Good morning.
Donald Trump has been indicted for “conspiring to defraud the United States” and other alleged crimes connected to his efforts to overturn the 2020 US election result.
The news, which broke late last night UK time, marks the first time Trump has faced criminal charges over his actions after his defeat by Joe Biden, and throws the run-up to next year’s presidential election into even greater turmoil.
Trump is bidding to regain the White House in 2024; he leads in polling for the Republican presidential nomination by a substantial majority. He called the case “ridiculous”.
Our newsletter this morning rounds up the latest developments on an extraordinary story.
First, the other news headlines.
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Five big stories
UK news | The family of Captain Tom Moore have objected to an enforcement notice ordering them to pull down an unauthorised spa pool block at the home of the late charity fundraiser.
Conservatives | Jeremy Hunt oversaw the signing of a low-tax treaty with San Marino that was championed by a leading Tory donor, who with his companies has given more than £700,000 to the party and £30,000 to the chancellor. Maurizio Bragagni, a prominent businessman and diplomat for San Marino, was present in No 11 Downing Street when a “double taxation” treaty was signed in May.
AI | UK intelligence agencies are lobbying the government to weaken surveillance laws, which they argue place a “burdensome” limit on their ability to train artificial intelligence models with large amounts of personal data.
Rights | Anti-protest laws and culture wars perpetrated by the government are among the issues highlighted as “urgent and alarming” by two thinktanks that argue the threat to Britain’s democratic spaces is growing, with charities and civil society groups come under “political attack” by ministers.
Science | Adults’ penchant for the landscapes of Vincent van Gogh is mirrored in babies, researchers say. Infants and adults were shown a selection of 10 of Van Gogh’s landscapes among 40 possible images. The infants tended to gaze longer at artworks that adult participants rated higher for pleasantness. Van Gogh’s Green Corn Stalks had the highest shared preference.
In depth: ‘Defendant spread lies that he had actually won’
Former president Donald Trump has been summoned to appear in a Washington court to answer charges linked to his bid to overturn the 2020 US presidential election.
The development, announced by special counsel Jack Smith is not wholly a surprise: a congressional panel created to investigate the January 6 insurrection recommended criminal charges last December. The US Justice Department has been investigating this and further evidence since.
But that does not make this news any less astonishing. A former president, who otherwise may stand a very good chance of being re-elected, has been charged with, among other things, conspiring to defraud the country he wants to lead. It is the first time a US president has faced charges for trying to overturn an election.
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The indictment
Trump has been indicted on four charges:
* Conspiracy to defraud the United States
* Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding
* Obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding
* Conspiracy against rights
You can read the full indictment on the US courts website – but here is a flavour: “The Defendant lost the 2020 presidential election,” the 45-page document states. “Despite having lost the defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies … that he had actually won.”
It alleges that Trump repeated false claims of election fraud, despite repeated warnings from multiple people in his circle, including senior leaders in the justice department and senior attorneys who had been appointed by Trump, and the former vice-president Mike Pence, who told him “he had seen no evidence of outcome-determinative fraud”.
As our US team report today, the indictment describes a conspiracy which, at its core, involves Trump and his co-conspirators allegedly trying to dupe Pence into falsely suggesting the outcome of the 2020 election had been in doubt.
To do so, prosecutors say Trump tried to use the Justice Department to open “sham election fraud investigations” and repeatedly tried to co-opt Pence into rejecting electoral college votes for Joe Biden in a bid to stop his election win being certified.
When that failed, the indictment says, Trump tried to block the certification and exploited the January 6 Capitol attack by trying to push false claims of election fraud and to convince members of Congress to continue to delay the certification.
Six other co-conspirators are listed but not named, though the indictment says they are four attorneys, a justice department official and a political consultant.
They have been tentatively identified, however, and they are thought to include Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who was Trump’s attorney in the wake of his presidential defeat.
The six have not been charged at this time, but could be in future.
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The background, in brief
The indictment stems from Trump’s refusal, in the weeks and months after his defeat by Joe Biden in November 2020, to accept he had lost, and from the violent attempt by a group of Trump’s supporters on 6 January 2021 to disrupt the congressional certification of Biden’s victory.
That event caused the deaths of seven people, a bipartisan Senate report found, and has already resulted in more than 1,000 arrests.
Trump is also facing other serious legal charges in New York and Florida over an alleged hush-money scheme during the 2016 election and his alleged mishandling of classified documents. Separately, he was found liable in May for sexual abuse and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll – he has appealed. And he could face other charges in Georgia over alleged election code violations.
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What does Trump say?
The former president hit back on Truth Social: “Why didn’t they bring this ridiculous case 2.5 years ago? They wanted it right in the middle of my campaign, that’s why!”
The Trump campaign earlier issued a statement calling the indictments “nothing more than the latest corrupt chapter in the continued pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential election, in which President Trump is the undisputed frontrunner”.
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What do others say?
There have been a range of responses from Trump’s Republican rivals and supporters.
Pence, who is also running in 2024, said: “Today’s indictment serves as an important reminder: anyone who puts himself over the constitution should never be president of the United States.” Florida governor Ron DeSantis said he hadn’t read the indictment, but would enact reforms: “Washington DC is a ‘swamp’ and it is unfair to have to stand trial before a jury that is reflective of the swamp mentality,” he tweeted.
Others have been more vocal. Ohio congressman Jim Jordan tweeted: “When you drain The Swamp, The Swamp fights back. President Trump did nothing wrong!”
Chuck Schumer, the (Democrat) Senate majority leader, and Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, issued a joint statement saying that the violence of 6 January 2021 “was the culmination of a months-long criminal plot led by the former president to defy democracy and overturn the will of the American people”.
There was no immediate comment from President Joe Biden, who is on holiday in Delaware; he went to the cinema with his wife, Jill, to watch Oppenheimer shortly after the indictment was announced.
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What happens next?
The former president has been summoned to appear before a federal magistrate judge in Washington DC on Thursday.
Jack Smith, the special counsel, said he would seek a “speedy trial”, and stressed that the former president was entitled to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty.
Smith described the January 6 insurrection as “an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy” that was “fuelled by lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing the bedrock function of the US government admissions process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election”.
If convicted on all counts, Trump could, in theory, spend decades in prison, but federal penalties are rarely as high as the maximum possible sentence.
Trump’s latest indictments would not bar him from standing for office – and nor would a conviction. At any other time it would be inconceivable to imagine a candidate facing multiple indictments to win the Republican nomination, but Trump’s political career has never conformed to expectations.
What else we’ve been reading
I have been enjoying the second season of the Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That …, but Louis Staples in Harper’s Bazaar hits the nail on the head on what is missing from the show: its inner cynic. Self-conscious and concerned with the life of Manhattan’s elite, the show’s lack of healthy scepticism leaves it feeling a little hollow, writes Staples. Nimo
We all know the things that irritate us when we eat out – but what do chefs find most annoying about diners? Tony Naylor reports. (A tip: standing on your chair to take food pics isn’t always popular.) Esther
After running a successful experiment last year, Jo Hunter has decided to commit to taking every August off, along with the rest of her staff. She explains why her company runs on an 11-month year and how transformative it has been for their business and employees. Nimo
I loved this brief story from novelist Colin Walsh’s school days, about the moment one of his teachers broke off from the exam script to tell “a bunch of lads, all acne and adrenaline” about the unimaginable ways their awareness of life was about to expand. Esther
During the London press preview screening of Barbie, influencers and writers alike were encouraged to share their positive feelings about the film on Twitter – but embargos for full reviews remained in place for two more days. Manuela Lazić left feeling censored. She asks what the role for film criticism is when studios can rely on influencers for glowing reviews. Nimo
Sport
Football | Inspired by two goals and three assists from Lauren James, England’s Lionesses topped Group D after a sensational 6-1 victory against China in their final Women’s World Cup group game. Denmark took down Haiti 2-0 after captain Pernille Harder converted a first-half penalty to also qualify from the group, while the Netherlands thrashed Vietnam 7-0 England in the knockout stage and the USA squeezed into the next round after drawing 0-0 with Portugal.
Netball | England clinched their place in the World Cup semi-finals with a match to spare after defeating Fiji 89-28 in a late-night game in Cape Town.
Football | Chelsea have signed the midfielder Lesley Ugochukwu from Rennes for €27m (£23.2m) and are deciding whether to explore an offer to take Dusan Vlahovic from Juventus as part of a swap deal involving Romelu Lukaku. Jürgen Klopp has laughed off suggestions Liverpool are in the running to put together a loan deal for the France striker Kylian Mbappé who has rejected the chance to hold talks with the Saudi Arabian club Al-Hilal after Paris Saint-Germain accepted a world-record £259m bid and Anfield has been touted as a possible destination.
The front pages
“Asylum seeker barge may be ‘deathtrap’, firefighters warn” is on the front of the Guardian today, and there’s another story there on medical research, about which the Times says “AI can help medics spot more breast cancer cases”. “Cancer ‘holy grail’” says the Metro but it’s a different breakthrough – a pill that has the potential to kill tumours. The Daily Express has “Biggest house price fall in 14 years … but rise on way” while the i reports “Recession fears grow as interest rates set to rise until Christmas”. “We’re shaping Labour policy, boasts eco-mob” – that’s the Daily Mail, about you guessed it, Just Stop Oil. Top story in the Financial Times is “Business ‘breathes sigh of relief’ after post-Brexit goods safety mark ditched”. The Daily Telegraph tells us: “First-time criminals to avoid court”. “Anton: My dad stabbed me” reports the Daily Mirror under the strapline “Strictly judge’s agony”.
Today in Focus
Life in the UK for one of China’s most wanted
Hong Kong activist Finn Lau has vowed to continue his fight for democracy despite the Chinese bounty on his head.
Cartoon of the day | Steve Bell
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
The longlist for the Booker prize, the UK’s most prestigious literary award, has been released and, writes Ella Creamer, it features an “original and thrilling” number of diverse novelists. For the first time, novels by Irish writers comprise one-third of the list, making Ireland the country that has produced the most nominees relative to population size. The judges have also chosen smaller debuts instead of the expected major novels of the year, with seven of the titles coming from independent publishers. Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ is the fifth Nigerian author to be nominated for the Booker, for her novel A Spell of Good Things, which was described by judges as a “powerful, staggering read” in its “examination of class and desire in modern-day Nigeria”. The list has been seen as a breath of fresh air, with its focus on lesser-known writers. Esi Edugyan, the chair of the panel which read 163 books in across seven months, said the longlist is defined by “the irreverence of new voices, by the iconoclasm of established ones”, and the novels are “small revolutions, each seeking to energise and awaken the language”.
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Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
