August 2, 2023 Latest on Trump’s indictment in 2020 election probe

Former Vice President and Republican presidential candidate Mike Pence attends the Republican Party of Iowa's Lincoln Day Dinner in Des Moines, Iowa, on July 28.

Former Vice President Mike Pence said Donald Trump is “entitled to the presumption of innocence” after the former president was indicted in the special counsel’s 2020 election interference probe.

Pence added, however, that “anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.”

Pence said in “regard to the substance of the indictment, I’ve been very clear I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this.” The former vice president said he “had hoped that this issue and the judgment of the president’s actions would be left to the American people.”

He added that he cannot assess whether “the government has the evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt what they assert in the indictment.” Pence said that Trump is “entitled to a presumption of innocence but for my part, I want people to know that I have no right to overturn the election.”

Recalling January 6, 2021, Pence said:

Pence defended his actions on January 6, 2021, and said that while he made his case to Trump that he had no right to overturn the 2020 election results, the former president “ultimately continued to demand that I choose him over the Constitution.”

Pence went on to say that the country and Constitution are more important “than any one man’s career — and that’s true of me, and that’s true of the president, former president of the United States.”

He said that he would “stand by what happened that day, the stand that we took and trust ourselves to the judgment of Republicans voters and ultimately, the American people.”

Pence said that he “has nothing to hide” when he was asked whether he would testify in any criminal trial related to this case but added that he doesn’t want to “prejudge” how the case may unfold.

And asked if he learned anything new from the indictment, Pence said, “I didn’t know anything about the efforts to secure fake electors in states around the country.”

“I learned about that after the fact. But again, I wish it didn’t come to this. It’ll be up to the government now to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this actually represented criminal activity,” he added.

In April, Pence testified before the grand jury hearing evidence in the 2020 election probe – the first time in modern history that a vice president has been compelled to testify about the president he served beside.

Trump posted about Pence on Truth Social Wednesday, saying he felt “badly” for his former vice president.

“I feel badly for Mike Pence, who is attracting no crowds, enthusiasm, or loyalty from people who, as a member of the Trump Administration, should be loving him,” Trump wrote, while also slamming Pence’s actions on January 6 and calling the indictment “fake.”

Police cars parked outside the E. Barrett Prettyman US Court House in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, August 2,.

Law enforcement officials involved in the preparation for Donald Trump’s court appearance in Washington, DC, tell CNN they are monitoring for potential threats, protests and online chatter – as well as coordinating with one another on security plans for the former president’s hearing. 

DC’s Metropolitan Police Department will be leading security in the district while US Secret Service oversees the protection of the former president and the US Marshals Service runs security inside the courthouse.  

A court appearance in DC would mark a notable moment for the former president. The US Capitol, which rioters stormed and overwhelmed in the wake of Trump’s alleged plot to overturn the 2020 election, is situated a few blocks from the federal courthouse where Trump will appear and where hundreds of January 6 defendants have been convicted.

Trump’s summons, issued by the court Tuesday along with the approval of his indictment, sets his initial appearance at 4 p.m. ET Thursday in the DC District Court before Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya. 

The Capitol Police Protective Services Bureau is monitoring for potential threats, especially those against members of Congress, as well as any online discussions of organizing protests near the Capitol in the lead-up to Trump’s court hearing.   

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, US Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said they have been working with law enforcement partners for the past few weeks to prepare in case Trump was indicted. 

According to law enforcement sources, agencies will establish a Joint Information Center for federal and local law enforcement to coordinate security in the district on Thursday. 

Officers for the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Service have been patrolling the area outside the courthouse this week — along with bomb-sniffing dogs — and have established a security perimeter around the building. 

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi during an appearance on CNN on Wednesday, August 2.

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday commended the House select committee on the January 6, 2021, attack, which recommended in its final report charges similar to the indictment unveiled Tuesday against former President Donald Trump as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 election. 

“I just want to commend the January 6 committee, the House committee, bipartisan committee, (Committee Chairs) Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, and all the members of the committee and the staff for the work they did,” she told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

The House committee outlined its case against Trump and others allegedly involved in efforts to overturn the election in a series of hearings last year – and in its 800-page report.

“They laid a foundation of facts, about facts and the law, and made a criminal referral to the Justice Department,” Pelosi added.

Three of the four counts included in the special counsel’s indictment mirror charges that were recommended by the committee in its final report released at the end of last year.

“It wasn’t our role to know what the justice department would do, if anything. So when it became clear that there would be criminal charges made, it’s interesting to see how similar they are to some of the charges recommended by the January 6th committee,” Pelosi said.

Read more about the parallels between Smith’s indictment against Trump and findings from the January 6 committee here.

Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson speaks alongside Rep. Zoe Lofgren, at left, and Rep. Liz Cheney, at right, in the Canon House Office Building on Capitol Hill on December 19, 2022 in Washington, DC.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal indictment appeared to be more than two and half years in the making, but the American public heard many of the key details of the case outlined in a series of hearings last year – as a well as an 800-page report – run by the House Select Committee that investigated the January 6 riot.

There are stark similarities between Smith’s narrative of how former President Donald Trump – aided by his co-conspirators – allegedly orchestrated a plot to remain in power after losing the 2020 election, and the evidence underpinning a nearly identical conclusion presented by the House January 6 committee months ago.

As striking as it is, the four-count indictment handed up by the grand jury against Trump on Tuesday hews closely to the roadmap outline by the January 6 committee in its final report, which was released at the end of last year.

Three of the four counts included in the special counsel’s indictment mirror charges that were recommended by the House committee.

The committee also specifically recommended prosecution of Trump himself and one of the former president’s now unindicted co-conspirators – attorney John Eastman – who still could face legal peril as the special counsel probe continues.

Also name-checked in the referral section of the congressional panel’s final report are also included in Smith’s indictment as unindicted co-conspirators: Rudy Giuliani, former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark and attorney Kenneth Chesebro.

“President Trump in the days immediately before January 6th, Chesebro – an attorney based in Boston and New York recruited to assist the Trump Campaign as a volunteer legal advisor – was central to the creation of the plan,” the report states. “Memos by Chesebro on November 18th, December 9th, and December 13th, as discussed below, laid the plan’s foundation.”

Read more about the panel’s findings here.

Former President Donald Trump’s mounting legal jeopardy is raising a stark political question: can anything break the sustained electoral stalemate that has left the country divided almost exactly in half between the Republican and Democratic coalitions?

Trump was indicted for a third time on Tuesday and is facing a swarm of criminal accusations unprecedented for an active presidential candidate, much less a former president.

But during this ordeal, his lead in the 2024 GOP presidential primary has solidified.

And while polls have highlighted some clear warning signs for him as a general election nominee, mostly they point to another closely fought contest, with President Joe Biden usually holding a small overall lead and a tiny handful of precariously balanced swing states likely to decide the outcome.

A New York Times/Siena College poll released on Tuesday, however, found Trump and Biden tied in a hypothetical matchup at 43 percent.

Here’s where things stand:

Several big dynamics are converging, including a slowdown in inflation and an acceleration of Trump’s legal troubles, that could provide Democrats a tailwind next year, particularly in the presidential race. But all of these forces face the immovable object of the entrenched demographic and geographic divisions that have produced one of the longest periods in American history in which neither party has been able to establish a durable or decisive advantage over the other.

The parties now represent coalitions with such divergent visions of America’s future, particularly whether it welcomes or resists racial and cultural change, that it’s unclear what could allow one side to break out from the close competition between them. And that includes the prospect of Republicans choosing a presidential nominee who could be shuttling between the campaign trail and the courtroom.

“The two political parties are farther apart on average than they have been in our lifetime,” said Lynn Vavreck, a UCLA political scientist and co-author of books on the 2016 and 2020 elections. “That makes it harder for people to think about crossing over to the other side.”

Stalemate in influence: Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections — something no party has done since the formation of the modern party system in 1828. That suggests the Democratic coalition, on a national basis, is somewhat larger than the GOP’s.

But the Democrats’ difficulty competing outside of large metropolitan areas, as well as the small state bias in the Senate and the Electoral College, has allowed the GOP to remain highly competitive in this era.

In almost every critical dimension, the political system is now defined by stasis and stand-off. In this century, for instance, majorities for either side in the House and Senate have consistently been much smaller than they were in the late 20th century.

Each party has now established a virtually impregnable sphere of influence across a large number of states in which they dominate elections up and down the ballot-from the presidential contest through Congress and state races.

Forty of the 50 states, or 80% of them, have voted the same way in each of the past four presidential elections; that’s a higher percentage of states than voted the same way even in the four consecutive elections won by Franklin Roosevelt from 1932 through 1944.

Read more about the deadlock between the parties despite Trump’s indictments.

Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, March 4, 2023. 

Special counsel Jack Smith unveiled his case alleging that former President Donald Trump broke several laws in his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, with a grand jury indictment returned Tuesday that illustrated the depth and breadth of the federal criminal investigation.

Prosecutors said in the new charging documents that Trump “was determined to remain in power” after losing the 2020 election, and that he and six unindicted co-conspirators orchestrated a plot to overturn the results on and leading up to January 6, 2021.

Trump, who has derided Smith’s case as a politically motivated “fake indictment,” has been summoned to appear before a magistrate judge on Thursday. He is scheduled at the Washington, DC, federal courthouse at 4 p.m. ET.

Here are key takeaways from Tuesday’s indictment:

Trump accused of knowingly spreading “prolific lies”: Prosecutors detailed the “prolific lies” that Trump made in the wake of the 2020 election, including knowingly pushing false claims of voter fraud and voting machines switching votes, the indictment says, despite state and federal officials telling him the claims were wrong.

Trump “spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won” the indictment states, adding that the “claims were false, and the Defendant knew they were false.”

Allegedly organized fake electors: The indictment alleges that Trump and his co-conspirators effectively tricked individuals from seven targeted states into creating and submitting certificates asserting they were legitimate electors.

The goal was to create a “fake controversy” at the certification proceeding in those states on December 14, 2020, and “position the Vice President – presiding on January 6 as President of the Senate – to supplant legitimate electors” with Trump’s fake ones.

“Exploited” the January 6 attack: The indictment alleges that Trump and co-conspirators “exploited” the “violence” and “chaos” of the Capitol attack – continuing efforts to convince members of Congress to delay the certification of the election that day while rebuffing pleas that he direct the rioters to depart.

In a phone call the evening of the riot, Trump refused a request from his then-White House Counsel Pat Cipollone to withdraw his objections and allow for Congress’ certification of the 2020 election results, prosecutors said in the new indictment.

New details on Pence: Many of the revelations in Tuesday’s indictment appear to be the fruits of aggressive legal battles brought by prosecutors to secure testimony from close presidential aides – including new details about the communications Trump had with Pence in the bid to convince the vice president to disrupt Congress’ certification vote.

More to come: The normally tight-lipped Jack Smith made a rare public statement with the unsealing of the indictment, making clear that his team’s “investigation of individuals continues and emphasizing that the Justice Department was committed to “ensuring accountability for those criminally responsible for what happened that day.”

As the investigation chugs along, and the possibility looms that others will be charged as part of the probe, the criminal proceedings against Trump will unfold in federal court in DC, starting with an appearance he’ll make before a magistrate judge scheduled for Thursday.

Read more.

J. Michael Luttig seen in March.

Conservative retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig said the argument Donald Trump’s attorneys are making that the former president has a First Amendment defense is not valid.

Luttig said he believes the American public has a right to see Trump tried before the 2024 election. “I do believe that he will be tried before the election occurs,” Luttig told Cooper.

John Lauro, an attorney representing Trump, claimed Tuesday that the First Amendment protected Trump’s speech.

“Our defense is going to be focusing on the fact that what we have now is an administration that has criminalized the free speech and advocacy of a prior administration during the time that there’s a political election going on. That’s unprecedented. We’ve never seen that in the United States–in the history of the United States.” Lauro argued to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in a live interview Tuesday.

Collins pointed out that the indictment spells out that Trump went beyond speech and pursued “unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes,” including fake electors.

Lauro said Trump was following the advice of his attorneys and that he is allowed to point out problems with the election. “He had every right, in fact, a responsibility as the United States president to raise those issues, and now his advocacy is being criminalized.” 

In a statement Tuesday, Luttig called the indictment of Trump “historic, tragic, and regrettable day for America.”

“These events will forever scar and stain the United States. And they will forever scar and stain the United States in the eyes of the world,” he continued.

Luttig, a former judge on the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals, was a key witness at the January 6 committee hearings last year. He is also known for his conservative credentials and longstanding ties with the Supreme Court.

Ahead of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, Luttig advised Vice President Mike Pence’s legal team against claims from Trump allies such as attorney John Eastman, who had argued that Pence had the power to block the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

DC Metropolitan Police Department officers are seen at Florida Avenue and P Street, NE, on Thursday, September 22, 2022.

Following Tuesday’s indictment of former President Donald Trump, Washington, DC, metro police say they are working with federal law enforcement partners to plan for Trump’s initial court appearance Thursday.  

The federal courthouse, where Trump is scheduled to appear for his initial hearing Thursday unless the hearing is held virtually, is situated several blocks from the US Capitol.

Multiple law enforcement agencies operate in the area, including National Park Police, Capitol police, DC police and the US Marshals Service.  

Law enforcement agencies would likely enter what are called memorandums of understanding prior to Trump’s appearance, a source familiar with the planning told CNN. These agreements allow for agencies to cross over into one another’s jurisdictions if an agency called for back-up.  

District Judge Tanya Chutkan.

District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who’s assigned to preside over former President Donald Trump’s criminal case in Washington, DC, has repeatedly spoken out in very strong terms against the efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and disrupt the transfer of power. 

In November 2021, Chutkan forcefully rejected Trump’s attempts to block the House select committee investigating January 6 from accessing more than 700 pages of records from his White House.

Chutkan has been outspoken about the riot at several sentencing hearings – calling the violence an assault on American democracy and warning of future danger from political violence – and has repeatedly gone over what prosecutors have requested for convicted rioters’ prison sentences. 

At a December 2021 sentencing hearing, she looked ahead to the 2024 election, saying that “every day we are hearing about reports of anti-democratic factions, people plotting potential violence in 2024.”

Chutkan has even tacitly referenced Trump during criminal sentencings, saying to one rioter that he “did not go to the United States Capitol out of any love for our country. … He went for one man.”

At a sentencing hearing on October 4, 2021, she acknowledged the nationwide attention on the Capitol riot cases. 

At that same hearing, she also rejected comparisons between January 6 and the 2020 protests against racial inequality. 

Read more here.

Special counsel Jack Smith arrives to speak to reporters Friday, June 9, 2023, in Washington, DC.

In a separate probe, special counsel Jack Smith is raising a potential conflict of interest with the lawyer for one of Donald Trump’s co-defendants who also has represented three witnesses that the prosecutors may put on the stand at trial in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. 

The attorney is Stanley Woodward, who represents Walt Nauta, an aide to the former president and one of his co-defendants in the case.

Woodward previously represented Yuscil Taveras, a Mar-a-Lago employee who oversaw the property’s surveillance cameras.

He is identified in court filings as the “Trump Employee 4,” whom CNN has reported to be Taveras. In a filing Wednesday, prosecutors said he could be a potential trial witness.

Taveras ultimately obtained new counsel by early July, according to the government’s filing, which said prosecutors warned Woodward in February and March that Taveras might have information that incriminated Nauta.

The two other witnesses are clients of Woodward’s, prosecutors said.

They are described in the new filing as an individual who “worked in the White House during Trump’s presidency and then subsequently worked for Trump’s post-presidential office in Florida” and another person who “worked for Trump’s reelection campaign and worked for Trump’s political action committee after Trump’s presidency ended.”

Prosecutors asked Judge Aileen Cannon to schedule a hearing on the matter to scrutinize any potential conflicts. 

With the request for a hearing, the prosecutors asked that Cannon, use it to determine:

The prosecutors also suggested that Cannon procure an “independent counsel to be present at the hearing and available to advise Mr. Woodward’s clients regarding the potential conflicts, should they wish to receive such advice.”

Woodward, Nauta’s attorney, has indicated to the prosecutors that he’d like the opportunity to respond with his own filing to the government’s request, according to the new Smith submission.

“The Government has also advised counsel for Defendants Donald J. Trump and Carlos De Oliveira of its intent to file this motion, and they have indicated that they take no position on this motion,” the prosecutors said, referring to the other Trump co-defendant, who was added to the case in a superseding indictment last week.

Former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump looks on as he attends the Republican Party of Iowa's Lincoln Day Dinner in Des Moines, Iowa, on July 28, 2023. 

It’s been eight years since he rode down the escalator in Trump Tower and more than two years since the January 6, 2021, insurrection — but the legal drama surrounding former Donald Trump has never been more intense.

The former president has now been indicted three times this year. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in the special counsel’s investigation into the aftermath of the 2020 election. He pleaded not guilty in June to dozens of federal counts related to the special counsel investigation into mishandling of classified documents.

In New York, a hush money payment to an adult film star has resulted in his indictment by a Manhattan grand jury over his alleged role in the scheme – the first time in American history that a current or former president was criminally charged.

Here’s what to know about each case:

2020 election and January 6: US Justice Department

Special counsel Jack Smith investigated the period after Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden and leading up to the insurrection at the US Capitol.

A federal grand jury indicted Trump on four criminal counts Tuesday in the investigation: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.

The special counsel’s office sought testimony from a number of key White House insiders, including former Vice President Mike Pence, Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Aspects of the Justice Department’s probe include the use of so-called fake electors from states that Trump falsely claimed he had won, such as Georgia and Arizona. Trump had fought to keep former advisers from testifying about certain conversations, citing executive and attorney-client privileges to keep information confidential or slow down investigators.

Trump has been summoned to appear before a magistrate judge in Washington, DC, federal court on Thursday.

Mar-a-Lago documents: Did Trump mishandle classified material?

Smith is also overseeing the Justice Department’s criminal investigations into the retention of national defense information at Trump’s resort.

Trump was initially indicted on, and has pleaded not guilty to, 37 federal charges related to the investigation of documents that were allegedly mishandled when they were taken to Mar-a-Lago in Florida after Trump left office. Last week, Smith charged Trump with three additional counts in a superseding indictment.

The National Archives, charged with collecting and sorting presidential material, has previously said that at least 15 boxes of White House records were recovered from Mar-a-Lago, including some classified records.

Trump was also caught on tape in a 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, where the former president discussed holding secret documents he did not declassify.

Hush-money payments: Trump pleads not guilty to criminal charges

Trump has been charged in Manhattan criminal court with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to his role in a hush money payment scheme involving adult film actress Stormy Daniels late in the 2016 presidential campaign.

The former president pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors, led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, accuse Trump of falsifying business records with the intent to conceal illegal conduct connected to his 2016 presidential campaign.

The $130,000 payment was paid by former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen to Daniels to remain quiet about an alleged affair between Daniels and Trump years earlier.

Meanwhile in Georgia, Fulton County, District Attorney Fani Willis oversaw a special grand jury investigating what Trump or his allies may have done in their efforts to overturn Biden’s victory in Georgia. Willis, a Democrat, is considering bringing conspiracy and racketeering charges. Willis is expected to present her case to a grand jury this month.

Read about other investigations, lawsuits and controversies Trump faces here.

In this June 2019 photo, then-President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with advisors about fentanyl in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC.

Donald Trump has been indicted on federal charges related to 2020 election subversion, a stunning third time this year that the former president has faced criminal charges.

But could the former president, who remains the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, assume the Oval Office again if convicted of the alleged crimes? In short, yes.

University of California, Los Angeles law professor Richard L. Hasen – one of the country’s leading experts on election law – said Trump still has a path to serving as president should he win reelection in 2024.

Could a president serve from prison? That’s less clear.

“How someone would serve as president from prison is a happily untested question,” Hasen said.

Read more here.

Special Counsel Jack Smith departs after delivering remarks about an indictment of former President Donald Trump during a news conference at a Department of Justice office in Washington, Aug. 1, 2023.

Special counsel Jack Smith reentered the public eye on Tuesday with a grand jury’s indictment of Donald Trump over his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election leading up to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, was indicted on four criminal counts: Conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.

The former president already faced 40 counts stemming from Smith’s seperate probe into the former president’s retention of classified documents and conspiracy with a top aide and an employee at Mar-a-Lago to hide them from the government and his own attorneys.

Trump has denied wrongdoing in both cases and cast Smith’s probes as a weaponization of the federal government.

But Smith has investigated members of both parties, handling some of the most high-profile political corruption cases in recent memory – with mixed outcomes. His experience ranges from prosecuting a sitting US senator to bringing cases against gang members who were ultimately convicted of murdering New York City police officers.

Smith’s career spans multiple stints in the Justice Department and international courts, which until his appointment had allowed him to keep a relatively low profile in the oftentimes brassy legal industry.

After serving as a prosecutor at the local and federal levels as well as a stint at the International Criminal Court, Smith oversaw corruption cases as chief of the Justice Department’s public integrity unit from 2010 to 2015.

Smith was the head of the section when the department failed to convict former senator and vice-presidential candidate John Edwards, a Democrat, in a corruption case in 2012 and when then-Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican, was indicted in 2014. He also oversaw the investigation into former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Republican, closing the probe in 2010 without bringing charges.

Smith would go on to serve as an assistant US attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, taking over as acting US attorney in early 2017. He became vice president of litigation for the Hospital Corporation of America later that year.

In recent years, Smith lived outside of the United States as the chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague, a role he assumed in 2018 in which he investigated war crimes in Kosovo.

Special counsel Jack Smith said Tuesday that the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol was “fueled by lies” told by former President Donald Trump. The indictment of Trump on four new federal criminal charges, all related to the former president’s effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, lays out some of those lies. Here is an abbreviated list:

1. The lie: Fraud changed the outcome of the 2020 election, that Trump “had actually won,” and that the election was “stolen.” (Pages 1 and 40-41 of the indictment)

Trump’s claim of a stolen election whose winner was determined by massive fraud was (and continues to be) his overarching lie about the election. The indictment asserts that Trump knew as early as 2020 that his narrative was false – and had been told as such by numerous senior officials in his administration and allies outside the federal government – but persisted in deploying it anyway, including on January 6 itself.

2. The lie: Fake pro-Trump Electoral College electors in seven states were legitimate electors. (Pages 5 and 26)

The indictment alleges that Trump and his alleged co-conspirators “organized” the phony slates of electors and then “caused” the slates to be transmitted to Vice President Mike Pence and other government officials to try to get them counted on January 6, the day Congress met to count the electoral votes.

3. The lie: The Justice Department had identified significant concerns that may have affected the outcome of the election. (Pages 6 and 27)

Attorney General William Barr and other top Justice Department officials had told Trump that his claims of major fraud had proved to be untrue. But the indictment alleges that Trump still sought to have the Justice Department “make knowingly false claims of election fraud to officials in the targeted states through a formal letter under the Acting Attorney General’s signature, thus giving the Defendant’s lies the backing of the federal government and attempting to improperly influence the targeted states to replace legitimate Biden electors with the Defendant’s.”

4. The lie: Pence had the power to reject Biden’s electoral votes. (Pages 6, 32-38)

Pence had repeatedly and correctly told Trump that he did not have the constitutional or legal right to send electoral votes back to the states as Trump wanted. The indictment notes that Trump nonetheless repeatedly declared that Pence could do so – first in private conversations and White House meetings, then in tweets on January 5 and January 6, then in Trump’s January 6 speech in Washington at a rally before the riot – in which Trump, angry at Pence, allegedly inserted the false claim into his prepared text even after advisors had managed to temporarily get it removed.

Read the full list here.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Unlike the cases involving hush money paid to an adult film actress or hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, it’s impossible to separate President Joe Biden from the crimes former President Donald Trump was accused of committing in the indictment returned Tuesday.

It was Biden’s election Trump sought to overturn. And Biden himself has already pinned blame on Trump for fomenting the crowds that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

For Biden, Trump’s third indictment is the most personal. But there is little question Biden will now say virtually nothing about the indictment, which was made public as the president and his wife were driving to dinner at the white clapboard Matt’s Fish Camp along the Delaware coast. He doesn’t want to provide Trump pretext for claiming political persecution and believes deeply that sitting presidents should not comment on ongoing legal matters.

The White House declined to comment on Trump’s indictment Tuesday, referring questions to the Department of Justice. The White House learned of the indictment through media reports, a White House official said, as was the case with past indictments.

Still, Biden has a long history of publicly criticizing Trump for the events of that day and the effort to undo the Democrat’s 2020 win. In private, Biden has been more forceful in his view that Trump should be held responsible for his actions, including telling advisers early in his term that his predecessor should be prosecuted, according to a person familiar with the matter.

However, Biden’s political aides have determined that the risks of commenting outweigh the rewards, believing that seizing on Trump’s indictment for political gain would only fuel Republican efforts to cast the indictments as politically motivated, rather than the action of an independent Justice Department.

The Biden campaign also intends to stick to its strategy from the previous indictment — not to comment or fundraise off of Trump’s prosecution. How closely Biden can hew to that pledge when it comes to the latest indictment remains to be seen. Unlike the classified documents case, which Biden does not regularly reference in public, the threat to democracy is central to his reelection argument.

The opening frames of the video announcing his 2024 campaign were of rioters on January 6. And in comments to voters and donors alike, Biden has repeatedly warned of what it might mean should Trump return.

Rudy Guiliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell and Jeffrey Clark.

The historic indictment against Donald Trump in the special counsel’s probe into January 6, 2021, and efforts to overturn the 2020 election says that he “enlisted co-conspirators to assist him in his criminal efforts.”

As is common practice, their identities are withheld because they have not been charged with any crimes. CNN, however, can identify five of the six co-conspirators based on quotes in the indictment and other context.

They include:

Co-Conspirator 1 is former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani: Among other things, the indictment quotes from a voicemail that Co-Conspirator 1 left “for a United States Senator” on January 6, 2021. The quotes in the indictment match quotes from Giuliani’s call intended for GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville, as reported by CNN and other outlets. Ted Goodman, a political adviser to Giuliani, said in a statement that the indictment “eviscerates the First Amendment.”

Co-Conspirator 2 is former Trump lawyer John Eastman: Among other things, the indictment says Co-Conspirator 2 “circulated a two-page memorandum” with a plan for Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election while presiding over the Electoral College certification on January 6, 2021. The indictment quotes from the memo, and those quotes match a two-page memo that Eastman wrote, as reported and published by CNN.

Eastman’s attorney Charles Burnham said the indictment “relies on a misleading presentation of the record,” and that his client would decline a plea deal if offered one.

Co-Conspirator 3 is former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell: The indictment says Co-Conspirator 3 “filed a lawsuit against the Governor of Georgia” on November 25, 2020, alleging “massive election fraud” and that the lawsuit was “dismissed” on December 7, 2020. These dates and quotations match the federal lawsuit that Powell filed against Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. An attorney for Powell declined to comment.

Co-Conspirator 4 is former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark: The indictment identifies Co-Conspirator 4 as “a Justice Department official.” The indictment also quotes an email that a top Justice Department official sent to Clark, rebutting Clark’s attempts to use the department to overturn the election. The quotes in that email directly match quotes in an email sent to Clark, according to a Senate report about how Trump tried to weaponize the Justice Department in 2020. CNN has reached out to an attorney for Clark.

Co-Conspirator 5 is pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro: Among other things, the indictment references an “email memorandum” that Co-Conspirator 5 “sent” to Giuliani on December 13, 2020, about the fake electors plot. The email sender, recipient, date, and content are a direct match for an email that Chesebro sent to Giuliani, according to a copy of the email made public by the House select committee that investigated January 6. CNN has reached out to an attorney for Chesebro.

The identity of Co-Conspirator 6 is unclear: The indictment says they are “a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.” The indictment also further ties this person to the fake elector slate in Pennsylvania.

Supporters of President Donald Trump participate in a rally in Washington, DC, on Jan. 6, 2021. 

Some of the charges former President Donald Trump is facing for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election are tied to a very specific thing: “conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding” and “obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding.”

The official proceeding is the counting of electoral votes in the House chamber, which by law is supposed to occur on January 6 after every presidential election. The ceremonial process is governed by the Electoral Count Act, first passed in 1887 in the wake of the contested election of 1876, which also ripped the country apart.

Fast forward to January 2021 and Trump refusing to accept his election loss.

There were also friendly lawmakers promising to object to the inclusion of electoral votes from key states he lost, claiming election fraud that didn’t happen. Trump openly called on his vice president, Mike Pence, to act unilaterally to reject those electors. He hoped friendly legislatures would overrule voters and sub in slates of fake electors his campaign had helped coordinate 

That, in a nutshell, was the plan to overturn the 2020 election.

One of the things both political parties — Republicans and Democrats — have agreed on in the years since the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol is that there should be no question that the vice president’s role is nothing but ceremonial.

In December 2022, Congress passed the first legislative response to January 6 through the Electoral Count Reform Act.

The act also raised the threshold to make it harder for lawmakers to force votes attempting to overturn a state’s certified result. Additionally, it includes provisions that would prevent efforts to pass along fake electors to Congress.

Read more about the Electoral Count Act reform.

The indictment against former President Donald Trump charging him by the Justice Department for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, is photographed Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023, in Washington, DC. 

Former President Donald Trump is facing criminal charges over his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election and stay in office.

The indictment, which was handed down and unsealed Tuesday, describes the plot to overturn the 2020 election which culminated in the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Even before that, Trump engaged in a pressure campaign on state election workers, lawmakers and others, the indictment said.

You can read the entire document here.

As part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation, Trump was charged with:

Here’s what else we learned today:

The indictment of Donald Trump stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election marks the third time the former president has faced criminal charges. 

The latest case against Trump strikes at what’s seen as his most serious betrayal of constitutional duties, when his attempts to remain in the White House after losing the 2020 election undermined the long-held American tradition of a peaceful transfer of presidential power.  

The plot to overturn the 2020 election shattered presidential norms and culminated in a previously unthinkable violent assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, as Congress met to certify President Joe Biden’s victory.

For two months leading up to the attack, Trump had engaged in an unprecedented pressure campaign aimed at state election workers and lawmakers in a handful of battleground states, as well as Justice Department officials and even Trump’s own vice president to persuade them to throw out the 2020 results.  

Smith’s move to indict the former president while he is running for a second term in the White House will test whether the criminal justice system can be used to hold Trump to account for his post-election conduct, after a House impeachment of the former president failed in the Senate in February 2021. 

The indictment marks the second time in two months that Smith has brought charges against Trump. In June, Trump was charged with retention of classified documents and conspiring with a top aide to hide them from the government and his own attorneys. And in March, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Trump on state charges of falsifying business records.   

Trump has pleaded not guilty in both of the prior cases — and is likely to do so again when he’s arraigned on the latest charges.  

The new special counsel indictment comes as Trump remains the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Trump’s March indictment marked the first time in US history that a former president had faced criminal charges. Now there are three separate, concurrent cases where the president is facing criminal allegations – which are all going to play out as Trump seeks to return to the White House in 2024 following his loss to Joe Biden in 2020.