2023-07-20 16:58:55
Federal prosecutors investigating Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election result have evidence to charge the former US president with three counts. According to two people familiar with the case, one of the crimes is the possible violation of article 241 of the country’s legal code, which prohibits conspiring to violate civil rights.
The possible crimes were detailed in the legal notice sent to Trump this week by members of the office of special counsel Jack Smith, the same one who in June accused Trump of withholding confidential documents. That notification is the most obvious sign that a formal indictment is imminent.
According to the legal notice, prosecutors appear to have sufficient evidence to charge Trump with “obstructing official procedure” and “conspiring to defraud the United States.” The same two charges for which the House of Representatives investigative committee that examined the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 recommended a criminal investigation against the former president.
a new accusation
That legal notice addressed to Trump mentions a third accusation that until now had not been considered, according to the sources mentioned by the newspaper. The Guardian. It is based on section 241 of title 18 of the US legal code, which prohibits conspiring to threaten or intimidate a person in the “free exercise” of the rights or privileges conferred by the “Constitution or the laws of the United States”.
The law was enacted to protect the civil rights of black voters who, after the US Civil War, were victims of attacks by white supremacist groups. Although it has been applied to other areas in recent years, it is a rare accusation that prosecutors tend to limit to hate crimes and cases of police abuse.
It’s unclear what that accusation could mean for Trump. Prosecutors have been investigating the ex-president’s pressure on other members of the government, such as the one he exerted against his own vice president, Mike Pence. But from a broader perspective, Trump’s attempt to prevent the transfer of power can also be interpreted as a conspiracy to defraud voters.
The other two laws suggest that a central part of the case against Trump will rest on the so-called ‘fake voters plot’ and on the former president’s attempts to use fake lists to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election victory on January 6, 2021.
The legal notice from federal prosecutors makes no mention of “seditious conspiracy,” “incitement to insurrection,” or “disenfranchisement under the guise of legality,” which pose a legal risk to Trump, according to legal experts.
A spokesman for Trump’s campaign team did not respond to a request for information about the content of the notification. But on Tuesday night, one of his senior advisers did not deny that the notice included Article 241. The newspaper The New York Times has also reported the inclusion of that point.
Unprecedented legal risks
Facing unprecedented legal risks, Trump continues to lead the Republican Party’s ticket for the 2024 presidential election. On his Truth Social social network, where he revealed that he is under investigation, he called the legal notice “HORROR NEWS.”
The House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol concluded in 2022 that Trump had committed multiple crimes in his attempt to reverse his defeat against Joe Biden in the 2020 election, including “conspiring to defraud the United States” and “obstructing official proceedings.”
That commission symbolically suggested to the Department of Justice that it proceed with a criminal investigation against the former president. By then, said department had already deepened its own criminal investigation with the incorporation, in the spring of 2022, of new prosecutors who later joined the special prosecutor’s office.
The commission also found that there was sufficient evidence for prosecutors to charge Trump with “conspiracy to defraud” and “obstruction of official process.” In addition, they recommended investigating him for “incitement to insurrection”, something that does not appear in the legal notice received on the 18th by Trump.
If prosecutors decide to indict the former president as part of the federal investigation on January 6, the trial in this case could begin before the 2024 election and much faster than the trial in the classified Mar-a-Lago documents, since pre-trial proceedings would not be delayed by rules governing documents related to national security.
Trump was charged in June with withholding documents important to national security and obstructing government attempts to recover them. Both Trump and his valet Walt Nauta, charged with obstruction and making a false statement before the FBI, have pleaded not guilty.
The legal notice has reached Trump weeks before Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, files an indictment against Trump and his allies for attempting to overturn the 2020 election result in the state of Georgia, as The Guardian reported last week.
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