Special counsel Jack Smith said Tuesday that the latest federal charges against Donald Trump reflect the former president’s role in spreading “lies” about the 2020 election that led his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“The attack on our nation’s capital on January 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” Smith said in brief remarks to the press on Tuesday evening. “As described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies ― lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government: The nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.”
Smith said that the U.S. Department of Justice, which tapped him to spearhead investigations into the former president, may charge more people implicated in what he said was a scheme to deliberately interfere with the certification of the 2020 election results.
“Since the attack on our Capitol, the Department of Justice has remained committed to ensuring accountability for those criminally responsible for what happened that day,” he said. “This case is brought consistent with that commitment and our investigation of other individuals continues.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Smith’s team unsealed a federal indictment charging Trump with four felony counts related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The federal government accuses Trump of “conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding,” Smith said.
In his remarks, Smith emphasized that he is seeking a “speedy” trial,” and that Trump “must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.”
Separately, Trump is already facing dozens of federal felony charges for allegedly mishandling highly classified documents and blocking attempts by the government to recover those documents.
A local Georgia prosecutor is investigating Trump’s possible role in interfering with the state’s election results, although no charges have been filed in that probe. And the Manhattan district attorney indicted Trump in April for falsifying business records to hide a hush-money payment made to an adult film star just days before the 2016 election. Trump pleaded not guilty to those charges, and a trial is set for March.