WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump said he would be criminally charged Tuesday in connection with his efforts to reverse his loss to President Joe Biden in 2020.
“I hear that Deranged Jack Smith, in order to interfere with the Presidential Election of 2024, will be putting out yet another Fake Indictment of your favorite President, me, at 5:00 P.M.,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“A Nation In Decline!” he said in a subsequent post.
The charges would mark the unprecedented third criminal indictment against the former president since he launched his latest bid for the 2024 Republican nomination. No other U.S. president, current or former, has ever faced criminal charges.
The election probe was led by special counsel Jack Smith, who also oversaw a separate investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents at his resort home Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House in 2021. Trump, in June, was charged with 37 counts related to his alleged efforts to conceal those records from the government. He received additional charges in the case last week, stemming from an alleged effort to delete surveillance footage from the Palm Beach club.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in that case, which is set to go to trial in May.
He has also pleaded not guilty in a case brought by Manhattan prosecutors who accuse him of falsifying business records as part of an effort to pay hush money to women who say they had extramarital affairs with him.
Trump faces another potential indictment in Georgia, where investigators are probing his attempts to overturn President Joe Biden‘s electoral victory in that state in 2020.
The former president has slammed the various investigations as a “witch hunt” and framed his legal woes as an effort by an out-of-control government to stifle his candidacy. His political operation has made the indictments a central feature of their fundraising pitches to prospective donors.
“They’re not after me, they’re after you,” reads a quote at the top of Trump’s campaign website. “I’m just standing in the way!”
Trump has vowed to continue campaigning even if he is convicted and sentenced. He remains the top candidate for the Republican nomination by far, with recent national polls showing him leading his nearest opponent, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, by double digits.