WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury on Tuesday following a Justice Department investigation into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The indictment comes as Trump leads the field of Republican contenders in the race for the party's nomination in the 2024 presidential election.
Trump has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States "by using dishonesty, fraud and deceit to obstruct the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election"; conspiracy to impede the Jan. 6 congressional proceeding; a conspiracy against the right to vote and to have that vote counted; and obstruction of, and attempt to obstruct and impede, the certification of the electoral vote.
The charges focus on the months following the 2020 election, in which Trump refused to accept his loss to Joe Biden and continuously proclaimed that the election had been stolen from him. The events culminated in the infamous riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump loyalists violently overtook the building, attacking police officers and interfering with the congressional counting of electoral votes.
In between his November loss and the events of Jan. 6, Trump lobbied local election officials to undo results in their states, while pressuring former Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify the electoral votes.
The indictment is the third criminal case that has been brought against the former president. A new indictment was filed last week in a separate special counsel investigation involving Trump's alleged mishandling of classified records. The additional charges were brought against the former president and a top aide while adding another defendant, Carlos De Oliveira, property manager at Mar-a-Lago who is said to have helped move boxes of classified documents.
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