The woes of former US President Donald Trump zoomed again as the prosecutors indicted him in wide-ranging attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The latest indictment came nearly four months after he was first charged with criminal laws even as he campaigns to regain the presidency next year.
According to the prosecutors, Trump had forced his federal colleagues including Vice President Mike Pence to alter the results. It said the then President deliberately incited violent attacks on the US Capitol in a frantic attempt to undermine American democracy and to remain in the position. The prosecutors directed him to appear in federal court in the national capital on Thursday. This time Trump was not lucky enough to get his appointed judge and in fact, his case will be heard by District Judge Tanya Chutkan-- a Barack Obama appointee.
First US president to face criminal proceedings
It is for the first time that a defeated president, who is the early front-runner for next year’s Republican presidential nomination, facing legal consequences for his frantic but ultimately failed effort to cling to power.
"The attack on our nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy," Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith said. "It was fueled by lies, lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the US government: the nation’s process of collecting counting and certifying the results of the presidential election," he added.
Further, the indictment charged the 45th US president and his allies with trying to "exploit the violence and chaos" by calling lawmakers into the evening on January 6 to delay the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
A quick look of what the indictment says
- In between the election and the riot, Trump urged local election officials to undo voting results in their states.
- It claimed he pressured Pence to halt the certification of electoral votes and falsely claimed that the election had been stolen — a notion repeatedly rejected by judges.
- Among those lies, prosecutors say, were claims that more than 10,000 dead voters had voted in Georgia along with tens of thousands of double votes in Nevada.
- Each claim had been rebutted by courts or state or federal officials.
- Trump knew his claims of having won the election were false but he repeated and widely disseminated them anyway.
- Prosecutors stressed he deliberately made false claims to appear legitimate, to create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and to erode public faith in the administration of the election.
