Donald Trump has added former Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to his transition team as the former president faces a revised federal indictment alleging he tried to illegally overturn his 2020 election loss.
Kennedy made crypto and Bitcoin (BTC) a central campaign issue during his first bid for the United States presidency as a Democratic candidate. He then switched to run as an independent before suspending his campaign on Friday, Aug. 23, and endorsing Trump.
Tulsi Gabbard — an ex-Democratic Representative and 2020 presidential candidate who is a one-time crypto holder — was also added to Trump’s team.
“As President Trump’s broad coalition of supporters and endorsers expands across partisan lines, we are proud that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard have been added to the Trump/Vance Transition team,” Trump campaign senior adviser Brian Hughes told Reuters on Aug. 27.
Kennedy would “help pick the people who will be running the government” if Trump wins the November elections, he explained to ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson in an interview on Aug. 26, where he revealed he was asked to join Trump’s team.
Trump, the Republican nominee, is lagging behind Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris by 3.4 percentage points in national polls, according to Aug. 27 FiveThirtyEight data.
Trump has trailed Harris in the polls since she became the Democrat’s favorite to nab the presidency. Source: FiveThirtyEight
Kennedy was polling at 4.6% before he suspended his campaign.
New indictment for Trump
Meanwhile, Trump is facing a fresh federal indictment from a grand jury in Washington, DC, alleging he illegally tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The superseding indictment filed on Aug. 27 lays out four charges federal prosecutors first pinned on Trump last August: Conspiracy to defraud the US, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of — and attempt to obstruct — an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.
Related: US Democrats are ‘increasingly gravitating towards crypto’ — Poll
The revised indictment focuses on Trump as a candidate and citizen rather than being the incumbent president at the time after the US Supreme Court ruled in July that Trump had “at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts” as president.
Trump posted to his Truth Social platform to claim US Special Counsel Jack Smith “rewrote the exact same case in an effort to circumvent the Supreme Court Decision.”
He had pleaded not guilty to the original indictment and added in his post that “the whole case should be thrown out and dismissed on Presidential Immunity grounds.”
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