A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
A new Justice Department indictment in the federal election interference case against former President Donald Trump.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The move comes weeks after the Supreme Court gave the former president substantial immunity from prosecution.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR justice correspondent Carrie Johnson has been following the case. Carrie, so why are we seeing a new indictment against Donald Trump?
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: The core charges in this D.C. case are the same - conspiracy to defraud the United States and to deprive millions of 2020 voters of their rights - but some key specifics are different. And that's because of the landmark Supreme Court decision last month that gave Trump and future presidents a lot of leeway to use their official powers. The special counsel, Jack Smith, said in court papers that this latest action was really an effort to respect and implement the Supreme Court holdings.
MARTÍNEZ: So you mentioned some specifics are different, so what's new in this indictment?
JOHNSON: The single biggest change is that allegations about Trump misusing the Justice Department to try to promote his bogus claims of election fraud - those are now gone, and so is the Trump official who allegedly tried to carry out those efforts inside the Justice Department. That's a lawyer named Jeffrey Clark. He had been listed as co-conspirator No. 4, but now, all the alleged co-conspirators are people who did not work in the Trump administration at the time and people who were acting in a private capacity. That's important because the ruling by the conservative Supreme Court specifically gave a president a lot of power over the Justice Department. These new charges also specify when prosecutors think Trump was acting as a candidate, as a person seeking political office, and not as the president. That, too, would be in line with how the Supreme Court ruled in the immunity case - lots of protection for the core acts of a president, but not for candidates or people seeking personal benefit.
MARTÍNEZ: Now, Trump has already pleaded not guilty to these charges, so what happens now?
JOHNSON: Normally, there's an arraignment on these kinds of new charges, but prosecutors say they are not going to demand that Trump show up in person for that. The Justice Department and Trump's legal team already had a deadline of Friday to update the trial judge in this case about how they wanted to proceed. For his part, Trump posted on social media, these charges are ridiculous, and that it's an effort to resurrect a dead witch hunt. After that Supreme Court decision last month, there's no chance that Donald Trump would have faced trial before the election. If he wins in November, he could order the DOJ to dismiss this case, but if he loses at the ballot box, all this legal wrangling could get even more intense. And some former prosecutors anticipated these new charges in interviews with me, but they told me weeks ago they thought the Justice Department might add some new defendants. That did not happen this time, but it might if the case survives into next year.
MARTÍNEZ: There's been some action in the other case that Jack Smith filed against Donald Trump, this one in Florida. What's happening with that one?
JOHNSON: Yes, Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, dismissed that entire classified documents case. She said the way the Justice Department appointed the special counsel, Jack Smith, was unconstitutional, so she threw out the whole case, the one that accused Trump of stockpiling classified documents at his Florida resort and refusing to return them to the FBI. This week, prosecutors offered new details about their appeal. They told the 11th Circuit Appeals Court Judge Cannon had gotten the law wrong again and again. They said there's a 150-year tradition of appointing special prosecutors by the Justice Department, and they said that now conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh called it a deeply rooted tradition.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR justice correspondent Carrie Johnson. Carrie, thanks for sorting this out.
JOHNSON: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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