United States former President Donald Trump has been indicted for the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection in his desperate bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election. A federal grand jury in Washington indicted him Tuesday for illegally attempting to overturn his loss at the poll. 

In a brazen attempt to scuttle the final proceedings by the U.S. Congress, at least 2,000 rampaging supporters of the ex-president, egged on by Mr Trump, invaded the Capitol.

“Despite having lost, the defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won,” stated the indictment.

It added that these claims were false, and “the defendant knew that they were false” but “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.”

Mr Trump had accused the Democrats of rigging the presidential polls in favour of his then-rival Joe Biden.

Refusing to concede defeat, Mr Trump had parroted false claims of election fraud, which incited his supporters into besieging the Capitol, unleashing violence, an action that formed the basis of his indictment filed by special counsel Jack Smith.

Mr Smith, in a Federal District Court in Washington, charged the ex-president with four counts of felony, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruct an official proceeding.

“Each of these conspiracies — which built on the widespread mistrust the defendant was creating through pervasive and destabilising lies about election fraud — targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election,” the 45-page indictment stated.

The indictment said Mr Trump conspired with six other unnamed individuals. But there are strong indications at least three of the six co-conspirators were on Mr Trump’s legal team based on their descriptions in the documents.

But Mr Trump dismissed the allegations and criticised its timing, claiming it is an attempt to derail his campaign to unseat Mr Biden as president in 2024.

“Why did they wait two and a half years to bring these fake charges, right in the middle of President Trump’s winning campaign for 2024?” claiming the indictment was “election interference.”