Donald Trump has been indicted for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, the third time in four months that the former US president has been criminally charged even as he campaigns to regain the presidency next year.
The four-count, 45-page indictment charges Mr Trump, a Republican, with conspiring to defraud the US by preventing Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden's victory and to deprive voters of their right to a fair election.
When Mr Trump was president, he pushed fraud claims he knew to be untrue, pressured state and federal officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, to alter the results and finally incited a violent assault on the US Capitol in an attempt to undermine American democracy and cling to power, prosecutors said.
Mr Trump was ordered to make an initial appearance in federal court in Washington tomorrow.
The case has been assigned to US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who was appointed by Mr Trump's predecessor Barack Obama.
The charges stem from Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigation into allegations Mr Trump sought to reverse his loss to Mr Biden.
Despite a growing array of legal troubles, Mr Trump has solidified his status as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, according to public opinion polls.
Weeks of assertions that the election had been stolen culminated in a fiery speech by Mr Trump on 6 January 2021, as Congress met to certify the results.
Soon after, his supporters stormed the US Capitol in a bid to stop Congress from formalising Mr Biden's victory.
In a brief statement to reporters, Mr Smith placed the blame for the violence squarely on Mr Trump's shoulders.
"The attack on our nation's Capitol on 6 January 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy," he said.
"As described in the indictment, it was fuelled by lies - lies by the defendant, targeted at obstructing the bedrock function of the US government," Mr Smith added.
Slate of electors
Mr Trump and others organised fraudulent slates of electors in seven states, all of which he lost, to submit their votes to be counted and certified as official by Congress on 6 January, the indictment said.
The indictment lays out numerous examples of Mr Trump's election falsehoods and notes that close advisers, including senior intelligence officials, told him repeatedly that the election results were legitimate.
"These claims were false, and the defendant knew that they were false," prosecutors wrote.
When the push to certify the fake electors failed, Mr Trump sought to pressure Mr Pence not to allow the certification of the election to go forward and took advantage of the chaos outside the Capitol to do so, according to prosecutors.
During the incident, Mr Trump rebuffed calls from his advisers to issue a calming message.
"The Defendant attempted to use a crowd of supporters that he had gathered in Washington DC to pressure the Vice President to fraudulently alter the election results," the indictment reads.
In a statement, the Trump campaign said he had always followed the law and characterised the indictment as a "persecution" reminiscent of Nazi Germany.
"President Trump will not be deterred by disgraceful and unprecedented political targeting," it added.
Later yesterday, Mr Trump's campaign sent out a fundraising email referencing the indictment.
The indictment also includes six unnamed co-conspirators.
Based on the descriptions, they appear to include Mr Trump's former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who called several state politicians in the weeks following the 2020 election to pressure them not to certify their state's results; former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who tried to get himself installed as attorney general so he could launch voter fraud investigations in Georgia and other swing states; and attorney John Eastman, who advanced the legal theory that Mr Pence could block the electoral certification.
"Every statement that Mayor Giuliani made was truthful and expressing his beliefs," Mr Giuliani's attorney Robert Costello said.
"He believed there was proof of election fraud, and I have seen the affidavits that back that up," Mr Costello added.
Mr Eastman's lawyer Charles Burnham said in an email that the indictment used a "misleading presentation of the record to contrive criminal charges against Presidential candidate Trump and to cast ominous aspersions on his close advisors."
Mr Clark did not respond to requests for comment.
The most serious charge against Mr Trump carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, though sentencing is based on numerous factors and is subject to the judge's discretion.
Legal woes
Donald Trump already had become the first former US president to face criminal charges. He has sought to portray all of the prosecutions as part of a politically motivated witch hunt aimed at preventing his return to power.
These charges represent a second round of federal charges by Mr Smith, who was appointed a special counsel in November by US Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Mr Trump pleaded not guilty after a federal grand jury in Miami convened by the special counsel charged him in June in a 37-count indictment over his unlawful retention of classified government documents after leaving office in 2021 and obstructing justice.
Prosecutors accused him of risking some of the most sensitive US national security secrets.
Last Thursday, prosecutors added three more criminal counts against Mr Trump, bringing the total to 40, accusing him of ordering employees to delete security videos as he was under investigation for retaining the documents.
The first charges brought against Mr Trump emerged in March when a grand jury convened by Manhattan's district attorney indicted him.
In April, Mr Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts accusing him of falsifying business records concerning a payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to buy her silence before the 2016 election.
Mr Trump has denied the encounter.
Republican front-runner
Mr Trump, 77, leads a crowded field of Republican presidential candidates as he seeks a rematch with Mr Biden, 80, next year.
Mr Trump, who served as president from 2017 to 2021, has shown an ability to survive legal troubles, political controversies and personal behavior that might sink other politicians.
Many Republicans, elected officials and voters, have rallied behind Mr Trump, portraying the charges against him as selective prosecution and a Democratic plot to destroy him politically.
This sentiment persisted following the four-count indictment, as most Republicans pivoted to attacks on Mr Biden.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in Congress, said on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, that the indictment was an attempt to "attack the frontrunner for the Republican nomination."
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Mr Trump's leading rival for the Republican nomination, said on X that he had yet to read the indictment. However, he vowed to "end the weaponisation of the federal government," suggesting that the Biden administration was using the charges to target a political enemy.
Mr Pence, who is also competing against Mr Trump in the Republican primary, said on X that the indictment "serves as an important reminder: anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States."
In a joint statement, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said: "This indictment is the most serious and most consequential thus far and will stand as a stark reminder to generations of Americans that no one, including a president of the United States, is above the law."
The White House and the Biden re-election campaign declined to comment on the indictment.
"We would refer you to the Justice Department, which conducts its criminal investigations independently," said Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson.
Strategists said that while the indictments could help Mr Trump solidify support within his base and win the Republican nomination, his ability to capitalise on them may be more limited in next year's general election, when he will have to win over more skeptical moderate Republicans and independents.
Meanwhile, his legal woes are growing. In addition to the three indictments, Mr Trump faces a fourth criminal investigation by a county prosecutor in Georgia into accusations he sought to undo his 2020 election loss in that state.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has indicated she plans to bring charges in that case within the next three weeks.
Special counsels are sometimes appointed to investigate politically sensitive cases and they do their jobs with a degree of independence from the Justice Department leadership.
Before being appointed by Mr Garland to take over the two Trump-related investigations, Mr Smith had served as the chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague, assigned to prosecuting war crimes in Kosovo, oversaw the Justice Department's public integrity section and worked as a federal and state prosecutor in New York.
