Donald J. Trump has been charged by a federal grand jury with leading a scheme “built on prolific lies” to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Trump faces four specific charges related to his role to steal the election won by President Biden in an effort that led to the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection. Those charges include conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstructing an official government proceeding, denying people their civil rights and an additional count of obstructing an official proceeding. The indictment also refers to six co-conspirators.

“Each of these conspiracies — which built on the widespread mistrust the defendant was creating through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud — targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election,” the New York Times quoted the indictment.

Trump and his co-conspirators engaged in a barrage of public lies to undermine the election itself and the process for Congress to certify the actual results, according to the indictment. On page after page, the indictment details what it says Trump did, but also that he was told repeatedly and emphatically that what he was saying was simply not true.

“These prolific lies about election fraud included dozens of specific claims that there had been substantial fraud in certain states, such as that large numbers of dead, non-resident, non-citizen, or otherwise ineligible voters had cast ballots, or that voting machines had changed votes for the Defendant to votes for Biden,” the indictment says. “These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false.”

Lengthy and detailed indictment

The indictment is lengthy and detailed, offering a specific timeline of the actions by Trump and his allies to publicly and privately derail the election certification. The indictment claims Trump and that team met with members of Congress and elected state officials from key states where they tried to claim the vote counts were in dispute.

“I encourage everyone to read it in full,” special counsel Jack Smith said Tuesday in a news conference announcing the charges against Trump.

The six co-conspirators are not named. The indictment, however, describes them as an attorney who spread election lies, an attorney who devised the scheme to use the vice president’s role in certifying the election as part of their conspiracy, a Justice Department official attempted to “open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.” The others include a political consultant and another attorney “whose unfounded claims of election fraud the defendant privately acknowledged to others sounded ‘crazy.'”

Smith said the investigation is continuing.

Trump attacks

Before news of the indictment was public on Tuesday, Trump denounced it and the work by the special prosecutor.

“Why didn’t they do this 2.5 years ago? Why did they wait so long?” Trump said in a posting on his Truth Social social media platform. “Because they wanted to put it right in the middle of my campaign. Prosecutorial Misconduct!”

In June, Trump was indicted by a grand jury on charges of mishandling classified documents, making him the first former president to face federal criminal charges.

Since then, Trump has continued to seek a second term as president, and leads in a campaign for the Republican nomination where his impeachments, lawsuits and possible indictments do not appear to be a drag on that effort.

Trump still faces possible charges related to moves by him and his associated to overturn election results in Georgia.