The Justice Department announced its second federal indictment of former president Donald J. Trump on Aug. 1, 2023. The charges are groundbreaking and not just because a former president is facing multiple criminal charges.
It’s because these are the first federal charges alleging a former president effectively attempted a particular kind of coup, called an auto-coup, in which he attempted to keep himself in power by illegal means.
The indictment lists four felony charges. All of them rely on the same facts and boil down to the same set of five allegations, many of which have been previously reported.
