Trump indicted over attempts to overturn 2020 election result
Former President Donald Trump has been indicted in connection to special counsel Jack Smith's investigation of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and plots to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
CNN was first to report the indictment and said a source confirmed Trump had been told.
The former president has been charged with four offenses: conspiracy to defraud the United States, two counts of witness tampering, and conspiracy against rights. The indictment also specifies six unnamed co-conspirators whom, according to CNN's Kaitlan Collins, include four attorneys, a DOJ official, and a political consultant.
The probe looked at a broad array of alleged schemes by the former president and his allies, including efforts to seat fake electors in a number of closely-divided battleground states that were carried by President Joe Biden, and a pressure campaign against then-Vice President Mike Pence to declare electors from those states invalid.
Earlier this month, Trump furiously announced that he'd been told that he was a criminal target of the investigation and that he expected charges would follow.
Trump is the first former president to face indictment — and this marks the third round of criminal charges against him.
Earlier this year, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged the former president with felony accounting fraud for concealing his alleged $130,000 hush payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. The other indictment, also brought by Smith, charges Espionage Act violations and obstruction of justice for stealing and hiding highly classified national defense information in boxes at Trump's Mar-a-Lago country club in South Florida. This was updated with a superseding indictment last week, accusing Trump and two associates of trying to erase subpoenaed security footage.
Even more charges could be coming against Trump. Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis has strongly suggested she will bring an indictment against the former president for his election interference schemes in that state.