Politics

By Jack Queen

(Reuters) – Prosecutors who charged Donald Trump and two aides with mishandling classified documents asked a judge on Wednesday for a hearing over potential conflicts of interest with one of the men’s lawyers.

Stanley Woodward, a lawyer for Trump aide Walt Nauta, has represented or is currently representing three people who might be called as witnesses in the case, Florida federal prosecutors said in a filing, which does not identify the potential witnesses.

Woodward declined to comment Wednesday.

The filing is the latest wrinkle in a case that has been complicated by the defendants’ difficulties finding lawyers and disputes over how the hundreds of classified documents will be handled.

Trump and Nauta were hit with additional charges in a new indictment filed in Miami on July 27, which also added the property manager of the former U.S. president’s Mar-a-Lago resort, Carlos De Oliveira, as a defendant.

Trump is accused of taking troves of classified documents with him upon leaving the White House in 2021 and storing them haphazardly at Mar-a-Lago. Nauta and Oliveira are accused of helping him try to hide the documents from investigators seeking their return.

Trump and Nauta have pleaded not guilty. Trump has said the case and others against him are politically motivated “witch hunts.”

Nauta entered his plea on July 6 at an arraignment that was delayed twice because he did not initially have a lawyer licensed to practice in Florida.

De Oliveira was also unable to find a local lawyer in time for his first court appearance on Monday. His arraignment is set for Aug. 10.

Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers have asked for permission to review troves of top secret documents at Mar-a-Lago rather than an ultra-secure room known as a “sensitive compartmented information facility,” or SCIF.

Prosecutors said in a July 27 filing that they are not aware of any case where a defendant was granted permission to review classified documents at home. Such “exceptional treatment” would not be appropriate, they argued.

Trump’s lawyers have argued that forcing them to only review and discuss classified documents in a secure location would be too inconvenient.

(Reporting by Jack Queen; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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By Sarah N. Lynch and Jacqueline Thomsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. efforts to hold Donald Trump criminally responsible in a plot to overturn the 2020 election were gaining steam, as the former president prepared to face federal charges in a Washington courtroom on Thursday while Georgia state prosecutors looked poised to issue their own charges in coming weeks.

Trump – the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination – was indicted on Tuesday on four counts, including conspiring to defraud the U.S., obstructing an official proceeding and conspiring to deprive voters of their right to fair elections.

In the 45-page indictment filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith, prosecutors described a sprawling, multistate conspiracy built upon Trump’s repeated false claims that Democrat Joe Biden’s victory had been marred by widespread fraud.

A spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service said Trump, 77, was expected to be fingerprinted and asked to provide such basic information as his date of birth and Social Security number, when he appears voluntarily on a court summons on Thursday.

According to the indictment, Trump ignored advisers who told him the election was not fraudulent and helped organize fake slates of electors to try to capture electoral votes in states he had lost.

Trump and his allies knowingly pushed those lies as part of a campaign to pressure state and federal officials to throw out the election results, prosecutors said, culminating in a mob of Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a failed bid to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.

“Despite having lost, the defendant was determined to remain in power,” the indictment said.

The Trump campaign issued a statement accusing the Biden administration of targeting him for political gain.

“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,” the campaign said.

Smith, the former chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague, was appointed special counsel by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, empowered to handle a politically sensitive investigation while insulating the Justice Department from allegations of bias.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, who confounded attempts by Trump to remain in power, told then-President Trump there was no constitutional basis for his having such authority, and Trump responded: “You’re too honest,” according to the indictment.

Trump, the first former U.S. president to face criminal charges, has been indicted on three separate occasions this year. In June, Smith’s office charged him in a separate case with illegally retaining classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructing efforts to retrieve them.

Earlier this year, the Manhattan district attorney’s office brought charges that he falsified business records to hide hush money payments to a porn star who claimed to have had an affair with Trump years ago.

Trump has pleaded not guilty in both cases and has portrayed those investigations, as well as the election probes, as part of a coordinated “witch hunt.”

In Georgia, the district attorney in Atlanta, Fani Willis, has been investigating whether Trump and his associates illegally interfered with that state’s election for more than two years. Willis, an elected Democrat, has signaled she intends to bring charges in that probe within the next three weeks.

Despite the steady drumbeat of scandal, Trump maintains a wide lead over a field of Republican rivals in the November 2024 presidential race, according to public opinion polls.

Strategists said that while the indictments could help Trump solidify support among Republican voters, who view the charges as bogus, they could prove more damaging among independent voters in the general election against Biden.

Many Republican officials, unwilling to anger Trump’s substantial base of supporters, attacked Biden instead, claiming that the latest charges were politically motivated.

Trump’s chief rival for the Republican nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, declined to address the specifics in the indictment but vowed to end “the weaponization of the federal government.”

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Jacqueline Thomsen, writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Scott Malone, Michael Perry and Howard Goller)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former Vice President Mike Pence, who confounded attempts by then-President Donald Trump to remain in power after Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, plays a key part in the indictment charging Trump with conspiring to defraud the United States.

On Jan. 6, 2021, Pence’s role was to take part in a ceremonial duty at the U.S. Capitol: Certify the election results from November 2020 that showed Biden defeated Trump.

Trump, working with six co-conspirators, pushed Pence to refuse to certify the results based on his accusations of voter fraud on multiple occasions, the indictment alleges.

But the Vice President who had stood at Trump’s side for four stormy years refused.

In special counsel Jack Smith’s 45-page indictment of Trump, Pence is a frequent participant in the narrative, which includes detailed recollections of private calls and conversations.

The indictment describes Trump pressuring Pence to overturn or otherswise tamper with 2020 election results on a number of occasions in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, including on Christmas Day 2020.

“When the Vice President called the defendant to wish him a Merry Christmas, the defendant quickly turned the conversations to Jan. 6 and his request that the Vice President reject electoral votes that day,” the indictment says.

Pence told him, “You know I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome,” it says.

Then, on New Years Day, Trump “called the Vice President and berated him” after learning Pence had opposed a lawsuit that sought to give the Vice President the ability to reject or return votes to the states at the Jan. 6 certification, the indictment says.

Pence “responded that he thought there was no constitutional base for such authority and that it was improper,” the indictment reads. In response, it says, Trump told him “You’re too honest.”

Angry Trump supporters launched a violent uprising on Jan. 6, forcing an hours-long delay in the certification. But Pence and congressional leaders eventually went ahead with declaring Biden the winner.

Pence, a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said in a statement on Tuesday that the indictment against Trump “serves as an important reminder: anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.”

“The former president is entitled to the presumption of innocence but with this indictment, his candidacy means more talk about January 6th and more distractions,” he said.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Heather Timmons and Michael Perry)

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By Jack Queen

(Reuters) – Donald Trump was charged on Tuesday with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and other crimes related to his efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss. Here’s what happens next.

WHEN WILL TRUMP APPEAR IN COURT?

Trump is set to make his first court appearance on Thursday, when prosecutors will outline the charges against him and a judge will set his bail conditions. He might enter a plea at that time, but his arraignment could also come at a later date.

A judge will then set a schedule for pretrial motions and discovery, the months-long process when prosecutors hand over documents and other evidence to defense lawyers.

Trump’s attorneys will likely file a motion to dismiss in coming months, but those are rarely granted in criminal cases. Both sides are also likely to file motions seeking to shape what evidence and legal arguments will be permitted at trial.

HOW DOES THE CASE AFFECT TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN?

It doesn’t, from a practical standpoint. Nothing prevents criminal defendants from campaigning or taking office if they are convicted.

The political impact is less clear. Trump has shown a unique ability to weather scandals that would sink most politicians, and two previous indictments did nothing to diminish his commanding lead in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

If he wins the nomination, Trump would face off against Democratic President Joe Biden in the November 2024 election. Biden defeated Trump in 2020, but he has only a razor-thin edge in polls of a hypothetical match-up with Trump, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

WHEN WILL THE TRIAL HAPPEN?

That is unclear, but it would likely be many months away. A judge will set an initial trial date, but those are typically pushed back as both sides wrangle over legal issues and review evidence. Trump could also appeal pretrial rulings by a judge, which would further slow down the case.

(Reporting by Jack Queen; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Howard Goller and Daniel Wallis)

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By Sarah N. Lynch and Jacqueline Thomsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Efforts to hold Donald Trump criminally responsible for attempting to overturn the 2020 election were gaining steam, as the former U.S. president prepared to face federal charges in a Washington courtroom on Thursday while Georgia state prosecutors looked poised to issue their own charges in the coming weeks.

Trump – the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination – was indicted on Tuesday on four counts, including conspiring to defraud the U.S., obstructing an official proceeding and conspiring to deprive voters of their right to fair elections.

In the 45-page indictment filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith, prosecutors described a sprawling, multistate conspiracy built upon Trump’s repeated false claims that Democrat Joe Biden’s victory had been marred by widespread fraud.

According to the indictment, Trump ignored advisers who told him the election was not fraudulent and helped organize fake slates of electors to try to capture electoral votes in states he had lost.

Trump and his allies knowingly pushed those lies as part of a pressure campaign to try to convince state and federal officials to throw out the election results, prosecutors said, culminating in a mob of Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to block Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.

“Despite having lost, the defendant was determined to remain in power,” the indictment said.

The Trump campaign issued a statement accusing the Biden administration of targeting him for political gain.

“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,” the campaign said.

Smith, the former chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague, was appointed as special counsel by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. Special counsels are sometimes named to handle politically sensitive investigations to insulate the Justice Department from allegations of bias.

Trump, 77, the first former U.S. president to face criminal charges, has been indicted on three separate occasions this year. In June, Smith’s office charged him in a separate case with illegally retaining classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructing efforts to retrieve them.

Earlier this year, the Manhattan district attorney’s office brought charges that he falsified business records to hide hush money payments to a porn star who claimed to have had an affair with Trump years ago.

Trump has pleaded not guilty in both cases and has portrayed those investigations, as well as the election probes, as part of a coordinated “witch hunt.”

In Georgia, the district attorney in Atlanta, Fani Willis, has been investigating whether Trump and his associates illegally interfered with that state’s election for more than two years. Willis, an elected Democrat, has signaled she intends to bring charges in that probe within the next three weeks.

Despite the steady drumbeat of scandal, Trump has continued to hold a wide lead over a field of Republican rivals in the 2024 presidential race, according to public polls.

Strategists said that while the indictments could help Trump solidify support among Republican voters, who view the charges as bogus, they could prove more damaging among independent voters in the general election against Biden.

Many Republican officials, unwilling to anger Trump’s substantial base of supporters, attacked Biden instead, claiming that the latest charges were politically motivated.

Trump’s chief rival for the Republican nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, declined to address the specifics in the indictment but vowed to end “the weaponization of the federal government.”

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Jacqueline Thomsen, writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Scott Malone and Michael Perry)

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By Andrew Goudsward

(Reuters) – The judge assigned to oversee the federal case against Donald Trump for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election has previously ruled against the former president and sharply condemned the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C. is set to preside over the wide-ranging case accusing Trump of attempting to interfere with the counting of votes and seeking to block Congress from certifying the election results.

Trump claimed the indictment unsealed on Tuesday was political persecution aimed at harming his bid to recapture the presidency in 2024.

Here are key facts about Chutkan’s background and rulings:

OBAMA APPOINTEE

Chutkan was nominated as a federal judge by President Barack Obama in 2013. She was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate the following year though she did face some Republican opposition in an earlier procedural vote.

She previously served as a public defender in Washington, D.C. representing indigent defendants in criminal cases. Chutkan later joined the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, where she defended clients in white-collar cases and represented plaintiffs in antitrust class action lawsuits.

While at Boies Schiller, Chutkan represented the failed blood testing startup Theranos in a lawsuit against one of the company’s former law firms. Theranos later became engulfed in scandal and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, was convicted of fraud.

RULED AGAINST TRUMP

The criminal case will not be Chutkan’s first chance to rule on a matter involving Trump and the U.S. Capitol riot. Chutkan rejected a lawsuit brought by Trump in 2021 seeking to block the U.S. House committee investigating the attack from obtaining White House records, citing the legal doctrine of executive privilege.

“Presidents are not kings, and plaintiff is not president,” Chutkan wrote in her ruling, which was later upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

OVERSAW JAN. 6 CASES

Chutkan has overseen several cases involving people accused of participating in the attack on the U.S. Capitol. She is among judges in D.C. federal court who have spurned some recommendations from prosecutors for lesser punishments.

“There have to be consequences for participating in an attempted violent overthrow of the government, beyond sitting at home,” Chutkan told one defendant in 2021, rejecting the government’s recommendation of home detention.

JAMAICA BORN

Chutkan was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1962. She was the third Black woman to serve as a federal judge in the Washington, D.C. federal trial court when she was confirmed.

Chutkan graduated from George Washington University and later the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; Editing by David Bario and Michael Perry)

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By Jacqueline Thomsen, Sarah N. Lynch and Andrew Goudsward

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Donald Trump allegedly conspired with six other allies in his failed bid to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, according to an indictment of the former president made public on Tuesday.

The six alleged co-conspirators are not named in the indictment and have not been charged by U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has been investigating Trump for his efforts to undo his 2020 election loss.

But the detailed descriptions of the actions of the six people closely track with publicly available knowledge of some Trump associates, who have all previously denied wrongdoing. Several media reports have identified co-conspirators based on the descriptions in the indictment.

POSSIBLE CO-CONSPIRATOR NO. 1: RUDY GIULIANI

The former New York City mayor and Trump’s former personal attorney has faced legal issues since working on Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Giuliani argued in federal court for Trump in an unsuccessful legal challenge to Pennsylvania ballots. He also played a prominent public role in pushing theories of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

He spoke at an event outside the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, alleging widespread election fraud ahead of the siege on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.

The indictment describes someone with similar characteristics: “An attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies that the defendant’s 2020 re-election campaign attorneys would not.”

Giuliani’s law license has been suspended in New York and a Washington, D.C., attorney ethics committee last month recommended he be disbarred there.

Giuliani recently met voluntarily with prosecutors in Smith’s office to answer their questions.

“Any allegations that Mayor Giuliani knowingly uttered false statements is emphatically denied,” his attorney Robert Costello told Reuters.

“Every statement that Mayor Giuliani made was truthful and expressing his beliefs. He believed there was proof of election fraud, and I have seen the affidavits that back that up.”

POSSIBLE CO-CONSPIRATOR NO. 2: JOHN EASTMAN

John Eastman represented Trump in a long-shot lawsuit to overturn voting results in four states. The former Chapman University law professor has been under scrutiny by both Smith’s office and Georgia prosecutors for penning a series of legal memos which claimed that former Vice President Mike Pence could reject electors from certain states to deny Democrat Joe Biden a majority of Electoral College vote.

His phone was seized by federal agents investigating his conduct in 2022.

The indictment describes someone with similar characteristics: An “attorney who devised and attempted to implement a strategy to leverage the Vice President’s ceremonial role overseeing the certification proceeding to obstruct the certification of the presidential election.”

An attorney for Eastman recently told NBC News his legal team was sending a letter to federal and state prosecutors in a bid to convince them not to bring charges against their client.

Eastman is separately facing possible disbarment in California, after the state bar accused him of misleading courts and making false public statements about voter fraud. He has denied any misconduct.

John Eastman’s attorney Charles Burnham said that the indictment “relies on a misleading presentation of the record to contrive criminal charges against presidential candidate Trump and to cast ominous aspersions on his close advisors.”

POSSIBLE CO-CONSPIRATOR NO. 3: SIDNEY POWELL

Sidney Powell played a leading role in promoting Trump’s false fraud claims. She was part of a legal team that filed unsuccessful lawsuits seeking to overturn election results, and was sanctioned by a Michigan judge in one of those cases.

Powell has since been sued for defamation by the voting companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic over false claims she made about them rigging the 2020 election against Trump. She has denied that her statements were defamatory.

Texas bar officials also brought ethics charges against Powell in 2021. A state judge dismissed the case in March, saying there were “numerous defects” in the evidence. The state bar is appealing that ruling.

Tuesday’s indictment describes someone with similar characteristics, noting that Trump privately told others that baseless election fraud claims by this co-conspirator “sounded crazy,” but that he still “embraced and publicly amplified” the allegations.

Powell could not be immediately reached for comment.

POSSIBLE CO-CONSPIRATOR NO. 4: JEFFREY BOSSERT CLARK

Jeffrey Clark is a former high-ranking Justice Department official who has been under investigation by federal prosecutors for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

In the waning days of the Trump administration, Clark tried to convince Trump to oust Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen so that he could take over the department and help pursue Trump’s baseless claims by opening an investigation into voter fraud in Georgia and other swing states.

Trump ultimately declined to fire Rosen and appoint Clark, after other top Justice Department officials threatened to resign in protest.

Federal agents investigating Clark’s conduct seized his phone and searched his home in June of 2022. The D.C. Bar’s disciplinary arm has since filed ethics charges against Clark for trying to pressure Justice Department officials to send a letter to lawmakers in Georgia echoing Trump’s bogus claims of voting fraud.

The indictment describes someone with similar characteristics, who “attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election fraud investigations.”

The indictment also directly cites handwritten notes that former acting Deputy Attorney General Rich Donoghue kept to document both Clark’s conduct and conversations with Trump.

Neither Clark nor his attorney responded to a request for comment. Clark has fought the ethics charges against him.

POSSIBLE CO-CONSPIRATOR NO. 5: KENNETH CHESEBRO

Kenneth Chesebro is an attorney who allegedly helped devise a plan to submit fake slates of electors for Trump to obstruct Congress’s certification of the election results.

Prosecutors describe someone who acted similarly, who helped the Trump campaign with a recount in Wisconsin and drafted a legal memo that “evolved over time from a legal strategy to preserve the Defendant’s rights to a corrupt plan to subvert the federal government function by stopping Biden electors votes from being counted and certified.”

Under that theory, Pence would be able to appoint alternate slates of electors to help Trump win the election, overturning Biden’s victory.

Cheseboro could not be immediately reached for comment. He has previously defended his work with the Trump campaign.

CO-CONSPIRATOR NO. 6

A sixth unnamed co-conspirator is described in the indictment as being “a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.”

That description did not clearly line up with Trump’s highest-profile supporters.

According to Tuesday’s indictment, the political consultant identified attorneys who could help carry out a scheme to present fake electors to Congress as lawmakers certified the election results.

(Reporting by Jacqueline Thomsen and Sarah N. Lynch in Washington and Andrew Goudsward Middletown, N.J. Additional reporting by Mike Scarcella in Silver Spring, M.D.; Editing by Michael Perry)

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By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Here are five takeaways from Tuesday’s indictment accusing former U.S. President Donald Trump with conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

TRUMP DIRECTED THE PLAN TO SUBMIT FAKE ELECTORS

The indictment accused Trump of organizing a push to get fraudulent slates of electors in seven states, all of which he lost, to submit their votes to be counted and certified as official by Congress on Jan. 6.

“The Defendant pushed officials in certain states to ignore the popular vote; disenfranchise millions of voters; dismiss legitimate electors,” prosecutors wrote.

TRUMP WAS AWARE CLAIMS OF VOTING FRAUD WERE FALSE

According to prosecutors, Trump was advised by several senior officials and advisors – including then Vice President Mike Pence, White House lawyers, and the Director of National Intelligence – that claims he had made about electoral irregularities were false.

TRUMP REPEATEDLY PRESSURED PENCE TO SUPPORT THE PLAN

In the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 vote, Trump falsely told Pence at least three times he had the authority to reject the electoral results, even though Pence pushed back every time. One of the conversations took place after Pence called Trump on Dec. 25 to wish him a merry Christmas, prosecutors said.

After Pence pushed back on the plan in a call a week later, Trump told him, “You’re too honest,” prosecutors said.

TRUMP TOOK ADVANTAGE OF JAN. 6 CHAOS TO PUSH PLAN

Prosecutors said Trump “exploited” his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, where lawmakers were meeting to certify the election results, refusing his advisors’ suggestion to send a message directing rioters to leave the Capitol.

PROSECUTORS HAVE CAMPAIGN STAFFERS’ TEXT MESSAGES

The indictment cites text messages Trump’s staffers sent each other describing his push to certify fake slates of electors as “crazy” and “illegal.” The messages could serve as powerful evidence of Trump’s directions to his staff at the time.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Daniel Wallis)

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By Jack Queen and Sarah N. Lynch

(Reuters) – The charges brought against former President Donald Trump on Tuesday in the federal election interference case are based in part on a law enacted in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War to protect the rights of Black people.

Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination, was charged with conspiring to deprive voters of their right to a fair election and defraud the U.S. by blocking Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s victory. He has denied wrongdoing and said the case is part of a broader, politically motivated “witch hunt.”

Federal prosecutors base one charge, conspiring to deprive citizens of constitutional or legal rights, on a law enacted during post-Civil War Reconstruction in 1870, when federal lawmakers sought to integrate into society enslaved people who had been freed.

Kristy Parker, a former federal prosecutor, said many efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the election targeted urban areas with large populations of Black voters who voted for Democrat Joe Biden.

Those included Atlanta, Detroit and Philadelphia.

“It’s pretty telling that those Reconstruction-era laws would apply to this case, and it suggests that we are fighting a lot of the same battles that we were fighting in the Civil War,” said Parker, an attorney at the non-profit advocacy group Protect Democracy.

The Reconstruction era lasted until 1877 but is widely considered a failure by historians, in part because it neither prevented violence against Black people nor delivered lasting racial integration in politics and civil society.

But battling violence against Black people was a central goal of the deprivation of rights statute, and it has long been used to prosecute hate crimes.

It was central to the 1967 trial of more than a dozen Ku Klux Klan members who conspired to murder three civil rights workers, a case immortalized in the 1988 film “Mississippi Burning.”

Prosecutors have long used the deprivation of rights statute, known as Section 241, to fight disenfranchisement of Black voters, and a string of landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases have affirmed the law’s use for that purpose.

The law also covers less overt schemes to disenfranchise voters. In March, a Brooklyn federal jury convicted a social media influencer of deprivation of rights for targeting supporters of Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump’s rival in the 2016 election, with false information about how to vote. The scheme explicitly targeted Black voters.

Trump is accused of using false claims of voter fraud to pressure election officials to subvert the election and conspiring with others to put forth a slate of sham electors who would falsely deem him the winner.

Legal experts said Trump’s alleged conduct clearly falls within Section 241, which is broadly written.

“From a prosecution standpoint, I think the charge is a solid one that is well-grounded in what Congress envisioned when they passed this statute,” said Eric Gibson, a former federal prosecutor who successfully prosecuted a former Pennsylvania election judge and a former U.S. Congressman for trading bribes for fraudulent votes.

To prevail against Trump, prosecutors must prove he conspired with at least one other person to deprive voters of their right to a fair election, regardless of whether he was successful.

The indictment accused Trump and co-conspirators of organizing fraudulent slates of electors in seven states, all of which he lost, to submit their votes to be counted and certified as official by Congress on Jan. 6.

Trump could argue that he is innocent because he did not intend to break the law. He has claimed without evidence that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud and said his actions were aimed at safeguarding the vote.

The issue will likely be subject to intense pretrial litigation and legal wrangling if the case goes to trial.

But even if prosecutors have a strong legal case, Trump would need just one holdout juror to trigger a mistrial. Given the politically fraught nature of the case, that would likely be prosecutors’ biggest concern ahead of a trial – and make the jury selection process critical to the outcome.

“The danger here is that they get someone on the jury who is there for political reasons,” Gibson said. “Trump’s team can’t just insert people into the jury, but the reality is that almost half the country voted for him.”

(Reporting by Jack Queen in New York and Sarah N. Lynch in Washington, D.C.; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Howard Goller)

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By Andrew Goudsward

(Reuters) – Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s main fundraising group, known as a leadership PAC, on Monday reported spending more than $21 million on legal fees in the first half of 2023 amid investigations and lawsuits against Trump, his advisers and his associates.

WHAT IS A LEADERSHIP PAC?

Leadership PACs, such as Trump’s Save America committee, raise money from donors to support political campaigns in the United States.

Leadership PACs emerged in the 1970s as a way for elected officials and candidates to raise money for other political candidates, usually of the same political party, without using their own campaign funds.

Members of U.S. Congress have often used the PACs to help colleagues in closely fought elections and attract support for their own bids to secure leadership positions in Congress, according to campaign finance experts.

The committees are set up and controlled by lawmakers or other political leaders, but are not connected to the candidate’s campaign.

WHAT CAN A LEADERSHIP PAC SPEND MONEY ON?

Leadership PAC funding cannot be used to support the candidate’s campaign, although it has been used to cover administrative expenses such as travel, political consulting and polling.

Unlike super PACs, which can raise unlimited sums from companies, unions and individuals, individual donors may contribute no more than $5,000 a year to leadership PACs.

U.S. politicians have traditionally had wide latitude to spend money raised through leadership PACs. Although U.S. law prohibits candidates from using campaign money on personal expenses, the U.S. Federal Election Commission, which enforces campaign finance law, has not clarified whether the ban applies to leadership PACs.

WHAT IS THE SAVE AMERICA PAC?

Trump, who is the leading candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024, established the Save America PAC in the days after the 2020 presidential election. The committee has often solicited donations by making false claims of widespread voter fraud in the election, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

The committee made about $760,000 in donations to other Republican candidates ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, according to OpenSecrets, an organization that tracks political spending in the United States.

But the group has spent far more covering legal bills for Trump and other associates. Save America had previously reported spending more than $16 million on legal expenses through 2022.

Trump has faced two criminal indictments and a host of other investigations since leaving office. The probes have drawn in his political advisers and employees of his real estate business.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges in both cases and has accused prosecutors of political bias against him.

CAN LEADERSHIP PACS BE USED TO PAY LEGAL FEES?

The answer is tricky, according to legal experts. Generally, politicians cannot spend campaign money on legal expenses unless they are tied to a campaign, but many of the investigations involving Trump relate to his conduct as president and as a political candidate.

However, leadership PACs such as Save America also are not allowed to directly support their own candidate’s campaign. Richard Briffault, a professor at Columbia Law School and an expert on campaign finance issues who has supported Democratic candidates, said that because Trump is fighting criminal charges during a presidential campaign, it is possible that covering legal fees could be considered a benefit to his campaign.

Campaign finance experts said the question was unsettled, though Trump’s team would most likely argue his criminal defense is separate from his campaign.

A Trump spokesman said the legal payments were made in “accordance with the law and upon the advice of counsel.”

(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward in Washington. Additional reporting by Jason Lange.; Editing by David Bario, Matthew Lewis and Gerry Doyle)

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