Trump strikes defiant tone after Jan. 6 indictment

Donald Trump was defiant on Wednesday in his response to new federal charges accusing him of trying to overturn the 2020 election.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, the former US president called the indictment "unprecedented."

He said it "has awoken the world to the corruption, scandal & failure that has taken place in the United States for the past three years" and vowed to make America "greater than ever before."

Trump was expected to appear, in person, in a Washington federal court on Thursday for his arraignment.

He faces four criminal charges, conspiracy to defraud the United States, two counts for conspiring to obstruct and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

Trump denies all wrongdoing

In interviews on several news outlets, John Lauro, Trump's criminal defense attorney, said the indictment was an attack on free speech.

He described it as a campaign by President Joe Biden derailing his political rival's campaign.

"It's the first time that a sitting president is attacking a political opponent on First Amendment grounds and basically making it criminal to state your position and to engage in political activity," Lauro told the TODAY Show program on American network station NBC.

Multiple people charged with taking part in the Capitol riot have tried to shift at least part of the blame onto Trump, who delivered an incendiary speech to supporters shortly before the attack.

"What the president saw in the 2020 election was all these irregularities going on ... He had every right to comment on that and act politically," Lauro said.

The latest charges represent the third indictment for Trump in four months. He has previously been charged in New York over alleged hush-money payments to an adult film star and in Florida over his handling of classified documents.

Trump has denied all the charges.

But the four-count indictment over efforts to undo his loss to Democrat Joe Biden might be the most serious.

It accuses Trump of an assault on the "bedrock function" of democracy. "The attack on our nation's Capitol on January 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy," Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith said.

"It was fueled by lies, lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the US government: the nation's process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election," he added.

Judge has a history with Trump

The judge assigned to oversee the federal case, Tanya Chutkan, has a history of ruling against January 6 defendants.

She has given prison terms to 38 people convicted of crimes related to the Capitol riot, ranging from 10 days to over five years.

But the judge appointed by President Barack Obama also has a history with Trump.

She ruled against the former president in November 2021, rejecting his attempts to block the House select committee investigating January 6 from accessing more than 700 pages of records from his White House.

She wrote that Trump could not claim his privilege "exists in perpetuity."

In a memorable line from her ruling, Chutkan wrote, "Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President."

However, Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya will manage Trump's initial appearance on Thursday.

Reaction to Trump's indictment

Biden, who is seeking reelection next year, has declined to comment on the indictment against the man who opinion polls and bookmakers currently predict to be his most likely Republican contender for the presidency in 2024.

"We would refer you to the Justice Department, which conducts its criminal investigations independently,"  Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson, said.

The primary challenger to Trump's bid to become the Republican presidential nominee, Ron DeSantis, vowed to "end the weaponization of the federal government," suggesting that the Biden administration was using the charges to target a political enemy.

Other prominent Republicans, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, spoke up in defense of Trump.

"Everyone in America could see what was going to come next: DOJ's attempt to distract from the news and attack the frontrunner for the

Republican nomination, President Trump," McCarthy wrote on Twitter, now called X.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffrie,s however, called the attack on the Capitol "one of the saddest and most infamous days in American history, personally orchestrated by Donald Trump and fueled by his insidious Big Lie."

Schumer and Jeffries were using the term "Big Lie" to denote Trump questioning his defeat to Biden in the 2020 election. 

lo/msh (AP, AFP, Reuters)