The charges now levied against Donald Trump are by some degree the most serious and consequential that he faces. The third indictment of the former US president, for attempting to engineer his own fraudulent re-election, charges him with trying to undermine his country’s democracy. That democracy, like any other, depends above all on an acceptance of the peaceful transfer of power through elections, and the equality of all, including presidents, before the law.
That Trump’s trial for conspiracy to overturn the last presidential election should take place as he contests the next one – as runaway favourite for the Republican nomination – is deeply troubling. In effect, the election will become the trial before the court of public opinion, with the candidate already making clear that he would use his victory and presidential powers to scrap any conviction, or abandon the process.
And there’s more to come. He faces at least five cases over the year ahead, ranging from falsifying business records, to mishandling classified documents, to a civil trial for business fraud and more election-related charges in Georgia.
The latest indictment spells out three alleged conspiracies around attempts to obstruct certification of the election of Joe Biden on January 6th 2022. Trump and six co-conspirators, the indictment says, made claims of election fraud they knew to be false, sought to overturn the result by using the Justice Department to support those claims, oversaw the creation of false slates of electors in seven states won by Biden, and pressurised Vice President Mike Pence to block certification by Congress, exploiting the violence of demonstrators laying siege outside.
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Prosecutors will have to demonstrate “intent” to commit criminal acts on the part of the former president. Showing that Trump knew the claims of electoral fraud to be untrue will be vital to any conviction – the indictment, at length, both outlines Trump’s direct personal involvement in a number of illegal manoeuvres and lists those who told him there was no evidence to back his claims.
What the indictment does not do is attempt to make a case against Trump as a directing force behind the siege and seizure of the Capitol, although special prosecutor Jack Smith spoke to journalists of his moral, as well as legal, responsibility for violence at the Capitol. Here, the evidence of criminal intent is weaker – he may have summoned marchers to Washington, urged them to confront legislators and Pence, and did nothing till far too late to call them off.
On the evidence of past charges, the latest indictment will be grist to the Trump electoral mill, a powerful fundraising weapon. Yet, despite the obstacles ahead, we may also see the US political system beginning to hold the repeated liar to account.