Washington: Prosecutors on Tuesday filed a revised indictment of Donald Trump, pressing ahead on bombshell charges that he tried to overturn the 2020 US election after losing to Joe Biden.
The superseding indictment retains the same four charges against Trump as in an earlier version but takes into account a recent Supreme Court ruling that a former president has broad immunity from criminal prosecution.
The new indictment is 36 pages long, down from 45 pages, and removes material potentially affected by the presidential immunity ruling by the conservative-dominated top court.
However, it retains the same core, stating that Trump lost in 2020 but "was determined to stay in power" and attempted to subvert the results.
The Supreme Court ruled in July that an ex-president has broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts conducted while in office, but can be pursued for unofficial acts.
This threw into doubt the historic prosecution of the ex-president.
The new indictment comes three days before Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought the charges against Trump, and lawyers for the former president had been scheduled to file a schedule for pretrial proceedings.
Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, had also scheduled a status hearing in the case for September 5 and it was not immediately clear if that would go ahead now, following the filing of the superseding indictment.
Trump's lawyers have been seeking to delay a trial until after November's presidential election, in which Trump is the Republican candidate, running against Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump is accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding - the January 6, 2021 joint session of Congress that was attacked by Trump supporters.
Trump is also accused of seeking to disenfranchise American voters with his campaign of false claims that he won the 2020 election.
He was originally scheduled to go on trial on March 4, but it was put on hold while his lawyers pushed his claim of presidential immunity all the way up to the Supreme Court.
It will be up to Chutkan, an appointee of former Democratic president Barack Obama, to decide which of Trump's actions regarding the 2020 election were official acts and which were unofficial acts subject to potential prosecution.
That - along with other pre-trial issues - is expected to take months, making it unlikely the case will go to trial before the November 5 presidential election.
Other cases
Trump was convicted in New York in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Sentencing has been scheduled for September 18, but Trump's lawyers have asked for his conviction to be tossed, citing the Supreme Court immunity ruling, and sentencing to be delayed.
Trump also faces charges in Georgia related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump was also charged in Florida with mishandling top secret documents after leaving the White House.
The judge presiding over the documents case, Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed the charges on the grounds that Smith, the special counsel, was unlawfully appointed.
Smith has appealed Cannon's ruling.
