Former President Donald Trump said that he received a letter on July 16 informing him that he is a target of the special counsel investigation of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.
Mr. Trump called the letter “HORRIFYING NEWS for our country” and framed it with the backdrop of the two other indictments he is facing amid a heated presidential reelection campaign in which he is dominating the GOP field.
Mr. Trump was charged earlier this year in connection to payments for a non-disclosure agreement in a state case in New York. He was later charged in a federal case in Miami in connection to his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House.
“THIS WITCH HUNT IS ALL ABOUT ELECTION INTERFERENCE AND A COMPLETE AND TOTAL POLITICAL WEAPONIZATION OF LAW ENFORCEMENT,” Trump wrote.
Mr. Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for a copy of the target letter. The Epoch Times has also asked Mr. Trump’s campaign to answer whether he would present himself to the grand jury as the letter reportedly ordered.
The Department of Justice has indicted hundreds of people for participating in the breach of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. In two of the most prominent cases, the government convinced juries in Washington that members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, two right-wing groups, were guilty of seditious conspiracy.
Defense attorneys maintained that their clients exercised their First Amendment rights to free speech.
The Proud Boys were convicted even though an FBI informant testified that, to his knowledge, there was no organized plan to storm the building. Instead, he said, “a herd mentality” took hold.
Mr. Smith, the special counsel, is investigating both the classified documents case and the Jan. 6 case.
Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel’s office, declined to comment.
Trump was found not guilty in a Senate impeachment trial over his remarks on and before the Jan. 6 events. The charges against him hinged largely on selective quotations from his speech in the capital that day.
A massive crowd of Trump supporters gathered in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, at the behest of Mr. Trump to protest election irregularities. By that day, nearly every legal election challenge by Mr. Trump’s team had failed in the courts. After hearing Trump speak, the attendees started making their way to the Capitol, where a joint session of Congress was in the process of certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. The ensuing breach of the Capitol briefly interrupted the Congressional session.
Democrats have framed the events of Jan. 6 as an “insurrection” and, beginning with the impeachment, have ceaselessly used the attacks to paint Republicans and Trump followers as extremists. Republicans, including Trump, immediately condemned the violence and vandalism and drew a distinction between the largely peaceful crowd of protesters and the small group which engaged in egregious lawbreaking.
At least a half-dozen Jan. 6 defendants have been convicted of seditious conspiracy. The underlying law has been on the books since the end of the Civil War and was intended for use against Southerners bent on rebelling against the federal government.
As defined, a seditious conspiracy means that at least two people worked together to “overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force” the U.S. government, oppose its authority, or prevent a law from being executed.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, a Trump ally, said he was questioned for hours by Mr. Smith’s grand jury about challenges to the outcome of the 2020 election.
Mr. DeSantis on Tuesday issued a mixed reaction in response to news of the target letter. The governor condemned the political weaponization of the prosecution while faulting Trump for not doing enough on Jan. 6 to thwart the violence.
Nikki Haley, one of Mr. Trump’s Republican challengers in the race for the White House, did not defend the former president in an appearance on Fox News.
“It’s going to keep on going,” said Ms. Haley, who served as Mr. Trump’s United Nations ambassador. “It’s just going to continue to be a further and further distraction.”
“And that’s why I’m running,” she continued. “It’s because we need a new generational leader. We can’t keep dealing with this drama.”
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a White House hopeful with less than one percent Republican support on average, used the news to mount an attack on Mr. Trump.
“I have said from the beginning that Donald Trump’s actions on January 6 should disqualify him from ever being President again,” Hutchinson said in a statement posted on Twitter.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) told reporters during a House GOP press conference on July 18 on Capitol Hill that “We have yet again another example of Joe Biden’s weaponized Department of Justice targeting his top political opponent, Donald Trump.”
