WASHINGTON: Prosecutors on Tuesday filed a revised indictment against Donald Trump, moving forward with shocking allegations that he tried to overturn the 2020 US election after losing to Joe Biden.
The new indictment retains the same four counts against Trump as in an earlier version, but takes into account a recent Supreme Court ruling that a former president has broad immunity from criminal prosecution.
The new indictment against the 78-year-old Republican presidential hopeful is 36 pages long, down from 45 previously, and removes material affected by the conservative-dominated high court's immunity ruling.
It sticks to the core, claiming Trump lost in 2020 but “was determined to stay in power” and tried to subvert the results.
The Supreme Court ruled in July that a former president has broad immunity from prosecution for official acts performed while in office, but can be prosecuted for unofficial acts.
This cast doubt on the historic prosecution of the former president.
Trump called the new accusation an “act of desperation” that was part of a “witch hunt” against him.
“The illegally appointed 'Special Prosecutor', the deranged Jack Smith, has filed a ridiculous new indictment against me, which has all the same problems as the previous indictment, and must be dismissed IMMEDIATELY,” he posted on his platform Truth Social.
The new indictment comes three days before special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the charges against Trump, and the former president's lawyers presented a timeline for pretrial proceedings.
Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, had also scheduled a status hearing for Sept. 5 in Washington and it was not immediately clear whether that would take place now, following the filing of the superseding indictment.
Trump's lawyers have been seeking to delay the trial until after the November election between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.
Trump is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding: the January 6, 2021 joint session of Congress that was attacked by Trump supporters.
Trump is also accused of trying to disenfranchise American voters with his campaign of false claims that he won the 2020 election.
He was originally scheduled to go on trial on March 4, but the proceedings were put on hold while his lawyers pursued their claim of presidential immunity all the way to the Supreme Court.
'Private capacity'
It will be up to Chutkan, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, to decide which of Trump's actions regarding the 2020 election were official acts and which were unofficial acts subject to possible prosecution.
That and other pretrial matters are expected to take months, making it unlikely the case will go to trial before the Nov. 5 presidential vote.
The new indictment removes references to Jeffrey Clark, a former senior Justice Department official who was one of six conspirators listed in the original indictment allegedly recruited by Trump to push his false claims of election fraud.
The Supreme Court, in its ruling on immunity, said a president's communications with members of the Justice Department should be considered official acts.
The other co-conspirators, who include Trump's former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, “acted in their private capacities,” the indictment says, “to assist him in his criminal efforts to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election and retain power.”
Regarding the ruling on Trump's immunity, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she was “troubled” by the July verdict, according to an interview published by CBS News on Tuesday.
“I was concerned about a system that seemed to grant immunity to an individual in certain circumstances, when we have a criminal justice system that had traditionally treated everyone equally,” he said.
Jackson was among three judges who dissented from the court's ruling.
Trump was convicted in New York in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Sentencing has been scheduled for Sept. 18, but Trump's lawyers have asked that his conviction be vacated, citing the Supreme Court's immunity ruling, and that the sentence be delayed.
Trump also faces charges in Georgia related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump was also charged in Florida with mishandling top-secret documents after leaving the White House.
The judge presiding over the documents case, Trump appointee Aileen Cannon, dismissed the charges on the grounds that Smith, the special counsel, was illegally appointed.
