Donald Trump faces revised 2020 election interference charges | BBC News
BBC News- 93 views
- 28 Aug 2024
US prosecutors have issued revised charges against former President Donald Trump for his alleged attempts to interfere in the ...
Donald Trump has accused the US Department of Justice of trying to resurrect a dead witch hunt after it filed revised election interference charges against him. The allegations relate to Mr. Trump's efforts to overturn his loss to Joe Biden four years ago. Government lawyers were forced to amend their case because of a landmark Supreme Court ruling that former presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution. So the new indictment has reworked the language of the accusations, and they now refer to his status as a political candidate rather than a sitting President. Well, speaking to reporters in Nashville, Mr. Trump's Republican running mate, JD Vance, hit out at the US Special Prosecutor Jack Smith.
My pushback on what they said is, look, if the President doesn't have some level of immunity in how he conducts his office in the same way that judges have to have immunity, police officers have to have immunity, there has to be some recognition that people can't be sued for doing their job. The way that I think about it is, try to make this non-partisan. Barack Obama ordered drones to strike an American citizen in Yemen. That's like the definition of murder unless you recognize the President has some immunity in conducting his official act. I just don't understand how you can even have a President of the United States if there's no immunity in how they do their job.
Jd Vance, our correspondent, Carl Nasman, has the latest from Washington.
Jack Smith is really recasting this case to try to keep its legal future alive. It's not very different. It still contains the same four criminal counts as the previous indictment related to Donald Trump's alleged efforts to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election. But it is a little bit slimmer. This has been pared down. This is actually a copyright here of the new indictment. It's 36 pages long rather than 45 in the original one. So what's missing? Well, Jack Smith and his team have taken out some allegations that related to Mr. Trump's conversations and activities with his own Justice Department. That's because those likely fall under the umbrella of what's called official acts of a president. And remember, that crucial Supreme Court case earlier this year said that Donald Trump and presidents are immune from prosecution for their official acts while in office. So the everyday activities of a President that he's meant to be doing in terms of part of his job. What this dipend now does do is change the narrative a bit. It talks about Donald Trump, candidate for President, Donald Trump, the personal citizen, rather than Donald Trump, the President.
So one example of that, it discusses within these pages, Donald Trump's tweets on his own Twitter account as a private citizen. It also talks about other ways that he acted on January sixth, really trying to take this away from his acts as a President. Well, Donald Trump has responded on his social media account. He said that this is basically trying to resurrect what he calls a dead witch hunt. Of course, he's always denied these charges, and he continues to insist, without evidence, that this is all politically motivated. Of course, we know the next presidential election coming up on November fifth, less than 70 days away, it's very unlikely that this will even begin, that this trial will start before voters go to the polls. Carl.