WASHINGTON — The criminal indictment of former President Donald Trump mentions six unindicted co-conspirators that prosecutors believe worked with the former president in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
According to LSD Law, the definition of an unindicted co-conspirator is a person who is believed to have been involved in a crime with others but has not been officially charged with a crime.
Statements made by the unindicted co-conspirator can be used as evidence against others who have been charged with a crime, the website noted.
In the Trump indictment, six other individuals are basically put forward as unindicted co-conspirators. pic.twitter.com/RkVwYZwtbj
— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) August 1, 2023
Tuesday’s indictment that named Trump does not identify the co-conspirators by name, but it does describe the individuals in detail, The New York Times and The Washington Post reported.
Four of the six unindicted co-conspirators are attorneys.
According to the Times, people central to the investigation include attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani; John Eastman, a law professor; Sidney Powell, an attorney; Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official at the time; attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and James Troupis; and Michael Roman, a political aide who was Trump’s director of Election Day operations.
According to the indictment, co-conspirator 1 is described as an “attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies that the defendant’s 2020 re-election campaign would not.” According to the Post, comments and descriptions of the person match up to Giuliani.
Robert Costello, an attorney for Giuliani, confirmed to the Times that “it appears that Mayor Giuliani is alleged to be co-conspirator No. 1.”
Costello added that the indictment was nothing more than “election interference” and “eviscerates the First Amendment,” according to the newspaper.
“Every fact that Mayor Giuliani possesses about this case establishes the good-faith basis President Donald Trump had for the action that he took during the two-month period charged in the indictment,” Costello told the Times.
Co-conspirator 2 is described as “an attorney who devised and attempted to implement a strategy to leverage the Vice President’s ceremonial role overseeing the certification proceeding to obstruct the certification of the presidential election.” According to the Post and the Times, that description fits Eastman.
Co-conspirator 3 is described in the indictment as “an attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud the defendant privately acknowledged to others sounded ‘crazy.’ Nonetheless, the defendant embraced and publicly amplified co-conspirator 3′s disinformation.” According to the two newspapers, the description matches the activities of Powell.
Co-conspirator 4 is noted as “a Justice Department official who worked on civil matters and who, with the defendant, attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.” That refers to Clark, according to the Post and the Times.
Co-conspirator 5 is described as “an attorney who assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.” According to the two newspapers, that description refers to Chesebro, a Trump attorney who worked on the scheme to enact false presidential electors.
Co-conspirator 6 is described as a “political consultant” who helped devise and implement the fake elector scheme, the Times reported. A December 2020 email indicated that the consultant was likely Boris Epshteyn, a strategic adviser to the Trump campaign in 2020, according to the newspaper.
