Trump charged by U.S. Justice Department for efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss
CTV
Donald Trump was indicted on felony charges Tuesday for working to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the run-up to the violent riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol, as the Justice Department moved to hold him accountable for his efforts to block the peaceful transfer of power.
Donald Trump was indicted on felony charges Tuesday for working to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the run-up to the violent riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol, as the Justice Department moved to hold him accountable for his efforts to block the peaceful transfer of power.
The four-count indictment reveals new details about a dark chapter in modern American history, detailing handwritten notes from former vice-president Mike Pence about Trump's relentless goading as well as how Trump sought to exploit the violence of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot to remain in office.
Even in a year of rapid-succession legal reckonings for Trump, Tuesday's criminal case, with charges including conspiring to defraud the United States government that he once led, was especially stunning in its allegations that a former president assaulted the underpinnings of democracy in a frantic but ultimately failed effort to cling to power.
It accuses him of repeatedly lying about the election results, turning aside repeated overtures from some aides to tell the truth but conspiring with others to try to improperly change vote totals in his favour. It says that on the day of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, he attempted to "exploit" the chaos by pushing to delay the certification of the election results even after the building was cleared of violent protesters.
Trump's claims of having won the election, said the indictment, were "false, and the Defendant knew they were false. But the defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway -- to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, to create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and to erode public faith in the administration of the election."
Federal prosecutors say Donald Trump was "determined to remain in power" in conspiracies that targeted a "bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation's process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election."
The indictment, the third criminal case brought against the former president as he seeks to reclaim the White House in 2024, follows a long-running federal investigation into schemes by Trump and his allies to subvert the peaceful transfer of power and keep him in office despite a decisive loss to Joe Biden.
