The top Democrats in the House and Senate released a joint statement calling the Tuesday indictment of Donald Trump a “stark reminder” that “no one, including a president of the United States, is above the law.”
A grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted Trump on four charges related to the former president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, among them conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of an official proceeding.
BIDENOMICS: WHY BIDEN GETS POOR RATINGS ON THE ECONOMY DESPITE IMPROVING NUMBERS
The case is the second handled by special counsel Jack Smith, who said the ransacking of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was “fueled by lies” of a stolen election. Trump is also embroiled in a Justice Department investigation into his handling of classified documents.
Like in the first indictment, handed down in June, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) released a statement with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) calling for an investigation free from “outside interference.”
But the two leaders called the Jan. 6 case the “most serious and most consequential thus far.” Trump has also been charged in Manhattan with business fraud, and a fourth indictment is expected any day by a prosecutor in Georgia, also related to Trump’s actions in 2020. Trump has denied all wrongdoing.
“The third indictment of Mr. Trump illustrates in shocking detail that the violence of that day was the culmination of a months-long criminal plot led by the former president to defy democracy and overturn the will of the American people,” Jeffries and Schumer said.
Trump is accused of not only fomenting the riot with unfounded claims of voter fraud but also orchestrating an elaborate scheme to send alternate slates of electors to certify the election for Trump, not President Joe Biden. Then-Vice President Mike Pence also resisted pressure to overturn the election in his role overseeing its certification in Congress.
The fallout prompted an 18-month investigation into the Capitol riot by the House, which released an 845-page report in the final days of the 118th Congress that blamed the events of the day on Trump. Lawmakers also passed a bipartisan bill clarifying that the vice president’s role in election certification is merely ceremonial.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Republicans denounced the Tuesday indictment as a partisan attempt to throw in jail Biden’s chief rival in the 2024 presidential race. The president is mired in his own classified documents scandal, and the Republican-led House is investigating whether Biden was involved in what the party claims were corrupt business dealings abroad by the president’s son, Hunter.
The White House denies Joe Biden had any involvement in Hunter Biden’s business affairs.
