biden, President Trump is sitting in a courtroom — how is that justice?” Lauro told NBC News’ “Today.”
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article