Donald J Trump indictment: Trump compares charges on 2020 election interference probe to ‘Nazi persecution’

Donald Trump’s campaign team has issued a statement comparing the recent indictment handed out to the former president over an investigation into the Jan 6 insurrection to Nazi Germany.

“This is nothing more than the latest corrupt chapter in the continued pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election, in which President Trump is the undisputed frontrunner, and leading by substantial margins,” the campaign said.

“The lawlessness of these persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union, and other authoritarian, dictatorial regimes,” a part of the lengthy statement said.

“President Trump has always followed the law and the Constitution, with advice from many highly accomplished attorneys.”

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 US Capitol in an attack fueled by Mr Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election. She has also ruled against him before.

Mr Trump is to appear on Thursday before US district judge Tanya Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by president Barack Obama. She often has handed down prison sentences in 6 Jauary 2021, riot cases that are harsher than Justice Department prosecutors recommended.

Read more about the judge in this report:

A historic four-count federal indictment outlines Donald Trump’s sprawling campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 election, culminating in a mob of his supporters storming the halls of Congress to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election.

He knew he had lost, but he continued to pursue efforts to remain in power, including a so-called alternate elector scheme to fraudulently certify the results submitted to Congress, according to prosecutors.

Mr Trump has been charged with three criminal conspiracies – including a conspiracy to deprive Americans’ right to vote and to have their votes counted, a statute rooted in bedrock civil rights protections enacted in the brutal aftermath of the US Civil War.

The indictment of Donald Trump on Tuesday marks the first time that the former president has been formally held accountable for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

And it adds new details to what was already known about his actions, and those of his key allies, in the weeks leading up to the violent 6 January 2021 insurrection.

The newest charges – Mr Trump’s third criminal indictment this year – include conspiracy to defraud the United States government and conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding, the congressional certification of president Joe Biden‘s victory.

It describes how Mr Trump repeatedly told supporters and others that he had won the election, despite knowing that was false, and how he tried to persuade state officials, his own vice president and finally Congress to overturn the legitimate results.

Some takeaways from his indictment in this report:

As Donald Trump was being indicted on Tuesday evening for attempting to overturn the 2020 election, the third criminal case against him, US president Joe Biden enjoyed a day at the beach.

Mr Biden rode his bike, ate at a seafood restaurant, saw a movie and took a moonlit stroll on Rehoboth Beach near his Delaware vacation home, while studiously not commenting on the trials and tribulations of his predecessor.

As the indictment was being unsealed, Mr Biden and his wife Jill were headed to Matt’s Fish Camp, a chowder and fried fish restaurant, for an early supper. The pool of reporters who travel with Mr Biden were kept far from the president, allowing him to avoid questions and neatly maintain his long, deliberate silence about his top Republican political opponent’s mounting legal problems.

After dinner, Mr Biden and the first lady saw the movie ‘Oppenheimer’ at a local theatre and then went for a moonlit walk.

As special counsel Jack Smith spoke on Mr Trump’s four criminal counts of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, the White House and Mr Biden’s re-election campaign declined comment on Tuesday.

“We would refer you to the Justice Department, which conducts its criminal investigations independently,” said Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson.

Mr Trump’s mounting legal woes, and Mr Biden’s silence, come as the two combatants in the 2020 presidential election inch closer to a rematch in November 2024. From a political horse race point of view, Mr Biden is following a well-worn playbook: When your opponent is in trouble, stand clear and avoid any backlash.

GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy comments on Donald Trump’s third indictment:

The corrupt federal police just won’t stop until they’ve achieved their mission: eliminate Trump. This is un-American & I commit to pardoning Trump for this indictment. Donald Trump isn’t the cause of what happened on Jan 6. The real cause was systematic and pervasive censorship of citizens in the year leading up to it. If you tell people they can’t speak, that’s when they scream. If you tell people they can’t scream, that’s when they tear things down. If we fail to admit the truth, Jan 6 will just be a preview of far worse to come & I don’t want to see us get there.

Here are the many, many, many cases against the former president that you need to know about, as compiled by The Independent’s newsroom.

Co-Conspirator 1: An attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies that the Defendant’s 2020 re-election campaign attorneys would not.

Co-Conspirator 2: An attorney who devised and attempted to implement a strategy to leverage the Vice President’s ceremonial role overseeing certification proceeding to obstruct the certification of the presidential election.

Co-Conspirator 3: An attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud the Defendant privately acknowledged to others sounded “crazy.” Nonetheless, the Defendant embraced and publicly amplified Co-Conspirator 3’s disinformation.

Co-Conspirator 4: A Justice Department official who worked on civil matters and who, with the Defendant, attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.

Co-Conspirator 5: An attorney who assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.

Co-Conspirator 6: A political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.