A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted former President Donald Trump on Tuesday over matters relating to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump, as he has in the past two indictment cases, announced on Truth Social before the formal indictment had been delivered that he was expecting charges.
“I hear that Deranged Jack Smith, in order to interfere with the Presidential Election of 2024, will be putting out yet another Fake Indictment of your favorite President, me, at 5:00 p.m.,” he wrote minutes before the news broke.
The former president and 2024 GOP front-runner added, “Why didn’t they do this 2.5 years ago? Why did they wait so long? Because they wanted to put it right in the middle of my campaign. Prosecutorial Misconduct!”
Trump also announced on July 18 he had received a letter two days before notifying him that he was a target of an investigation by a grand jury examining the Jan. 6 attack and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, which he narrowly lost to President Joe Biden.
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The target letter reportedly named three federal statutes related to the deprivation of rights, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and witness tampering. However, it remains unclear what charges prosecutors will specifically level against the former president.
The indictment was received by the duty magistrate judge and placed under seal. On Tuesday, Judge Moxila Upadhyaya was scheduled as the duty magistrate, though a different judge will oversee the eventual trial.
The grand jury has been convening for months in the District of Columbia in the investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith.
As speculation swirled about whether the grand jury would move to indict the former president when it convened on Thursday, July 27, two of Trump’s attorneys met with prosecutors in the District that day. Hours later, Smith’s team surprised Trump with a superseding indictment, bringing three new charges to the ongoing case surrounding alleged mishandling of classified record at his Florida resort home, Mar-a-Lago. Prosecutors included a new charge of willful retention of documents and two new obstruction charges, alleging Trump worked with two co-defendants to attempt to delete Mar-a-Lago’s surveillance footage.
Smith received more documents the week of July 24 as part of his investigation, including records from a lawyer representing former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who said he sent thousands of pages of documents to Smith’s office over the weekend.
The grand jury also recently heard testimony recently from William Russell, a former White House aide who now works for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
Ahead of the Tuesday indictment, Trump and his advisers spent the start of the week in preparation, lining up surrogates and allies to immediately respond to the new charges once they become filed, sources familiar with the plans told CNN.
Trump has now been indicted in three different cases. His first federal indictment came in June in the case related to his handling of classified documents. He was indicted on New York state charges in April in a case surrounding a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels during the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign. On July 27, he faced a superseding indictment from a Florida grand jury adding additional charges in Smith’s original classified documents case. He has pleaded not guilty during two separate arraignments over the federal and state charges.
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After receiving the target letter, Trump blasted Smith on his Truth Social platform, calling him a “deranged” prosecutor and saying such letters “almost always means an Arrest and indictment.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
