Trump indicted for trying to overturn 2020 election

Donald Trump was indicted on Tuesday over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election -- the most serious legal threat yet to the former president as he campaigns to return to the White House.

It is the third criminal indictment of the 77-year-old Trump since March and charges him with three counts of conspiracy and one count of obstruction.

Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is already scheduled to go on trial in Florida in May of next year for allegedly mishandling top secret government documents.

The new charges raise the prospect of Trump being embroiled in more legal proceedings at the height of what is expected to be a bitter and divisive presidential campaign.

The indictment brought by special counsel Jack Smith accuses Trump of conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding -- the January 6, 2021 joint session of Congress held to certify Democrat Joe Biden's election victory.

Trump is also accused in the 45-page indictment handed down by a grand jury in Washington of seeking to disenfranchise American voters with his false claims that he won the November 2020 presidential election.

"Shortly after election day -- which fell on November 3, 2020 -- the Defendant launched his criminal scheme," the indictment said.

"The purpose of the conspiracy was to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud," it said.

Smith, a former war crimes prosecutor at the Hague, said the January 6 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters was "an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy."

"It was fueled by lies," Smith told reporters in brief remarks.

"Lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the US government -- the nation's process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election."

ME