A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. has reindicted Donald Trump on four felony charges related to his alleged effort to subvert the 2020 presidential election.
The 36-page indictment, secured Tuesday by special counsel Jack Smith, is an attempt by prosecutors to streamline the case against Trump to address 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.
The development is unlikely to alter the reality that a trial in the case before the November election looks impossible. In fact, the new indictment could drag the case out further — defense attorneys often seek delays after prosecutors revise criminal allegations.
Both sides face a Friday deadline to propose next steps to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, the Biden appointee who is overseeing the proceedings in the trial court. Chutkan has scheduled a Sept. 5 hearing to set a course for the case.
Trump pleaded not guilty to the initial indictment and has repeatedly decried the prosecution as a political vendetta.
The new charging document seeks to revive a case that has been stalled for months while the Supreme Court weighed Trump’s immunity arguments. In a largely 6-3 decision on July 1, the high court announced a robust version of presidential immunity that made clear that at least some of the special counsel’s allegations could not proceed — and left the rest of the case in jeopardy.
The new indictment seeks to rely on a distinction the Supreme Court drew between a president’s private actions (which can be the subject of criminal charges) and actions that stem from a president’s official powers (which now carry a large degree of immunity).
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 the election. Those details, which the Supreme Court put largely beyond 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.
Trump’s Response
“In an effort to resurrect a ‘dead’ Witch Hunt in Washington, D.C., in an act of desperation, and in order to save face, the illegally appointed ‘Special Counsel’ Deranged Jack Smith, has brought a ridiculous new Indictment against me, which has all the problems of the old Indictment, and should be dismissed IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote on TRUTH Social.
Source: CF
