U.S. Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith has filed an additional indictment against former President Donald Trump for his alleged attempts to interfere in the 2020 election after he lost to Joe Biden.
The new indictment adapts the charges against Trump to the recent ruling of the US Supreme Court, according to which presidents enjoy immunity from prosecution for certain official acts.
The revised indictment maintains four counts against Trump, but highlights some of the descriptions of his alleged conduct.
Trump has denied the allegations of election interference, but maintains his claim – without evidence – that there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
The new indictment leaves the four crimes Trump is accused of: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, attempted obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy to violate human rights.
Trump had previously pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The former president’s personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, referred the BBC to the Trump campaign team, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social that the new charges were an “attempt to revive a ‘dead’ witch hunt” and distract “the American people” from the election.
He demanded that the case be “IMMEDIATELY dismissed.”
A source close to Trump’s lawyers told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, that the new charges were “no surprise.”
“That’s what the government should do based on what the Supreme Court has decided,” the source said. “It doesn’t change our position that we believe Smith’s case is flawed and should be dismissed.”
The new indictment document – which has been shortened from 45 to 36 pages – revises the language of the allegations and refines the way it argues that the former president allegedly committed these crimes to the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.
For example, the new indictment drops the allegation that Trump tried to pressure Justice Department officials to overturn his defeat. The Supreme Court ruled that Trump’s order to the justice officials was not illegal.
The special counsel’s office explained the reason for the new charges in a statement on Tuesday.
“The new indictment, presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case, reflects the government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s decisions and instructions in Trump v. United States,” the office said.
The Justice Department declined further comment.
The new indictment says Trump acted as a private citizen – not as president – when he carried out the alleged plan to influence the election.
“The defendant had no official obligations related to the certification process, but as a candidate he had a personal interest in being declared the winner of the election,” a new line in the indictment states.
Another new line refers to a lawsuit filed by his campaign in Georgia. The old wording said the lawsuit was “filed on his behalf,” but the new one says it was “filed in his capacity as a presidential candidate.”
The new indictment also appears to have dropped the charges against Jeffrey Clark. Clark is a former Justice Department official who prosecutors say played a key role in the so-called fake electoral system.
The fake electors plan was an attempt to interfere with the Electoral College system that decides presidential elections. It centered on trying to convince Republican-controlled legislatures in seven states to appoint Republican electors or not to appoint electors at all in states won by Biden.
The fake certificates were then forwarded to the U.S. Senate in order to ensure that their votes were counted instead of those of the real electors, thus overturning Biden’s victory.
Mr. Clark was not named in any of the charges, but was identified in the media from public records.
Several key allegations against Trump remain in the new indictment. Among other things, he is said to have tried to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to prevent Biden’s election certification.
In the Supreme Court’s decision last month, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that any conversations between Trump and Mr Pence would likely fall under the category of official acts.
“Trump is at least presumptively immune from prosecution,” he wrote, adding that it remains to be seen whether the government can rebut “that presumption of immunity.”
The new charges show that Smith interpreted the U.S. Supreme Court ruling to mean that his case could still go forward, said Daniel Charles Richman, a constitutional law expert at Columbia Law School.
However, whether this would satisfy the Supreme Court’s rules on presidential immunity is still unclear, the law professor said, since “the court was painfully vague about which private conduct of a president can be prosecuted.”
The new charges will not necessarily speed up the case, Richman told the BBC. He doubted that the charges would be heard before the election.
CBS News’ source close to Trump’s legal team said the former president’s lawyers would ask for more time to prepare the case, saying it would likely delay the start of the trial if the judge agreed.
This case came about after Mr. Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2022 to lead two federal investigations into Trump: the election interference case and another case in which the former president was accused of taking classified documents to his Florida home after leaving office.
On Monday, Mr Smith’s team Appeal filed against the decision of a judge in Florida to dismiss the confidential documents case.
“The district court deviated from binding Supreme Court precedents, misinterpreted the statutes authorizing the special counsel’s appointment, and failed to adequately consider the Attorney General’s long history of appointing special counsels,” the special counsel’s team wrote in its appeal.
Following the Supreme Court’s landmark decision last month, the future of both cases is uncertain.
If Trump prevails against Democrat Kamala Harris, he is widely expected to order the Justice Department to drop all federal charges against him.