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** Trump Indicted, Again
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For the third time in four months, former President Donald Trump was indicted -- this time on four federal counts related to his attempts to remain in power after losing the 2020 presidential election.

The 45-page indictment alleges that Trump knowingly "spread lies" about election fraud and "repeated and widely disseminated them anyway to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election."

The indictment details how Trump and his co-conspirators allegedly used these false election fraud claims "to get state officials to change legitimate electoral votes" in seven states from Biden to Trump. The "criminal scheme" culminated in obstructing the counting of electoral votes at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the indictment charges.

We published these stories, so far, about the latest indictment:

"Q&A on Trump’s Jan. 6 Indictment ([link removed]) ," which explains the four federal counts against Trump and summarizes the allegations. It also unmasks five of his six unnamed co-conspirators and updates what we know about other investigations of Trump.

"Indictment Details Trump’s Attempt to Overturn Swing State Election Outcomes ([link removed]) " -- a state-by-state look at actions Trump and his co-conspirators allegedly took to get state officials to change legitimate electoral votes.

"What Trump Asked of Pence ([link removed]) ," which details Trump's repeated efforts "to pressure the Vice President to fraudulently alter the election results." As Deputy Managing Editor Rob Farley writes, then-Vice President Mike Pence kept contemporaneous notes that were cited in the indictment. Trump at one point told Pence, "You're too honest."
HOW WE KNOW
As mentioned in the item above, the Department of Justice's latest indictment of Trump mentioned six unnamed, unindicted co-conspirators. Who are they? We identified five of them by comparing details in the indictment to publicly available information, including the final report ([link removed]) issued by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. Read more ([link removed]) .
QUOTABLE
The indictment included this quote from an email sent by a "Senior Campaign Advisor" to Trump: “When our research and campaign legal team can’t back up any of the claims made by our Elite Strike Force Legal Team, you can see why we’re 0-32 on our cases. I’ll obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but it’s tough to own any of this when it’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.”
WORTHY OF NOTE
As we do with any major new developments, we have updated "Timeline of the FBI Investigation of Trump's Handling of Highly Classified Documents ([link removed]) " to include new details from the superseding indictment released last week.

The revised timeline includes information on the actions allegedly taken by former President Donald Trump and two aides, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, from June 23 through June 27, 2022, that resulted in new charges against all three.

During this time period, Trump and his two aides allegedly requested the Mar-a-Lago's director of information technology to "delete security camera footage at The Mar-a-Lago Club to prevent the footage from being provided to a federal grand jury.”

* * *

The Annenberg Public Policy Center, our parent organization at the University of Pennsylvania, released the results of a new survey this week on maternal health.

The Annenberg Science and Public Health Knowledge survey found that most were familiar with some information about staying healthy during pregnancy and having a healthy baby, but there are substantial gaps in knowledge about maternal health.

For example, only 27% of those surveyed know that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that pregnant individuals get a Tdap vaccine against whooping cough. About the same -- 26% -- know that a pregnant person who gets the flu is at higher risk of delivering the baby early.

For more, read the APPC press release ([link removed]) on the survey.
REPLY ALL

Reader: Did Biden admit in a public forum threatening to withhold economic aid to Ukraine while he was VP if they didn’t fire the prosecutor investigating Burisma?

FactCheck.org Director Eugene Kiely: We wrote about this many ([link removed]) times ([link removed]) during ([link removed]) the 2020 election. Then-President Donald Trump repeatedly alleged that Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin and close its investigation of Burisma to protect his son, Hunter, who served on the company’s board from 2014 to 2019. But the evidence to date still doesn't support such a claim.

Here's what we know happened: At a videotaped event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018, Biden publicly took credit for getting Shokin fired. The Obama administration, international financial institutions and Ukrainian reformers felt Shokin wasn't doing enough to rid the country of corruption in the wake of the Ukrainian revolution in 2014.

As we wrote ([link removed]) , during a 2015 trip to Kyiv, Vice President Biden told Ukraine’s new leadership that Shokin needed to be removed, warning that the U.S. would withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees until Shokin was replaced. (Biden did not say when he made the threat, but he addressed the Ukrainian Parliament in Kyiv on Dec. 9, 2015, and dangled the prospect of future U.S. aid if the country rid itself of the “cancer of corruption.”)

“I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,” Biden recalled in remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations event. “Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”

But, as we wrote, this was only one piece of evidence that was outweighed by all the other evidence that showed Biden was carrying out U.S. policy, and the United States was not alone in pressuring Ukraine to fire Shokin.

In February 2016, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde threatened to withhold $40 billion unless Ukraine undertook “a substantial new effort” to fight corruption after the country’s economic minister and his team resigned to protest government corruption. That same month, a “reform-minded deputy prosecutor resigned, complaining that his efforts to address government corruption had been consistently stymied by his own prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin,” according to a Jan. 3, 2017, Congressional Research Service report.

“After President Poroshenko complained that Shokin was taking too long to clean up corruption even within the [Prosecutor General’s Office] itself, he asked for Shokin’s resignation,” the CRS report said. Shokin submitted his resignation in February 2016 and was removed a month later.


** Wrapping Up
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Here's what else we've got for you this week:
* "Post Retreads False Claim About Biden’s Funding for Historically Black Colleges ([link removed]) ": The Biden administration has awarded billions in funding to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, including more than $2.7 billion provided in the American Rescue Plan. Yet a social media post revives an old, false claim that Biden revoked $250 million that then-President Donald Trump “pledged to give historical black colleges for the next 10 years.”
* "Romney Not Switching Parties, Contrary to Online Claim ([link removed]) ": Sen. Mitt Romney has sometimes been critical of fellow Republicans and veered from the party line. But an Instagram post falsely claims Romney “threatens to leave the Republican Party and Join Democrats.” A Romney spokesperson said there is “zero truth” to the claim, and the senator has filed for reelection in 2024 as a Republican.

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