WASHINGTON — Donald Trump became the first former U.S. president charged with federal crimes over conduct prosecutors tied to the period after he left the White House and after the 2020 election. A Washington grand jury, acting on a case brought by special counsel Jack Smith, returned a four-count indictment in August 2023.
Prosecutors alleged a conspiracy to defraud the United States, a conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, an attempt to obstruct that proceeding, and a conspiracy against voting rights. The indictment described communications with officials, efforts to organize alternate slates of electors in some states, and pressure around Congress’s Jan. 6, 2021, count of Electoral College votes. The Justice Department said the conduct went beyond protected political speech and aimed to obstruct the constitutional process.
Trump pleaded not guilty. He said he was exercising his right to challenge results through lawsuits and political channels. His lawyers raised immunity, constitutional and procedural defenses.
Courts had already rejected most 2020 election lawsuits. Officials in both parties said they found no fraud on a scale that would have changed the outcome. The criminal case still posed new questions: how far federal criminal law reaches a former president, and which acts are official and which are not.
In July 2024 the Supreme Court held that former presidents have absolute immunity for core constitutional acts and presumptive immunity for other official acts. Smith later filed a superseding indictment that kept the main charges but dropped some allegations about pressure on the Justice Department.
After Trump won the 2024 election, Smith asked U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to dismiss the charges without prejudice, citing longstanding Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president. Chutkan granted the request in November 2024. That meant the federal election case against Trump ended while he returned to office; it could, in theory, be refiled later against a private citizen. Smith resigned and the department released a final report on the investigation.
Reactions split along familiar lines. Supporters of the prosecution said the principle was that no one is above the law. Critics said charging a former—and then incoming—president risked turning criminal law into a tool of political succession.
Separate tracks continued or collapsed around the same history. Trump issued sweeping Jan. 6 pardons and commutations after taking office. Some state cases involving allies remained in flux; Arizona’s attorney general said in 2026 she would seek a new indictment after the first case was thrown out on grand-jury defects. Trump himself was not a defendant in that Arizona indictment.
Whatever view one takes of the 2023 charges, the episode is already a landmark: a former president was indicted over the transfer of power, the Supreme Court rewrote immunity doctrine, and the federal case was then set aside because the defendant became president again. Legal scholars will argue for years over the allegations, the immunity ruling and the decision to dismiss. The certified 2020 results were not overturned. The federal criminal case against Trump for that fight is not pending while he holds office.
