Conspiracy, obstruction, fraud: the potential charges facing Trump
Donald Trump's alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, the former US president faces a slew of potential charges. The 77-year-old Trump said Tuesday he had received a letter from Smith confirming he was a target of the probe and added that he expected to be arrested and indicted soon.
The special counsel, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November, declined to comment, but US media reports said the letter cited three federal criminal statutes: conspiracy to defraud the United States; obstruction of an official proceeding and deprivation of rights. Trump has already been indicted and pleaded not guilty in two other criminal cases — for mishandling top secret government documents after leaving the White House and for allegedly paying 2016 election-eve hush money to a porn star.
Here is a look at the charges Trump — the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — may face in connection with efforts to overturn his election loss to Democrat Joe Biden and the January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol by his supporters: — Conspiracy to defraud — The conspiracy statute makes it a crime if «two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States.» Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches at Columbia University, said the statute is «very broad» and can be applied in a number of ways to Trump's conduct before and after the election, which he baselessly claimed was «stolen.» «I'm assuming that a fraudulent effort to mislead Congress and to delay or prevent the certification of the election would be very plausible,» Richman told AFP. It could be applied to Trump's attempts to pressure Mike Pence
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