Trump indicted again in election subversion case brought by Jack Smith

[Thiệu Ngô]

The 36-page indictment, secured Tuesday by the special counsel, is an attempt to recalibrate the case after the Supreme Court’s immunity decision.

By Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein
08/27/2024 04:19 PM EDT

A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., has reindicted Donald Trump on four felony charges related to his effort to subvert the 2020 presidential election.

The 36-page indictment, secured Tuesday by special counsel Jack Smith, is an attempt by prosecutors to recalibrate the case against Trump in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling last month that concluded presidents enjoy sweeping immunity from prosecution for their official conduct.

The new indictment removes some specific allegations against Trump but contains the same four criminal charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States. It’s a signal that Smith believes the high court’s immunity decision doesn’t pose a major impediment to convicting the former president.

“The superseding indictment, which was presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case, reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions,” Smith’s team wrote in an accompanying court filing.

In an apparent bid to downplay any connection between Trump’s conduct and his official duties, the new charging document repeatedly emphasizes the political and personal nature of many of the actions Trump took during the post-election period and on Jan. 6, 2021.

The new indictment underscores that Mike Pence was not only vice president, but also Trump’s “running mate” when Trump pressured Pence to block the certification of the election results. It notes that Trump’s rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, was “privately-funded” and “privately-organized.” And it stresses that Trump often used his Twitter account for “personal purposes.”

The new document also eliminates a long list of top government officials who had informed Trump that his claims about election fraud and anomalies were false, including top intelligence, Justice Department, homeland security officials and White House lawyers.

Smith’s original 45-page indictment, unveiled last August, included claims that Trump sought to use the Justice Department to advance what prosecutors contend was an unlawful and fraudulent effort to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. Those details, which the Supreme Court described as largely outside the reach of prosecutors, have been omitted from the new, shorter charging document.

The new indictment adds no new defendants, but deletes all references to one alleged co-conspirator mentioned in the earlier indictment without being named or charged: former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark.

Clark held a Senate-confirmed post as head of DOJ’s Environmental and Natural Resources Division and was serving as the acting head of the department’s Civil Division at the end of the Trump administration when Trump considered a plan to install Clark to replace acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen.

Witnesses told a House investigation that, in the weeks after the 2020 election, Rosen and other Trump appointees had refused to send letters to local election officials claiming fraud in the presidential election results, but Clark was willing to do so. Trump ultimately abandoned the plan after nearly all of the senior leaders of the Justice Department said they would resign in protest.