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Special Counsel Revises Trump Election Indictment to Address Immunity Ruling

Jack Smith’s filing, in the case charging the former president with plotting to overturn the 2020 election, came in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling giving former presidents broad immunity.

Jack Smith, the special counsel, during a news conference announcing the federal indictment of former President Donald J. Trump in Washington last August.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Aug. 27, 2024Updated 7:21 p.m. ET

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday issued a pared-down version of an indictment accusing former President Donald J. Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, stripping out some charges and tweaking others to help the case survive the Supreme Court’s recent ruling granting former presidents broad immunity.

The revised indictment, issued in Federal District Court in Washington, represented an attempt by prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to preserve the bulk of their case against the former president while bringing the allegations into line with the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling that former presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for many official acts taken while in office.

It kept the basic structure of the first indictment, issued nearly 13 months ago, which accused Mr. Trump of intersecting plots to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The thrust of the changes was to remove any discussion from the indictment of any allegations that might be construed as related to Mr. Trump’s official acts as president while also contending that others acts should be interpreted as the conduct of a private candidate for office.

The tone of the new charges was apparent from the first paragraph of Mr. Smith’s filing, which described Mr. Trump as “a candidate for president of the United States in 2020.” The original indictment had referred to him as “the 45th President of the United States and a candidate for re-election in 2020.”

The new indictment came just days before Mr. Trump’s lawyers and Mr. Smith’s deputies were scheduled to provide the judge overseeing the case, Tanya S. Chutkan, with their proposals for how to assess the impact on the case of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision. The two sides are still expected to file papers to Judge Chutkan on Friday, suggesting how they would like to move forward.

The indictment was also filed in advance of the onset of the so-called 60-day rule, an unwritten internal Justice Department practice that calls for avoiding taking overt prosecutorial steps that could influence how people vote within two months of an election.

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