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Trump Pleads Not Guilty to Charges He Illegally Tried to Upend 2020 Election Loss

Former US President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty Thursday to four charges of criminal conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from the courthouse.
Camera: Saqib Ul Islam
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Washington Closely Watching Niger After Coup

The White House says it’s closely watching a coup in Niger, as the US Embassy prepares to evacuate staff from the West African nation. With the coup plotters staring down a Sunday deadline to reinstate the deposed democratically elected president, analysts say Moscow and Beijing are also monitoring Niamey – and looking for opportunities to widen their influence. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Washington.
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Trump to Appear in Court Thursday, Accused of Illegally Trying to Upend 2020 Election Loss

Former US President Donald Trump is due to appear in court Thursday, after a grand jury in Washington accused him of illegally trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more from Washington.
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Trump to Face Different Jury Pools in Two Federal Indictments

Former U.S. President Donald Trump will be facing two vastly different pools of possible jurors and judges with divergent views when he goes on trial in Washington, accused of illegally orchestrating an attempt to upend his 2020 election loss, and in Florida for allegedly trying to hoard classified national security documents.

Trump was indicted by Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith on Tuesday in the Washington case, and Trump is set to make his first court appearance on Thursday afternoon.

A federal court grand jury handed up a four-count indictment alleging that Trump conspired to defraud the United States to stay in power even though he knew he had lost his reelection bid to Democrat Joe Biden and then helped foment the January 6, 2021, riot of Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to block lawmakers from certifying the election outcome.

Jurors do not necessarily decide criminal cases the way they voted in elections, but when the case goes to trial — and that could be months from now — Trump will face a pool of would-be jurors, all residents of Washington, the national capital, who voted against him 92% to 5% in the 2020 election.

In the southern state of Florida, where Trump lives at his oceanside Mar-a-Lago estate in the winter months, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has indicated she is likely to hold the classified documents case Smith filed against Trump at the courthouse where she normally presides, in Fort Pierce, about 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of the resort city of Miami.

If the trial is in Fort Pierce, jurors would be chosen from a list of voters in five counties, four of which handed Trump more than 60% of their votes in the 2020 election, while he eked out a slim majority in the fifth county.

The two federal judges overseeing the cases have already issued rulings for and against Trump.

Cannon, a Trump appointee to the federal bench in the waning days of his presidency, was randomly picked to oversee the classified documents case. Last year, she appointed a special master Trump sought, over the protests of Smith’s prosecutors, to review documents seized from Mar-a-Lago, which at the time delayed the government’s investigation.

The government appealed her decision and an appellate court rebuked Cannon, ruling that she had no right to name the special master.

More recently, when Smith sought to start the classified documents trial in December and Trump’s lawyers wanted to push it past the 2024 election, Cannon pretty much split the difference, ordering the trial to start in May 2024.

In Washington, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, nominated to the federal bench by former Democratic President Barack Obama, was randomly selected to oversee the case accusing Trump of election interference to stay in power.

Smith alleged that Trump knew he had lost but continued to make false claims that he had been cheated out of another four-year term in the White House and then tried to keep Congress from certifying that Biden had won, resulting in the mayhem at the Capitol on January 6 two years ago.

A specially appointed committee in the House of Representatives examined the riot at length in public hearings last year, and Chutkan played a role in the committee’s evidence gathering.

Trump sought to block release of documents sought by the committee by asserting executive privilege over the material, even though he was no longer president and Biden had cleared the way for the National Archives to turn over the papers. Chutkan ruled that Trump could not claim that his privilege “exists in perpetuity.”

Chutkan notably wrote, “Presidents are not kings, and plaintiff is not president.”

Chutkan is one of two dozen federal judges in Washington who have overseen the cases of rioters charged with offenses for their roles in the January 6 rampage at the Capitol building.

She has sentenced all 38 defendants convicted in her court to prison terms, ranging from 10 days to more than five years. In four of the cases, prosecutors weren’t seeking any jail time at all.

“It has to be made clear that trying to violently overthrow the government, trying to stop the peaceful transition of power and assaulting law enforcement officers in that effort is going to be met with absolutely certain punishment,” she said at one sentencing.
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US Economy Will Sway 2024 Vote, Small Business Owners Say

The Biden administration has recently been emphasizing the strength of the U.S. economy, but some small business owners remain skeptical. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias visited their shops and found out more about their economic struggles, ahead of election season.
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Breakdown of Sprawling Election-Meddling Indictment Against Trump

Donald Trump for years has promoted baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. In truth, Trump was the one who tried to steal the election, federal prosecutors said Tuesday in a sprawling indictment that paints the former president as desperate to cling to power he knew had been stripped away by voters.

The Justice Department indictment accuses Trump of brazenly conspiring with allies to spread falsehoods and concoct schemes intended to overturn his election loss to President Joe Biden as his legal challenges foundered in court.

The felony charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith are built around the words of White House lawyers and others in his inner circle who repeatedly told Trump there was no fraud.

It’s the third time this year the early front-runner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary has been charged in a criminal case. But it’s the first case to try to hold Trump responsible for his efforts to remain in power during the chaotic weeks between his election loss and the attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Trump has said he did nothing wrong, and he has accused Smith and the Justice Department of trying to harm his 2024 campaign.

Here’s a look at the charges Trump faces and other key issues in the indictment:

With what is Trump charged?

Trump is charged with four counts: obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and conspiracy to prevent others from carrying out their constitutional rights.

In the obstruction charge — which carries penalties of up to 20 years in prison — the official proceeding refers to the January 6, 2021, joint session of Congress at which electoral votes were counted in order to certify Biden as the official winner. Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding also carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.

That obstruction charge has been brought against hundreds of the more than 1,000 people charged in the January 6 riot, including members of the far-right Oath Keepers and Proud Boys extremist groups. More than 100 people have been convicted at trial or pleaded guilty to the offense.

Conspiracy to defraud the U.S., which is punishable by up to five years in prison, prohibits efforts to obstruct or interfere with government functions “by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest,” the Supreme Court has held. The indictment alleges that Trump used “dishonesty, fraud and deceit” to obstruct the counting and certifying of the election results.

Trump had the right to contest the election — and even falsely claim that he had won, the indictment says. The charges, however, stem from what prosecutors say were illegal efforts to subvert the election results and block the peaceful transfer of power.

The indictment alleges a weekslong plot that began with pressure on state lawmakers and election officials to change electoral votes from Biden to Trump, and then evolved into organizing fake slates of pro-Trump electors to be sent to Congress.

Trump and his allies also attempted to use the Justice Department to conduct bogus election-fraud investigations in order to boost his fake electors scheme, the indictment says.

As January 6 approached, Trump and his allies pressured Vice President Mike Pence to reject certain electoral votes, and when that failed, the former president directed his supporters to go to the Capitol to obstruct Congress’ certification of the vote, the indictment alleges.

Finally, the indictment says, Trump and his allies tried to exploit his supporters’ attack on the Capitol by redoubling their efforts to spread election lies and convince members of Congress to further delay the certification of Biden’s victory.

“Each of these conspiracies — which built on the widespread mistrust the Defendant was creating through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud — targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election,” the indictment says.

What is the ‘conspiracy against rights’ charge?

Trump is accused of violating a post-Civil War era civil rights statute that makes it a crime to conspire to interfere with rights that are guaranteed by the Constitution, in this case: the right to vote and have one’s vote counted. It’s punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

The provision was originally part of a set of laws passed in 1870 in response to violence and intimidation by members of the Ku Klux Klan aimed at keeping Black people from the polls.

But it has been used over the years in a wide range of election fraud cases, including to prosecute conspiracies to stuff ballot boxes or not count certain votes. The conspiracy doesn’t have to be successful, meaning the fraud doesn’t have to actually affect the election.

Was anyone else charged?

Trump is the only defendant charged in the indictment, which mentions six co-conspirators. The six people are not explicitly named, but the indictment includes details that make it possible to identify some of them. It’s unclear why they weren’t charged or whether they will be added to the indictment at a later date.

The co-conspirators include an attorney “who was willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies” that Trump’s 2020 campaign attorneys would not, and an attorney whose “unfounded claims of election fraud” Trump privately acknowledged to others sounded “crazy.” Another co-conspirator is a political consultant who helped submit fake slates of electors for Trump.

What happens next?

The case was filed in Washington’s federal court, where Trump is expected to make his first appearance on Thursday.

For more than two years, judges in that courthouse — which sits within sight of the Capitol — have been hearing the cases of the hundreds of Trump supporters accused of participating in the January 6 riot, many of whom have said they were deluded by the election lies pushed by Trump and his allies.

Trump has signaled that his defense may rest, at least in part, on the idea that he truly believed the election was stolen, saying in a recent social media post, “I have the right to protest an Election that I am fully convinced was Rigged and Stolen, just as the Democrats have done against me in 2016, and many others have done over the ages.”

But prosecutors have amassed a significant amount of evidence showing that Trump was repeatedly told he had lost.

Trump is already scheduled to stand trial in March in the New York case stemming from hush-money payments made during the 2016 campaign and in May in the federal case in Florida stemming from classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
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Trump Indicted, Accused of Illegally Trying to Upend 2020 Election Loss

Legal jeopardy for Donald Trump is growing after a federal grand jury in Washington indicted the former U.S. president, accusing him of illegally trying to upend his 2020 election loss to retain power. VOA’s Michael Brown reports.
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Reaction to Indictment of Former US President Donald Trump

Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s indictment on four federal charges for working to overturn his 2020 election loss drew reaction from across the political spectrum, including from his vice president at the time, Mike Pence, who said “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.” 

The indictment describes a series of events after the November election, culminating in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. The indictment says many in the “large and angry crowd” had been deceived by Trump into believing Pence could change the election results. 

Among those tasked with defending the Capitol from the mob was U.S. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, who said in a statement released by his lawyer, “All I have wanted from day one is accountability and justice for the law enforcement men and women who fought bravely on January 6th.” 

“I would be lying if I did not acknowledge my numbness with the news of the indictment today of a former president of the United States,” Dunn said. “I am confident our legal system will handle this case properly.” 

‘A stark reminder’

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a joint statement that Tuesday’s indictment “will stand as a stark reminder to generations of Americans that no one, including a president of the United States, is above the law.” 

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose office was ransacked by the January 6 mob, said in a statement that as the legal process plays out, “justice must be done according to the facts and the law.” 

“The charges alleged in this indictment are very serious, and they must play out through the legal process, peacefully and without any outside interference. Like every criminal defendant, the former President is innocent until proven guilty,” Pelosi said. 

Claims of political interference

Republican leaders cast the indictment as a form of political interference ahead of the 2024 presidential election in which Democratic President Joe Biden is seeking reelection and Trump remains the leading candidate for the Republican Party. 

They also mentioned Biden’s son, Hunter, ongoing congressional probes into Hunter Biden’s business dealings and criticism of a plea agreement for tax evasion. 

“Everyone in America could see what was going to come next: DOJ’s attempt to distract from the news and attack the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, President Trump,” Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said in a statement. “House Republicans will continue to uncover the truth about Biden Inc. and the two-tiered system of justice.” 

Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise called Trump’s indictment “an outrageous abuse of power” and accused the U.S. Justice Department of giving favorable treatment to Hunter Biden while “trying to persecute” Trump. 

Reublican Senator Ted Budd said the Biden administration has repeatedly “weaponized the justice system to target his chief political opponent.” 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Michigan Prosecutors Charge Trump Allies in Felonies Involving Voting Machines, Illegal ‘Testing’

LANSING, Michigan — A former Republican attorney general candidate and another supporter of former President Donald Trump have been criminally charged in Michigan in connection with accessing and tampering with voting machines after the 2020 election, according to court records.

Matthew DePerno, a Republican lawyer who was endorsed by Trump in an unsuccessful run for Michigan attorney general last year, was charged with undue possession of a voting machine and conspiracy, according to Oakland County court records.

Daire Rendon, a former Republican state representative, was charged with conspiracy to commit undue possession of a voting machine and false pretenses.

Both were arraigned remotely Tuesday afternoon, according to Richard Lynch, the court administrator for Oakland County’s 6th Circuit.

Those charged in Michigan are the latest facing legal consequences for alleged crimes committed after embracing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

The charges come as the former president is investigated for election interference in Georgia. Separately, Trump said in mid-July that he is a target of a federal investigation into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

DePerno, whose name was incorrectly listed as “DeParno” in court records, was named as a “prime instigator” in the case. He could not be reached by phone immediately for comment but has previously denied wrongdoing and has accused the state attorney general of “weaponizing her office.”

Five vote tabulators were taken from three counties in Michigan to a hotel room, according to documents released last year by Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office. Investigators found that the tabulators were broken into, and that “tests” were performed on the equipment. They said that DePerno was there.

Because Nessel ran against DePerno in 2022, she secured a special prosecutor who wouldn’t have a conflict of interest in the case and could operate independently.

That special prosecutor, D.J. Hilson, has been reviewing the investigation and considering charges since September. He convened a grand jury in March to determine whether criminal indictments should be issued, according to court documents.

Charges were slow to come in the case, in part because prosecutors wanted clarification from a judge about what constitutes illegal possession of a voting machine. Some of the defendants argued that local clerks gave them permission to take the machines.

In July, a state judge ruled that it’s a felony to take a machine without a court order or permission directly from the secretary of state’s office.

That felony is punishable by up to five years in prison.
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Judge Assigned to Trump Case Known for Giving Capitol Rioters Stiff Penalties

The federal judge assigned to the election fraud case against former President Donald Trump has stood out as one of the toughest punishers of rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attack fueled by Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election. She has also ruled against him before. 

Trump is to appear Thursday before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama. She often handed down prison sentences in January 6, 2021, riot cases that were harsher than Justice Department prosecutors recommended. 

Trump was indicted Tuesday on federal felony charges for his persistent efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the two months leading up to the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. 

Chutkan has ruled against Trump before in a separate January 6 case. In November 2021, she refused his request to block the release of documents to the U.S. House’s January 6 committee by asserting executive privilege. 

She rejected his arguments that he could hold privilege over documents from his administration even after President Joe Biden had cleared the way for the National Archives to turn the papers over. She wrote that Trump could not claim his privilege “exists in perpetuity.” 

In a memorable line from her ruling, Chutkan wrote, “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.” 

Chutkan has sentenced at least 38 people convicted of Capitol riot-related crimes. All 38 received prison terms, ranging from 10 days to more than five years, according to an Associated Press analysis of court records. 

She is one of two dozen judges in Washington who collectively have sentenced nearly 600 defendants for their roles in the January 6 siege. More than one-third of them avoided sentences that included incarceration. 

Other judges typically have handed down sentences that are more lenient than those requested by prosecutors. Chutkan, however, has matched or exceeded prosecutors’ recommendations in 19 of her 38 sentences. In four of those cases, prosecutors weren’t seeking any jail time at all. 

Chutkan has said prison can be a powerful deterrent against the threat of another insurrection. 

“Every day we’re hearing about reports of anti-democratic factions of people plotting violence, the potential threat of violence, in 2024,” she said in December 2021 before sentencing a Florida man who attacked police officers to more than five years behind bars. At the time, that sentence was the longest for a January 6 case. 

“It has to be made clear that trying to violently overthrow the government, trying to stop the peaceful transition of power and assaulting law enforcement officers in that effort is going to be met with absolutely certain punishment,” she said. 

Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump nominee, suggested during a hearing in 2021 that the Justice Department was being too hard on those who broke into the Capitol compared with the people arrested during racial injustice protests following George Floyd’s 2020 murder. 

Without naming her colleague, Chutkan criticized McFadden’s suggestion days later. 

“People gathered all over the country last year to protest the violent murder by the police of an unarmed man. Some of those protesters became violent,” Chutkan said during an October 2021 hearing. 

“But to compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights, to those of a violent mob seeking to overthrow the lawfully elected government is a false equivalency and ignores a very real danger that the Jan. 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy.” 
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