Trump pleads not guilty to charges over election defeat

WASHINGTON: Former US president Donald Tru­mp on Thursday pleaded not guilty in federal court to four criminal counts charging him with plotting to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss.

Trump appeared in a Washington courtroom to face charges that he led a conspiracy built on lies to overturn the 2020 presidential election, culminating in an attack on the seat of American democracy.

Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, walked into the court of Moxila Upadhyaya just before 2000GMT for his arraignment.

Wearing a blue suit and a red tie, Trump briefly picked up the papers in front of him, shuffled them and put them back down.

The courthouse is about one kilometer from the US Capitol, the building Trump supporters stormed on Jan 6, 2021, in a failed bid to stop Congress from certifying his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

In a 45-page indictment on Tuesday, Special Coun­sel Jack Smith accused Trump and his allies of promoting false claims the election was rigged, pressuring state and federal officials to alter the results and assembling fake slates of electors to try to wrest electoral votes from Biden.

Smith was sitting in the front row of the courtroom as the arraignment began.

Trump faces four counts, including conspiracy to defraud the US, to deprive citizens of their right to have their votes counted and to obstruct an official proceeding. The most serious charge carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.

In a series of posts on his social media site, Trump framed the indictment as a contrivance to derail his campaign, while his campaign issued a statement comparing the Biden administration to “fascist regimes”.

The indictment is the third in four months for Trump. He has pleaded not guilty to federal charges that he retained classified documents after leaving office and New York state charges that he falsified documents in connection with hush money payments to a porn star.