By Maria Ortiz
Aug 27, 2024, 5:40 PM EDT
Special prosecutor Jack Smith has re-indicted Donald Trump on four felony counts related to his attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election.
The indictment, filed Tuesday by special counsel Jack Smith, is an attempt by prosecutors to recalibrate the case against Trump in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling that found presidents enjoy broad immunity from prosecution for their official conduct.
Prosecutor Jack Smith maintains the four charges against the Republican presidential candidate in the 2024 elections, but limits some allegations about his plans for electoral subversion.
According to statements from the special prosecutor’s office cited by CNN, this new indictment, presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in the case, reflects the government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s ruling.
On July 1, the highest US court granted the now ex-president partial immunity.
By a vote of six to three, the progressive judges concluded that “a former president has the right to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his constitutional authority,” but established that “there is no immunity for unofficial acts.”
Full immunity during the Republican’s time in the White House (2017-2021) would have ended the case against him in Washington DC, but that more ambiguous ruling forced lower courts to determine more precisely which acts could be considered official and which could not.
Smith filed the new indictment in the District Court for the District of Columbia.
The original 45-page indictment has been reduced to 36, removing a number of allegations that the conservative majority in the Supreme Court said were wrongly presented.
Specifically, according to The Washington Post, these allegations are linked to Trump’s efforts to get the Justice Department to support his claim that voter fraud was committed in the 2020 election, which was won by Democrat Joe Biden.
Instead of six co-conspirators, there are now only five. According to The Washington Post, one person who sources familiar with the case had identified as Jeffrey Clark, a former agent of the Department of Justice, is no longer there.
In its July decision, the Supreme Court said Trump could not face charges related to his exchanges with Justice Department officials, saying his interactions with the department were part of his job duties.
The New York Times reported that this new accusation comes just days before both the prosecution and Trump’s lawyers were scheduled to present to the judge in charge of the case their respective proposals on how to evaluate the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision.
Trump, a candidate for re-election in the November 5 elections, called the Supreme Court’s ruling a “victory for democracy,” while President Joe Biden considered that it set a “dangerous precedent” by determining, in his opinion, that any president “can feel free to ignore the law” without facing consequences.