Special Counsel Jack Smith said in a statement that the insurrection on January 6 was an “unprecedented assault” on democracy. The prosecutor spoke following the indictment of former President Donald Trump in relation to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Mr Smith said the indictment “sets forth the crimes charged in detail. I encourage everyone to read it in full”. “The attack on our nation's capitol on January 6 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy,” he added. “As described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies. Lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the US government – the nation's process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.” “The men and women of law enforcement who defended the US Capitol on January 6 are heroes. They are patriots and they're the very best of us,” the special counsel said. “They did not just defend a building or the people sheltering in it, they put their lives on the line to defend who we are as a country and as a people.” Mr Smith added: “They defended the very institutions and principles that define the United States.” A grand jury in Washington, DC voted to indict Mr Trump on four counts on Tuesday, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. The indictment states that Mr Trump took part in a “conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the federal government”. It states that he conspired to “corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified” and orchestrated a “conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted”. On Tuesday evening, Mr Smith said, “Since the attack on our capital, the Department of Justice has remained committed to ensuring accountability for those criminally responsible for what happened that day”. “This case is brought consistent with that commitment and our investigation of other individuals continues,” he added. “In this case, my office will seek a speedy trial so that our evidence can be tested in court and judged by a jury of citizens. In the meantime, I must emphasize that the indictment is only an allegation and that the defendant must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.” Prosecutors claim that Mr Trump had six co-conspirators, five of which were attorneys. Mr Trump and the “co-conspirators used knowingly false claims of election fraud to get state legislators and election officials to subvert the legitimate election results and change electoral votes for the Defendant’s opponent, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., to electoral votes for the Defendant,” the indictment states. They also argue that Mr Trump “pushed officials in certain states to ignore the popular vote; disenfranchise millions of voters; dismiss legitimate electors; and ultimately, cause the ascertainment of and voting by illegitimate electors”. Mr Smith ended his statement by thanking “the members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who are working on this investigation with my office, as well as the many career prosecutors and law enforcement agents from around the country who have worked on previous January 6 investigations. “These women and men are public servants of the very highest order and it is a privilege to work alongside them.” Read More Trump indictment - live: Trump faces four criminal charges in indictment over 2020 election interference Marjorie Taylor Greene calls for Jack Smith’s office to be defunded amid Trump indictment DeSantis calls new Trump indictment ‘unfair’ - while pushing his own campaign

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For years people have been looking to the skies for signs of alien life - but maybe, they should have been looking at the bottom of the ocean this whole time. A Harvard physicist has claimed that parts of an alien 'spacecraft' could have been uncovered under the sea. Professor Avi Loeb set off on a search along the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and found 50 iron pieces which originated from the IM1 meteor. IM1 crashed off the coast of Papua New Guinea and Leob believes it could contain key information in the search for life out there in the universe, saying he hasn’t discounted the idea of the pieces being evidence of a “spacecraft” from an “extraterrestrial technological civilization” which crashlanded on Earth. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Loeb is currently the head of Harvard’s Galileo Project, focusing on the search for aliens, and he said the fragments they found must have come from “a natural environment different from the solar system, or an extraterrestrial technological civilization.” Speaking to Fox News Digital, Loeb detailed his thoughts on the origins of the meteor fragments by saying: “Given IM1's high speed and anomalous material strength, its source must have been a natural environment different from the solar system, or an extraterrestrial technological civilization.” He added that IM1 “is actually tougher and has material strength that is higher than all the space rocks that were catalogued by NASA. That makes it quite unusual.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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