Trump indicted on four counts in 2020 election interference probe – live updates

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.

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.

A crime of conspiracy against rights invokes Section 241 of Title 18 of US Code, among criminal codes that came from the Enforcement Acts, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Acts. Those laws were designed to protect Americans’ newly enshrined rights under the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments – allowing the federal government to protect the rights of newly enfranchised Black people to vote, hold office, serve on juries and receive equal protection under the law against white supremacist terror.

Robert F Kennedy Jr is facing mockery and criticism after it has been revealed that more than half of his Super PAC funding came from a single Republican mega-donor.

The son of the assassinated Attorney General and New York Senator Robert F Kennedy is running against President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination, with observers giving him little chance of giving the incumbent a real challenge.

Rudy Giuliani is believed to be one of the unnamed co-conspirators in Tuesday’s special counsel indictment against Donald Trump.

The former mayor of New York served as a key legal adviser to the former president throughout the contentious 2020 presidential campaign.

On Tuesday, Mr Giuliani weighed in on the charges in a lengthy statement from a spokesperson to The Independent.

“Every fact Mayor Rudy Giuliani possesses about this case establishes the good faith basis President Donald Trump had for the actions he took during the two-month period charged in the indictment.This indictment eviscerates the First Amendment and criminalizes the ruling regime’s number one political opponent for daring to ask questions about the 2020 election results.This indictment underscores the tragic reality of our two-tiered justice system—one for the regime in power and the other for anyone who dares to oppose the ruling regime.The news today is particularly egregious in light of the growing evidence proving that Joe Biden and his family made millions of dollars in bribes from America’s most intransigent adversaries.” – Ted Goodman, Political Advisor to Mayor Rudy Giuliani

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries released the following statement after Donald Trump was indicted in connection to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election:

The insurrection on January 6, 2021 was one of the saddest and most infamous days in American history, personally orchestrated by Donald Trump and fueled by his insidious Big Lie in an attempt to undermine the 2020 election. In a deadly effort to overturn the will of the American people and block the peaceful transition of power, our nation’s Capitol—the very symbol and home of American patriotism and democracy—fell under attack to thousands of vicious and violent rioters.

The third indictment of Mr Trump illustrates in shocking detail that the violence of that day was the culmination of a months-long criminal plot led by the former president to defy democracy and overturn the will of the American people. This indictment is the most serious and most consequential thus far and will stand as a stark reminder to generations of Americans that no one, including a president of the United States, is above the law. The legal process must continue to move forward without any outside interference.