Donald Trump expected in court over attempt to overturn 2020 US election

In his response to the indictment on Tuesday, Donald Trump’s statement described it as a “pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election”.

“Biden Crime Family” has become the latest epithet that Donald Trump drops into his statements in the hope that it will be picked up and amplified by his followers.

The former president has a knack for pithy phrases and nicknames which become shortcuts and memes for his fans – think rallies chanting “Lock her up” about opponent “Crooked Hillary” Clinton in the 2016 election or Trump dubbing his opponent “sleepy Joe” in 2020.

It isn’t just those in the Democratic party who have been on the receiving end. He has labelled his Florida governor opponent for the 2024 nomination “Ron DeSanctimonious” and Ted Cruz earned the Trump name “Lyin’ Ted”.

“Biden Crime Family” isn’t an original Trump phrase though, but one that has been floating around Republican circles for some time. In fact only a week ago Jill Biden’s first husband was using the phrase in a New York Post interview about his experience of dealing with the president and his wife after the split.

The “crime family” name derives from a continued Republican fascination with the legal worries of Biden’s son Hunter, who has pleaded not guilty to tax and gun charges. Overseas dealings involving the Biden family have been subject to a House Oversight Committee investigation, which is yet to report any wrongdoing.

In the minutes after the Trump indictment was filed in federal district court in Washington, conservative commentators rapidly scrambled to his defense. Rightwing pundits lined up to compare the charges to “criminalizing thoughts” and the dropping of “fifteen dozen” atomic bombs – and that was just on Fox News.

Rightwing TV channel Newsmax, which has drained some of Fox News’s audience in recent months, brought on Rudy Giuliani, an unnamed co-conspirator in Tuesday’s indictment, who railed for seven minutes about Hillary Clinton’s emails and Biden being a “crooked president”.

In America’s rightwing media ecosystem it was a largely united front. News outlets repeatedly pressed the idea that Trump’s free speech was being criminalized: that the former president had done nothing more than talk about the election being stolen.

The effort, perhaps deliberately, ignored prosecutors’ allegations that Trump had convened false slates of electors and attempted to block the certification of the election on 6 January.

One America News Network pivoted to Hunter Biden – always a source of interest among right-wing news – with an OANN correspondent pushing an emerging conspiracy theory that the Trump indictment was timed to coincide with Biden Jr’s tax charges trial.

Elsewhere, a senior editor of the Blaze website suggested that the Republican-led House should force a government shutdown – which could see about 800,000 federal employees furloughed or forced to work without pay – in the hope that the case against Trump would collapse.

Perhaps the most berserk take, however, was the one pushed by Trump’s own campaign.

“The lawlessness of these persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union, and other authoritarian, dictatorial regimes,” the campaign posted to Truth Social.

On a day when the rightwing media seemed willing to do and say anything to defend their man, none of them was willing to go as far as that.

Maya Yang has written this profile of Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting Donald Trump:

Smith, a 54-year-old veteran prosecutor appointed as special counsel by the attorney general, Merrick Garland, in November 2022, has now brought two indictments against Trump, the first one surrounding Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents that were discovered at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Before his appointment as special counsel in the Trump investigations, Smith was the specialist prosecutor at The Hague’s Kosovo specialist chambers where he investigated war crimes from 1998 to 2000 during Kosovo’s war for independence from Serbia.

Smith, a registered independent and graduate of Harvard law school, began his three-decade career as a prosecutor in 1994 at the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Five years later, Smith began working as an assistant attorney at the US attorney’s office for the eastern district of New York. Up until 2008, Smith supervised approximately 100 criminal prosecutors who handled cases involving terrorism, civil rights violations and financial fraud.

From 2010 to 2015, Smith headed the justice department’s public integrity section which was established following the Watergate scandal and oversees the investigation and prosecution of federal crimes affecting government integrity such as bribery of public officials and election crimes.

In 2015, Smith went on to serve as the first assistant US attorney for the middle district of Tennessee before taking over as acting US attorney two years later in 2017. In 2018, Smith was appointed specialist prosecutor at the Kosovo specialist chambers.

The Hill this morning has a quote from a Republican strategist who suggest that today’s court appearance could be more significant for Donald Trump’s election chances than the others, because the public are more aware of what took pace on 6 January 2021.

It quotes Vin Weber, a Republican strategist and former member of the House Republican leadership, saying “It’s politically more salient because of 6 January. The whole country knows what happens on 6 January. Most of the country watched it unfold on television. Whereas the Mar-a-Lago [documents case], while it may be very serious, it’s not something the average person pays a lot of attention to.”

Politicial observers are not just watching the criminal proceedings against former president Donald Trump, but also the reaction of the Republican party to them.

This morning AP congressional correspondent Lisa Mascaro has looked at the contrast between Mitch McConnell’s words at the time of the 6 January uprising and subsequent impeachment, and what he is – or rather isn’t – saying now.

At a rally last weekend, Trump argued he was exercising his right to free speech as he challenged the 2020 election results. In the indictment, the prosecution acknowledges Trump had a right to challenge the results. But, crucially, it said Trump repeated his knowingly false claims to give them legitimacy and “create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.”

At the time, Mascaro notes, McConnell put it similarly.

“The issue is not only the President’s intemperate language on 6 January” McConnell said ahead of the Senate vote to acquit Trump of the impeachment charge of insurrection.

“It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe; the increasingly wild myths – myths – about a reverse landslide election that was somehow being stolen in some secret coup.”

McConnell said, “The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things.”

And when Senate leader McConnell rose to announce his vote to acquit Donald Trump of impeachment charges, the Republican assured the public the former president would have his day in court.

“He didn’t get away with anything yet – yet,” McConnell vowed. “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being accountable by either one.”

This week, as Trump prepares to face potential consequences from the criminal justice system, McConnell has remained silent.

Our First Thing newsletter has just been published, and here is how my colleague Nicola Slawson teed up the day, writing:

Trump is expected to make his first appearance in the case in person, according to people briefed on the matter, and to travel for the arraignment from his Bedminster club in New Jersey to Washington with his lawyers and several top campaign staffers.

The initial appearance from Trump to enter a plea formally starts the months-long pretrial process that will run into the timetable for his other criminal trials next year and the 2024 presidential race, where Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.

The US constitution does not bar those convicted of a crime from running for president. There could be a pathway to blocking him, however, through the constitution’s 14th amendment. That provision says someone cannot hold office if they have taken an oath to the US, as Trump did when he was inaugurated, and engage in “insurrection or rebellion” against the country.

If Trump takes office while the charges are still pending against him, he’s likely to move to quickly get rid of the charges. He would almost certainly appoint an attorney general who would fire the special counsel Jack Smith. If he has already been convicted, Trump could theoretically pardon himself, an untested legal idea.

You can sign up to First Thing: the Guardian’s US morning briefing here.

We are a good few hours away yet from Trump’s court appearance, but preparations are well under way, with security barriers being put out in

Authorities are expecting both Trump supporters and anti-Trump demonstrators to appear outside the E Barrett Prettyman US Courthouse today.

This is a handy little timeline too of how the charges and court appearances for Donald Trump are unfolding ahead of next year’s election.

Twice impeached, twice arrested and now indicted three times. Donald Trump faces serious charges in New York and Florida over a hush-money scheme during the 2016 election and his alleged mishandling of classified documents, as well as today’s court appearance over his attempt to cling to power after losing the 2020 election.

As Trump prepares for those cases to go to trial, the former president is simultaneously reeling from a verdict that found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation toward writer E Jean Carroll. And more criminal charges could be on the way for Trump in Georgia.

My colleagues Joan E Greve and Andrew Witherspoon have produced this guide to all of Trump’s legal woes.

Here is a reminder of the charges Donald Trump is facing today. He has been indicted on four charges:

• Conspiracy to defraud the US

• Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding

• Obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding

• Conspiracy against rights

You can read the full indictment here. It opens:

Despite having lost, the defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on 3 November, 2020, the Defendent spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the defendant knew that they were false.

Good morning. It is around 6am in Washington DC, where today we expect to see the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump, in court.

The former president is accused of conspiring to defraud the United States government, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiring against rights, and obstruction and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding. Here is what we know and what we are expecting:

• Trump’s third appearance in a courtroom as a criminal defendant is expected at 4pm Eastern time (9pm BST).

• Prosecutors in Washington will outline the four conspiracy and obstruction counts and a judge will set bail conditions.

• The magistrate judge, Moxila Upadhyaya, will set a schedule for pre-trial motions and discovery.

• Both sides are likely later to file motions seeking to shape what evidence and legal arguments will be permitted at trial, which could be many months away.

• In a possible preview of Trump’s defence, his lawyer John Lauro called the indictment “an attack on free speech and political advocacy”, implying Trump’s lies about election fraud were protected under the constitutional right to freedom of expression.

This is Martin Belam in London. I’ll be covering the build-up to Donald Trump’s court appearance for the next couple of hours before handing over to my colleagues in the US. You can reach me at martin.belam@theguardian.com.