Key Facts From Trump Indictment In Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s Probe Into 2020 Election Interference And The January 6th Insurrection
This fact sheet was prepared by and is being distributed by Democracy 21 Education Fund.
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Read the indictment: United States of America v. Donald J. Trump
1. According to the indictment, former President Donald Trump knew he lost the 2020 election and proceeded with an illegal attempt to hold onto power through a comprehensive criminal conspiracy that attempted to manipulate every step of the process for certifying electoral votes.
The indictment alleges that Trump worked with his lawyers and White House aides to hatch a series of schemes to overturn the results of the 2020 election, even though Trump admitted privately that he knew he had lost the election, despite his public statements to the contrary.
The indictment shows that Trump and his co-conspirators orchestrated a sprawling conspiracy that began with spreading unfounded claims of voter fraud and illegality that Trump knew were false. Trump, along with his co-conspirators, then used those lies as a pretext to manufacture fraudulent electoral certificates that were submitted to Congress.
After their attempts to convince state officials to certify those fraudulent electoral certificates failed, Trump and his lawyers ultimately concentrated on using these false electoral slates to obstruct Congress’s constitutionally mandated count of the electoral votes on January 6 by attempting to convince Vice President Mike Pence to count those fraudulent electoral certificates anyway.
2. According to the indictment, Trump and his team first pressured state officials to overturn the legitimate results of the election in their states by certifying Trump’s electors.
Trump and his co-conspirators embraced claims of voter fraud and illegality in states won by Joe Biden. Trump was repeatedly told that those claims of fraud were false by senior officials at the Justice Department, his own political advisors and lawyers in the White House Counsel’s office, and elected officials in every disputed state.
Trump nonetheless pressured elected officials, including governors, state secretaries of state, and state legislatures, to overturn the lawful and legitimate results of the election by certifying Trump’s electors rather than the legitimate Biden electors. That pressure campaign attempted to leverage the Justice Department, whose top officials refused Trump’s request that the Department make knowingly false statements that there was widespread voter fraud that undermined the election. (Indictment at 17-21, 27-31.)
3. According to the indictment, Trump and his team organized fraudulent slates of electors to transmit false certificates to Congress.
After Trump failed in his efforts to convince state officials to certify his own electors rather than Biden’s electors, Trump and his co-conspirators organized a scheme for Trump’s electors to cast fraudulent ballots in the Electoral College. The scheme then directed the Trump electors to transmit purported “certificates” of their votes to Congress that falsely claimed that the Trump electors were the lawful electors for their states. (Indictment at 21-27.)
4. According to the indictment, Trump and his team pressured then-Vice President Pence to stop Congress from counting the electoral votes confirming Biden’s victory.
After the fraudulent electors submitted their false certificates to Congress, Trump began to publicly and privately pressure Pence, in his role as President of the Senate, to unlawfully stop the counting of electoral votes.
According to the indictment and testimony from Pence’s then-counsel Greg Jacob, Pence repeatedly refused Trump’s request to reject electors, but Trump continued to pressure Pence in the days leading up to the electoral count. Trump and his allies repeatedly demanded that Pence unconstitutionally misuse his ceremonial role in presiding over the electoral count to block Biden’s victory.
Trump and his co-conspirators initially pressured Pence to reject outright the electoral votes cast for Biden in seven states. After Pence and Jacob indicated that Pence would not do so, Trump and his co-conspirators shifted to pressuring Pence to unconstitutionally delay the electoral count. The purported purpose of that delay was to give state legislatures, which had already uniformly refused to certify Trump’s fraudulent electors, more time to act.
This pressure included Trump issuing a categorically false statement on January 5 asserting that Pence agreed with Trump’s false view that the Vice President held unilateral authority over the electoral count, even after Pence told Trump he did not possess that authority. On January 6, in the midst of the insurrection, Trump reiterated his pressure on Pence by tweeting to his followers that his Vice President “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.” (Indictment at 32-39.)
5. According to the indictment, Trump and his allies exploited the violence at the Capitol after Pence refused to interfere with the electoral count.
According to the indictment, after Pence announced in a public statement that he would not accede to Trump’s request to reject Biden’s electoral votes or to delay the electoral count, Trump resorted to a final, frantic strategy: making false claims of election fraud to a crowd on the Mall, which resulted in violence that Trump and his allies exploited in the hope that it would throw Pence and Congress off course, interfering with the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history.
After months of inflammatory remarks, in a speech delivered at noon on January 6, 2021 before a rally of his followers at the Ellipse, Trump encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol. As the indictment explains, Trump “repeated false claims of election fraud, gave false hope that the Vice President might change the election outcome, and directed the crowd in front of him to go to the Capitol as a means to obstruct the certification and pressure the Vice President to fraudulently obstruct the certification.”
Trump directed the crowd “to head to the Capitol” and suggested that he was going with them. He told the crowd to give Members of Congress “the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”
Trump even warned the audience: “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
After marching toward the Capitol on Trump’s orders, insurrectionists breached the building. Instead of taking swift and appropriate action, Trump watched the action unfold on cable news, and even sent messages of encouragement through social media. In a blatant dereliction of his constitutional duties, Trump failed to act for 187 minutes while his armed supporters stormed the Capitol. The indictment alleges that Trump and his co-conspirators exploited the violence and chaos at the Capitol by once again pressuring Pence and Members of Congress to delay the electoral count. (Indictment at 38-42.)
6. According to Count One in the indictment, Trump engaged in conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Count One of the indictment alleges that Trump violated 18 U.S.C. § 371. This statute criminalizes, among other things, a conspiracy that uses dishonest means to obstruct or impede the lawful function of the U.S. government. The indictment alleges that Trump and his co-conspirators dishonestly obstructed the lawful electoral count on January 6, 2021, through their sprawling scheme to manufacture fraudulent electoral votes for Trump and to pressure Pence and Members of Congress to count them rather than the legitimate electoral votes for Biden. (Indictment at 3, 42.)
7. According to Counts Two and Three in the indictment, Trump conspired and attempted to obstruct an official proceeding.
Counts Two and Three of the indictment allege the Trump violated 18 U.S.C. § 1512 by conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding — in this case, Congress’s count of the electoral votes mandated by the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution.
18 U.S.C. § 1512 forbids corruptly obstructing or impeding — or attempting to obstruct or impede — an official proceeding. Section 1512(k) forbids conspiring to obstruct or impede an official proceeding.
The indictment alleges that Trump and his co-conspirators violated § 1512(c)(2) and (k) through their scheme to block or delay the congressional count of electoral certificates votes by pressuring Pence to interfere with the count unilaterally and unconstitutionally. (Indictment at 43-44.)
Dozens of insurrectionists have already been convicted under § 1512 for their attempted obstruction through violence and intrusion on Capitol grounds.
8. According to Count Four in the indictment, Trump conspired to deprive Americans of their fundamental constitutional rights to vote and to have their votes counted.
Count Four of the indictment alleges that Trump violated 18 U.S.C. § 241 by engaging in a conspiracy to deprive Americans of civil rights, saying that Trump’s schemes interfered with the voters’ right to have their votes counted properly.
This statute makes it a crime for people to “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person” in the “free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”
The indictment alleges that Trump and his co-conspirators agreed to a conspiracy to manipulate the count of electoral votes that, if it had been successful, would have nullified tens of millions of Americans’ votes in the 2020 presidential election. (Indictment at 45.)
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