There are five things to know about the latest charges against Donald Trump

Trump and his supporters fought for the election of Jan. 6, 2021 in Fulton, Ga., and lost in 2020 by illegal access to voting machines

Thousands of Trump supporters did that. They marched from the Ellipse to the Capitol, where they fought through police lines, stormed the Capitol and sent lawmakers fleeing for safety.

And all of these investigations are happening separately from the Justice Department’s sprawling and complex investigation into the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

A prosecutor in Fulton County, Ga., is leading a separate investigation into Trump’s alleged efforts to pressure state election officials there. A federal jury found that Trump was liable for defamation and battery.

Matthew DePerno — the most recent Republican nominee for Michigan attorney general, who worked with Trump’s team to try to contest his 2020 loss in the state — was arraigned Tuesday on state charges for an alleged effort to unlawfully gain access to voting machines.

The indictment was to be used by Trump and his allies to distract from the Biden administration attempting to interfere with the 2024 election.

It works. In March, several weeks before the first indictment, Trump had just 43% of the vote in Republican polling, according to a RealClearPolitics average. After he was charged, his numbers went up to 50%.

That’s because, after two impeachments, three indictments and quite a few scandals in between, Trump has conditioned his supporters to see each allegation against him as a reason to rally around him.

They claim the charges are politically motivated. They attacked the special counsel. “They don’t always reply to allegations in a specific way.” “They don’t argue Trump never incited those followers who attacked the Capitol. They never say that Trump didn’t seek a group of fake electors.”

But as NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez pointed out in an interview with All Things Considered, the attacks from Trump and his supporters are focusing on the process — not so much the substance.

There are others, such as former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Sidney Powell, and a DOJ attorney named Jeffrey Clark, who could be of interest to investigators.

Some are attorneys who helped promote bogus election fraud claims. Co-conspirator 3 is described as an attorney who privately acknowledged that the unfounded election fraud claims were “crazy.” Another, co-conspirator 4, was a Justice Department official who worked on civil matters and “attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures.”

Trump is the only person who is charged and he is the only defendant in this latest indictment. There are a lot of clues in the court document about who else might face charges.

The former president now faces legal peril in three criminal cases — following March’s indictment on 34 counts of falsifying business records and June’s indictment on 37 counts of mishandling classified documents. Trump has pleaded not guilty in both cases.

Donald Trump remains the leading candidate in the Republican primary race despite being summoned to appear in court Thursday. If he pleads not guilty and makes his case for the White House, we could hear about his trial.

The case of John Eastman: Trump is arraigned and pleads not guilty to charges he conspired to overturn election

One of the largest investigations in the department’s history was immediately launched to find those who broke into the Capitol. So far, more than 1,100 people have been arrested in connection with the attack.

But as Congress was meeting on Capitol Hill, Trump was hosting a rally down by the White House. He repeated his claims of election fraud, and told the crowd to fight and march to Congress.

Meanwhile, Trump advisers were pursuing a fake-elector scheme, pushing Republican officials in states like Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia to put forward an alternate slate of electors even though Biden had won those states.

There is a fight being fought by Eastman to retain his law license. The State Bar of California opened a case against him in June and has argued that Eastman knowingly and willfully pushed false allegations of voter fraud during the 2020 election.

Trump, leaning on legal theories proposed by outside attorney John Eastman, wanted Pence to refuse to count certain Electoral College votes — a theory that Pence rejected as unconstitutional.

On Thursday, Trump pleaded guilty before a federal judge in Washington, DC, to a conspiracy he is accused of orchestrating.

Among the other people in the courtroom was Evan Corcoran, an attorney for Trump who wound up testifying before the grand jury investigating willful retention of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort after prosecutors successfully pierced the attorney-client privilege. Trump was charged with 40 counts in that case.

The judge said that the most important condition of release is not committing any new crimes while on release, and this could lead to him being arrested and sentenced to a longer time behind bars. She told Trump that it is a crime to “influence a juror or try to threaten or bribe a witness or retaliate against anyone” connected to the case. He said he understands.

The magistrate judge has set the first hearing for Aug. 28 at 10 a.m. ET, and at that time U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who has been assigned the case, will set a trial date.

Source: Trump is arraigned and pleads not guilty to charges he conspired to overturn election

Can Donald Trump stand up and complain about the election and the fraud he’s accused of claiming happened in a U.S. senator’s office

“This was never supposed to happen in America. This is the persecution of the person that’s leading by very substantial numbers in the Republican primary and leading Biden by a lot. If you can’t beat him, you should persecute him or prosecute him. We can’t let this happen in America,” Trump said in brief remarks at the airport before departing after the hearing.

On election night, when he claimed that the election was being stolen through fraud,Trump refused to acknowledge the results.

The Trump campaign pursued many lawsuits in states that it lost in the election. The courts did not approve of the Trump team’s election fraud claims.

Instead, he continued to push his false claims of fraud and raise money off them. The House Jan. 6 Committee states that by Jan. 6, he had raised nearly $250 million.