More than a month after the Supreme Court decided that presidents had immunity for official acts, special council Jack Smith filed an updated indictment against former President Donald Trump and his connection to what happened on Jan. 6.
The Supreme Court had decided in July in a 6-3 opinion that Trump was immune from prosecution, The Associated Press reported. The high court sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan who will decide what were official acts Trump did in his capacity as president or what was done as a private act.
The reworked indictment was entered about 10 days before the Justice Department’s 60-day rule would take effect, The Washington Post reported. The rule typically does not allow indictments within the 60 days before an election that could influence a race, ABC News explained earlier this year.
Trump wrote on Truth Social that the indictment violated the 60-day rule because “Voting starts on September 6th” and that it is “Election Interference.”
ABC News said that the guideline does not appear in the so-called Justice Manual which has all of the Department of Justice’s rules and policies. Instead, according to the report from Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued in 2018 and that looked into the FBI’s actions during the race between Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Horowitz said the 60-day rule “is not written or described in any Department policy or regulation” but is instead a “general practice that informs the Department decisions,” ABC News reported.
Former FBI Director James Comey testified before Congress with Horowitz quoting the director as saying the rule is “a very important norm which is ... we avoid taking any action in the run up to an election, if we can avoid it.”
“Several Department officials described a general principle of avoiding interference in elections rather than a specific time period before an election during which overt investigative steps are prohibited,” Horwitz said.
The Post reported that in Smith’s refiling of the charges, he wrote in the notice to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, that it was filed “by a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in the case” and that it “reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holding and remand instructions.”
The charges remain the same, accusing Trump of trying to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 win.
The charges are:
- Conspiring to defraud the United States
- Conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding
- Obstructing a congressional proceeding
- Conspiracy against rights
The original indictment was 45 pages but has been pared down to 36 pages after removing the portion where Smith accused Trump of attempting to force the Justice Department to support his claims of voter fraud.
With the removal of the portion involving the Justice Department, the accusations against “Co-Conspirator No. 4″ who was identifiable as former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark are no longer in play, leaving five uncharged co-conspirators, private lawyers or consultants who Smith said advised Trump on his efforts to overturn the election, the Post reported. By calling them private lawyers or a consultant, the newspaper explained, is an effort “seeking to distinguish their conduct from official government acts.”
“These co-conspirators included the following individuals, none of whom were government officials during the conspiracies and all of whom were acting in a private capacity,” the indictment read according to the Post.
Trump called the new filing “an effort to resurrect a ‘dead’ Witch Hunt.”
The New York Times also said the revamped indictment called Trump “a candidate for president of the United States in 2020″ not how he was previously referred to as “the 45th President of the United States and a candidate for re-election in 2020.”
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