- Prosecutors revise Trump indictment after Supreme Court ruling
- Indictment now excludes interactions with DOJ, focuses on election role
- Trump denies charges, calls indictment politically motivated
Federal prosecutors accusing former U.S. President Donald Trump of election interference have issued a revised indictment in reaction to a recent Supreme Court decision.
The indictment issued on Tuesday narrows the scope of the case, removing interactions between Trump and the Department of Justice and focusing on his role as a political candidate.
Nonetheless, the core claim remains the same: Trump attempted to disrupt the 2020 presidential election and reverse his defeat to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump has long maintained, incorrectly and without evidence, that major voter fraud plagued the 2020 election.
The revised case in Washington, DC, is one of four indictments against Trump. He is the first U.S. president to face and be convicted on criminal charges.
Only one of the four trials has resulted in a conviction: In May, Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of fabricating corporate documents in New York. Even that verdict may be in jeopardy due to a recent Supreme Court decision extending extensive immunity to presidential activities.
What was the Supreme Court’s decision?
On July 1, the Supreme Court ruled in Trump v. United States that all “official” presidential acts are entitled to “presumptive immunity” from prosecution.
According to the verdict, what constitutes “official” conduct extends beyond a president’s constitutional powers, indicating a significant expansion of executive power.
The court’s opinion explicitly referenced the events of January 6, 2021, when a crowd of Trump supporters rushed the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of the Electoral College result.
That event is essential to the Washington, DC, indictment.
The court’s majority expressly referenced the indictment, citing an example in which Trump was accused of “attempting to enlist the Vice President” to “alter the election results” on January 6.
According to the court, “Trump is at least presumptively immune from prosecution for such conduct” because speaking with a vice president is part of a president’s official duties.
The Supreme Court currently has a conservative supermajority, with three of its judges selected by Trump. The decision was made on ideological grounds, with a vote of six to three.
All three dissenting justices leaned left.
How did the court affect Tuesday’s indictment?
The court’s ruling immediately impacted the Washington case and the other indictments against Trump. Tuesday’s new indictment demonstrates how federal prosecutors, led by special counsel Jack Smith, intend to respond to the ruling.
The indictment has been reduced from 45 to 36 pages, omitting the references cited by the Supreme Court in its July decision.
It also emphasizes that the exchanges described in the updated version occurred with people outside of the president’s formal circle.
The updated indictment explains that none of Trump’s co-conspirators “were government officials during the conspiracies and all of whom were acting in a private capacity” when identifying them.
It also emphasizes that former Vice President Mike Pence “was also the Defendant’s running mate” in the 2020 race, implying an effort to distinguish between his official and unofficial activities.
In other areas of the indictment, prosecutors clarified that Trump, the president, was not the same as Trump, the political candidate.
For example, although the original indictment said that “the Defendant repeatedly and widely disseminated” false information, the second version amended the sentence to read: “The Defendant used his Campaign to repeat and widely disseminate” false information.
In addition, the revised indictment noted that Trump “sometimes used his Twitter account to communicate with the public as President” before emphasizing that “he also regularly used it for personal purposes.
The primary charges, however, remain the same as in the previous version of the indictment: Trump conspired to deceive the United States, obstruct and impede an official action, and prevent lawful votes from being counted.
It describes how Trump allegedly incited his supporters to behave, pushed election officials, and conspired to fabricate Electoral College votes.
Trump faces four felony counts in connection with the conspiracy charges.
According to the indictment, each of these conspiracies, which built on the widespread mistrust the Defendant was instilling through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud, targeted a fundamental function of the United States government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying presidential election results.
How did Trump respond?
The amended indictment elicited a rush of responses from Trump on his Truth Social account.
“To resurrect a ‘dead’ Witch Hunt in Washington, D.C., in an act of desperation, and to save face, the illegally appointed ‘Special Counsel’ Deranged Jack Smith, has brought a ridiculous new Indictment against me,” Trump posted on Twitter.
He said the revised version had “all the problems of the old Indictment” and demanded that it be “dismissed IMMEDIATELY.”
The former Republican president is campaigning for a second term before the November 5 presidential election. He has consistently decried the criminal charges against him as an attempt to undermine his latest presidential campaign, an accusation he reiterated on Tuesday.
“PERSECUTION OF A POLITICAL OPPONENT!” he wrote in a different post, all in capital letters.
In a subsequent letter, he cited a 2022 ruling by the Biden Justice Department that prohibits political appointees from participating in election-related activities within 60 days of an upcoming vote.
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It is DOJ policy that the Department of Justice should not take any action that will affect an election within 60 days of that election — but they have already taken such action, Trump claimed, referring to early voting dates in several states rather than the actual November 5 election day.
Smith, the special counsel designated to supervise the Justice Department’s investigations into Trump independently, said the newly updated indictment reflected “the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions.”
Smith filed the election interference indictment on August 1, 2023, after a grand jury voted to prosecute Trump for his activities during the 2020 election and aftermath. This was the third of four indictments to be announced.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan is anticipated to rule on the case, which is unlikely to go to trial before the November election.
Trump has pled not guilty to all of the allegations he faces.
