On Tuesday, Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a revised indictment against Donald Trump related to his attempts to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election. The new, narrower set of charges is intended to account for the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in July that invented the concept of legal immunity for U.S. presidents.
The biggest change to the indictment: All charges related to Trump’s attempts to bully Justice Department officials into supporting his claim that the 2020 election was stolen have been removed.
However, the majority of the original indictment remains. Trump still faces charges for other actions he took to subvert the election, including the scheme to elevate fraudulent electors willing to lie about election results in several swing states. He also faces charges connected to efforts to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence into unconstitutionally refusing to certify the election results.
In Trump v. U.S., Trump’s legal team sought to have his election interference case thrown out based on the argument that American presidents are completely immune from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. In fact, they literally argued this applies even if a president has their political opponents murdered.
On July 1, the Supreme Court’s right wing majority largely agreed with this argument, declaring in a 6-3 ruling that such immunity exists so long the criminal actions under consideration are somehow part of “official” acts. SCOTUS did not bother to define what counts as “official,” however, and the case was instead sent back down to lower courts to determine that counts.
In bleak dissent, Justice Sonya Sotomayor warned that this decision “makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.”
The federal case against Trump holds that he conspired to overturn the 2020 election, climaxing in the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, capitol attack.
