Your biggest questions about the federal criminal charges against Trump in the January 6 case, answered.
Former President Donald Trump was indicted for an unprecedented third time on August 1, adding another set of serious federal charges to the mounting legal issues he faces.
Trump was indicted as part of the Department of Justice’s criminal investigation, led by special counsel Jack Smith, into the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol. The indictment marks the second time Trump has faced federal charges, and he remains the only president to have been federally indicted.
The indictment is the product of a months-long investigation in which Smith’s team questioned several high-profile members of Trump’s circle, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner and former White House communications director Hope Hicks. It follows the House January 6th committee’s investigation last year, which concluded that Trump incited the insurrection and conspired to defraud the US government, referring him and other associates to the DOJ for prosecution.
Trump seemed to know the indictment was coming. He posted August 1 on TruthSocial that Smith “will be putting out yet another Fake Indictment of your Favorite President, me,” and previously posted on the platform that he’d received what’s known as a target letter from Smith. He wrote, “They have now effectively indicted me three times,” and called the investigation a “WITCH HUNT” as well as “POLITICAL WEAPONIZATION OF LAW ENFORCEMENT” in that earlier, July 18 post.
Here’s what you need to know about what happens next.
Will Trump be arrested and go to jail?
Trump is not expected to be jailed following his arraignment, following a pattern established by his previous arraignments in New York and Miami. Trump was previously fingerprinted in those cases but was not put in handcuffs and did not have his mugshot taken. There were cameras allowed in the courtroom in New York, but not in Miami. He was also allowed to return home following both arraignments.
What does this mean for Trump’s 2024 campaign?
So far, Trump has simply brushed off his legal entanglements, and they appear to be helping him in the 2024 polls. He remains the frontrunner in the GOP primary, polling more than 30 percentage points on average ahead of Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, notes that previous indictments were easy for GOP voters to dismiss, but it’s unclear whether this latest indictment will follow that trend.
Many legal analysts have said Trump’s first indictment in New York has weak underpinnings, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had previously boasted about how many times he had sued the Trump administration during his campaign. Together, those factors left many Republicans waving away that indictment as a “partisan witch hunt.”
The second, in the case concerning Trump’s retention of classified documents after he left office, was a “blockbuster legally,” Ayres said, but given Bragg’s indictment had come before it, was easy for Republicans to brush it off yet again.
It’s difficult to know exactly what will happen now that Trump has been indicted for a third time. But if Republicans’ reaction to the House January 6 committee’s investigation is any indication, it might do little to sway the base.
“It was an article of faith among Republican voters that they weren’t going to watch the January 6 hearings. They just determined ahead of time that it was a partisan witch hunt, even though the vast majority of the witnesses were Trump employees, Trump confidants, and Trump staff members,” Ayres said.
That means that when it comes to the primary, this latest indictment seems unlikely to have a major effect on voters. However, it remains to be seen whether these indictments will cause moderates and independents to turn away from the former president.
Trump has already lost once to President Joe Biden, but in head-to-head matchups over the last month, some polls have him winning by as much as 7 percentage points, while others have him losing by as much as 6 percentage points. Much could change before November 2024, but should Trump be his party’s nominee, those numbers suggest a tight race in which losing moderates and independents in states like Georgia or Pennsylvania could be the difference between victory and defeat.
Overall, even in the best-case scenario for the former president, in which the legal issues have zero effect on his support, the cases will take away valuable time and money he could be spending on his campaign.
How are Trump’s Republican rivals reacting?
Republicans seeking the 2024 nomination have trod lightly in using the investigations against Trump to attack him as unfit for another term.
Before news of the indictment broke, DeSantis said that Trump “should have come out more forcefully” against violence on January 6, but also told CNN, “I hope he doesn’t get charged.” Vivek Ramaswamy said that he “would have made very different judgments than President Trump did” that day. Nikki Haley suggested that she’s tired of the drama and said, “We can’t be sitting there focused on lawsuits over and over again.”
All three indictments have presented a conundrum for those looking to displace Trump as the GOP frontrunner. Recognizing his continued grip on the Republican primary voters and the risk of alienating them, the candidates have largely refrained from criticizing Trump directly. But in so doing, they have also struggled to carve out distinct lanes and present a clear argument for why the party should dump Trump.
What happens next?
As with the cases against Trump in New York and Florida, the January 6 case could extend well into the 2024 campaign season — or even beyond the election.
Smith has sought a speedy trial in the classified documents case, which is currently scheduled for May 2024, and it’s possible that he will do so in the January 6 case. (Trump, on the other hand, had pushed to delay the trial in the documents case later than the 2024 election to accommodate his campaign calendar.)
Kevin O’Brien, a former federal prosecutor in New York, said it’s unclear whether the January 6 case can feasibly be decided before the 2024 election. It is much bigger in scope and therefore may take longer to resolve, but also carries significant public interest.
“The subject matter has had direct implications for our democratic process. And you can argue the voters should be exposed to that evidence and know [the jury verdict] in that case,” he said.
If Trump wins the 2024 election, then it “would be a brouhaha,” O’Brien said. Any unresolved federal charges would likely become moot under the longstanding DOJ policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted. But if he’s convicted before assuming office, that would create a constitutional question: whether he could later pardon himself.
