Former US President Donald Trump (2017-2021) was indicted for efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election, in which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
Special Counsel Jack Smith has filed four charges against the former Republican president. Smith is expected to appear at any moment to explain the steps he has taken.
Trump could be accused of conspiring to defraud the United States, conspire to obstruct official proceedings, obstruct official proceedings, and conspire against rights. Local media have announced that the former president will have to appear before the court in Washington next Thursday at 16:00 local time (20:00 GMT).
A few minutes before 5pm local time (9pm GMT), Trump had announced on his social network, Truth Social, that he would be formally charged by Smith this Tuesday.
“I have heard that the deranged Jack Smith, to interfere in the 2024 presidential election, will release another false indictment of his favorite president, me, at 5 p.m.,” the former president wrote.
“Why didn’t they do it 2.5 years ago? Why did they wait so long? Why did they want to do it in the middle of my campaign -Indian-. Offenses by the Prosecutor’s Office”.
Trump is currently the favorite candidate, according to polls, to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. A new accusation against him would not prevent the former president from running for election.
Smith, appointed special prosecutor for the Department of Justice, is leading the investigation into Trump for his involvement in the 2021 storming of the Capitol and confidential documents found in his Mar-a-Lago mansion.
In that second lawsuit, in Florida, Trump pleaded not guilty to 37 criminal charges for bringing boxes full of classified documents to his Florida mansion when he left the White House in January 2021.
Moreover, the former president was indicted in March in New York for allegedly illegal payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election campaign in exchange for his silence about the “relationship” they had a decade earlier, and has another case filed in Georgia over his efforts to undo Biden’s victory in that southern state in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump, 77, lost the 2020 election to Biden but did not admit the voting result, exposed false voter fraud and lobbied officials to overturn the result.