Trump becomes a defendant and will have to appear before a judge on Thursday

“The defendant spread lies that there was fraud in the election result and that he actually won. These claims were false, and the defendant knew they were false. But the defendant repeated them at length.” The statement would fit well with a certain former Brazilian president, but they were directed at the former US president, Donald Trump, when he was found guilty this Tuesday (1st) for his attempts to remain in power after the victory of Joe Biden, among which is the invasion of the Capitol, on January 6, 2021.

The sentence above composes the piece of the prosecution and was signed by the special counsel of the Department of Justice, Jack Smith. Trump was formally charged with conspiracy to defraud the US; conspiracy against rights; conspiracy to obstruct official proceedings, and obstruction and attempted obstruction of official proceedings. The country’s legislation provides for up to five years in prison in the first two cases, and up to 20 years in the last two.

“The January 6, 2021 attack was an unprecedented attack on democracy, it was motivated by lies by the defendant because he did not want the election result counted and certified,” said prosecutor Jack Smith. That day, the official confirmation process for the winner of the election, Joe Biden, took place.

Read too: Trump promises amnesty for Capitol coup plotters if elected

As a result of yesterday’s decision, Trump – who has already been officially notified – must appear this Thursday (3) before the same judge who accepted his accusation, Moxila Upadhyaya, in Washington.

On the seriousness of the facts presented, Peter Baker, from the The New York Times, wrote: “Since the framers of the Constitution emerged from Independence Hall on that cold, clear day 236 years ago, no president has lost office and then been accused of conspiring to retain power in an elaborate scheme of lying and intimidation that would lead to violence. to the halls of the country’s Congress”.

There as here, the extreme right-wing former president has a list of processes and crimes to be investigated. In federal court, Trump is accused of having taken home confidential government documents and in New York, there is another action related to the purchase of silence by a porn actress during the 2016 elections.

The third accusation in four months, says the journalist, “finally gets to the heart of the matter, the one that will define the future of American democracy”, and completes by saying that “nothing less than the viability of the built system” is at stake. For him, “although he failed to retain power, Trump has undermined the credibility of elections in the United States by persuading three in ten Americans that the 2020 election was somehow stolen from him, although there is no evidence of this and many of his advisors and even some members of his own family do not believe this.”

Read too: Trump becomes a defendant and tries to politicize the crimes he committed with a view to 2024

Around here, Trump’s “clone”, Jair Bolsonaro, continues to be investigated for various types of crimes and deviations, among which are also attacks on electronic voting machines and the January 8 coup attempt. The former Brazilian president has already been convicted in the Electoral Court and was ineligible for eight years for abuse of power and use of the machine in his favor and for discrediting the polls in a meeting with ambassadors in August 2022.

In the US and Brazil, it is expected that attacks on democracy, perpetrated or directly stimulated by extremist former presidents, be duly investigated and punished, under the risk that the coup route ends up being legitimized to the detriment of the democratic rule of law and the popular will.