Donald Trump indicted on 2020 election-related charges

DDonald Trump, former president of the United States and current candidate for the 2024 presidential election, was indicted for the alleged crimes of conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing and attempting to obstruct an official procedure e violation of electoral rights.

According to the document, quoted by CNN International, Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury in the investigation of special counsel Jack Smith, Dealing with efforts to annul the 2020 election, leading up to the January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol.

The accusations are mainly focused on the schemes of the former president and his allies to subvert the transfer of power and keep him in office, despite the defeat against Joe Biden.

“Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election targeted the fundamental function of the United States federal government,” the indictment reads.

The document also reveals that there are six co-conspirators, who are also indicted in the same process. Together with Trump, they will have “used knowingly false allegations of voter fraud to cause lawmakers and election officials to subvert legitimate election results and change the electoral votes of Defendant’s opponent, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., to Defendant’s electoral votes”.

The former president is expected to be present in the district court of Washington DC on Thursday, August 3. It is the third time Trump has been criminally indicted, and the second time in as many months.

Even in a year of rapid legal succession for Trump, reports the Associated Press (AP) news agency, today’s criminal prosecution was especially impressive in its allegations that a former president attacked the foundations of democracy in a frantic effort and, ultimately, failed, to cling to power.

Federal prosecutors claim that Donald Trump was “determined to remain in power” in conspiracies that targeted a “fundamental function of the United States federal government: the national process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of presidential elections.”

In June, tells CNN International, Trump was accused of withholding confidential documents and conspiring with a top advisor to hide them from the government and his own lawyers.

Separately, in March, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted the presidential candidate on charges of falsifying business records.

“I take it for granted that at any moment there will be an accusation from the crazed Jack Smith [procurador especial responsável pelo caso] and his highly partisan gang of thugs related to my peaceful and patriotic speech”, highlighted the former republican president (2017-2021), in a message on his social network Truth Social, before the announcement of the indictment.

The tycoon described the possible indictment as “another attempt” to cover up “the bad news about bribery and extortion coming from the ‘side’ of Biden”.

“It seems that’s how they do it. Electoral interference. Tax misconduct,” Donald Trump also underlined.

The gravest threat to American democracy in modern history

The criminal case comes as Trump leads the pack of Republicans seeking his party’s presidential nomination.

The former president and his supporters – and even some of his rivals – will surely dismiss it as yet another politically motivated accusation.

However, the accusations stem from one of the most serious threats to American democracy in modern history.

They focus on the turbulent two months after the November 2020 elections, in which Trump refused to accept his defeat and spread lies that the victory had been stolen from him.

The turmoil resulted in the U.S. Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021, when Trump loyalists violently stormed the building, attacked police officers, and disrupted the counting of electoral votes in Congress.

[Notícia atualizada às 23h37]

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