Former President Donald Trump has pleaded not guilty to four felony counts stemming from his plans to rig the 2020 presidential election.
His arrest and arraignment were placed in the same Washington, DC, courthouse with a direct view of the violence that erupted at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, and over 1,000 Trump supporters who took part in the insurgency also appeared.
The former president will be released under very strict terms, including the prohibition on communicating with anyone believed to be a witness in the case unless through a counsel.
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The next hearing in the case has been scheduled for August 28, just five days after the first Republican presidential primary debate, highlighting the extraordinary circumstances in which the front-runner for the 2024 nomination has an unparalleled federal court schedule.
Trump told reporters before boarding his plane to fly to his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club that the indictment is "a political opponent's persecution." This was never meant to happen in the United States."
Trump has characterized the ongoing special counsel inquiry and indictments as politically motivated, given that he is the Republican Party's front-runner for the presidency in 2024.
He is charged with four charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstructing an official procedure, which has already been successfully filed against rioters who breached the Capitol.
Prosecutors are relying on a Reconstruction-era civil rights legislation in another accusation against the former president, which forbids conspiracies to deprive a person of their rights - in this case, "the right to vote and have one's vote counted."
According to the special counsel's charge, Trump "was determined to remain in power" despite losing the 2020 election and, along with six unindicted co-conspirators, plotted to reverse the results on and up to January 6.
Prosecutors contend that Trump took advantage of the "chaos" and "violence" of January 6 to keep their efforts to overturn his election loss alive.
The indictment also claims that Trump and his co-conspirators successfully duped people in seven targeted states into producing and submitting certificates claiming to be legitimate voters.
