Receive free Donald Trump updates
We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Donald Trump news every morning.
Donald Trump says he is the target of a criminal probe into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 US presidential election, raising the possibility he could face fresh federal charges in the coming days.
In a development he described as “horrifying”, Trump said he had received a letter from the Department of Justice informing him he was a target of an investigation into the run-up to the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
Trump said the letter from special counsel Jack Smith, who is handling the investigation, had given him “a very short four days to report to the grand jury which almost always means an arrest and indictment”. The DoJ declined to comment.
During federal grand jury investigations, prosecutors typically notify targets before they seek an indictment in order to give them a chance to testify, according to the DoJ guidelines.
Fresh criminal charges would deepen the legal risks facing Trump as he campaigns for another term as president. Last month, federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging him with 37 criminal counts relating to his handling of classified government documents. That indictment, filed days after Trump announced he had received a letter from the DoJ, was also brought by Smith.
Trump has vowed to press on with his campaign despite his mounting legal challenges.
In a lengthy post on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump described the January 6 probe as a “witch hunt” that was “all about election interference and a complete and total political weaponisation of law enforcement”.
He accused Joe Biden, US president, of unfairly targeting him because he is the president’s “number one political opponent, who is largely dominating him in the race for the presidency”.
Trump remains the undisputed frontrunner in an increasingly crowded field of Republicans vying for the party’s nomination to challenge Biden in the 2024 presidential election.
According to the FiveThirtyEight average of national polls, roughly half of Republican voters say they are supporting Trump in the primaries. Florida governor Ron DeSantis is running a distant second, with the support of just over 20 per cent of Republican voters. Other challengers, including Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence, trail in the single digits.
Several of Trump’s Republican rivals leapt to his defence on Tuesday, underscoring the former president’s grip on the party and its grassroots base. A significant share of Republican voters endorse Trump’s unfounded claims that the 2020 election was rigged.
Speaking at a campaign event in South Carolina, DeSantis said Trump “should have come out more forcefully” to stop the January 6 attack on the Capitol. But he criticised the prospective criminal charges, and accused Democrats of political interference, saying: “I think that we want to be in a situation, where, you know, you don’t have one side just constantly trying to put the other side in jail.”
Trump could face more legal woes in the coming weeks in the state of Georgia, where local prosecutors are also investigating alleged interference in the 2020 elections by the former president and others. If prosecutors there decide to bring their own indictment stemming from a separate special grand jury probe, those potential charges could be filed later this summer.
Trump in April pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a case brought by the Manhattan district attorney. He was accused of covering up “hush money” payments made to silence a porn actress ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Read the full article here
