Good morning, I'm Dana Taylor, and this is five things you need to know for Wednesday, August 2nd, 2023.

A federal grand jury indicted former president Donald Trump for conspiring to steal the 2020 election.

Trump allies were charged in connection with conspiracy to breach voting machines in Michigan, and Fitch downgrades the U.S. credit rating.

A federal grand jury indicted former president Donald Trump for a third time Tuesday, this time accusing him of organizing a conspiracy to steal the 2020 election from president Joe Biden.

Here to help us unpack the news is national political correspondent David Jackson. David, thanks for hopping on the pod.

Hey, thanks for having me. So David, what's in the indictment?

It's the whole lot of details about who Donald Trump talked to and who he dealt with in his effort to basically overturn his 2020 loss to president Joe Biden.

He had associates in the White House and elsewhere trying to get different states to basically invalidate Biden's win in those states and the electoral votes that accompanied them.

So this is former president Trump's third indictment. How serious is this one?

Probably the most serious because it actually deals with something that he did while he was president.

You know, his first indictment was in connection with a payment of hush money, and that happened back in 2016.

The second indictment deals with things he did after his White House years in terms of keeping classified documents and blocking them from going to a grand jury.

This indictment deals with his actions as president and they were unprecedented actions and a bid to hold on to power even though he had lost the 2020 election.

So I would say it's the most serious indictment and the most historic one he's had yet.

And there were no co-defendants in this indictment. Why was that?

That's a good question. Some reporter yelled at it, special counsel Jack Smith during his brief news conference today and he ignored it.

We don't know why others haven't been indicted yet, but we suspect that that may happen.

The indictment does reference six co-conspirators who helped Trump in this endeavor, but they didn't identify them by name.

They just described them. There were attorneys, justice department official and a couple of campaign advisors.

We're basically guessing who these folks are. We think we know some of them are, but so far they haven't been charged criminally, but it wouldn't surprise me if that didn't happen down the line.

So what does the indictment say about Mike Pence?

It's basically very differential to Pence. It says that he was the victim of what sound is like an extortion attempt from President Trump.

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