Donald Trump is entering a not guilty plea following a superseding indictment last week related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, the former president said in a court filing Tuesday.
He also waived the right to be present at his arraignment, where he will be charged with the same four counts from last year's original indictment.
"I, President Donald J. Trump ... do hereby waive my right to be present at Arraignment and I authorize my attorneys to enter a plea of not guilty on my behalf to each and every count of the superseding indictment," he said in the filing.
Special counsel Jack Smith's office said in a court filing last week that it would not oppose Trump waiving his appearance on the charges, which are the same as the ones he pleaded not guilty to last August: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.
The judge presiding over the case, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, said in an order later Tuesday that she accepted Trump's waiver and the arraignment would be held on Thursday, during a previously scheduled status conference in the case.
Smith sought the revised indictment from a new grand jury after the Supreme Court issued a ruling on presidential immunity that barred federal prosecutors from using certain “official acts” Trump took in his role as president in their case against him.
The new indictment omits evidence from the previous one that could be construed as having to do with official acts, including Trump's alleged conversations with Justice Department officials and White House advisers about his false claims of election fraud and ways to overturn the 2020 results.
Much of the superseding indictment is the same as the original, with prosecutors maintaining Trump didn’t actually believe the lies he was spreading in the wake of his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden and that he knew that they were not true.
“These claims were unsupported, objectively unreasonable, and ever-changing, and the Defendant and his co-conspirators repeated them even after they were publicly disproven,” the fresh indictment says. “These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false.”
Smith's office said in its filing last week that the revised indictment "reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions.”
Trump blasted that indictment on social media shortly after it was filed, calling it a "direct attack on democracy."
“The case has to do with ‘Conspiracy to Obstruct the 2020 Presidential Election,’ when they are the ones that did the obstructing of the Election, not me,” he wrote.
