The charges include conspiracy to defraud the United States government and witness tampering.

The indictment, the third criminal case brought against the former president as he seeks to reclaim the White House in 2024, follows long-running federal investigation into schemes by Trump and his allies to subvert peaceful transfer of power and keep him in office despite decisive loss to Joe Biden.

Federal prosecutors say Donald Trump was “determined to remain in power” in conspiracies that targeted “bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.”

Trump is due in court on Thursday before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan.

The criminal case comes while Trump leads the field of Republicans vying to capture their party’s nomination. It is sure to be dismissed by the former president and his supporters as just another politically motivated prosecution. Yet the charges stem from one of the most serious threats to American democracy in modern history.

They focus on the turbulent two months after the November 2020 election in which Trump refused to accept his loss and spread lies that victory was stolen from him. The turmoil resulted in the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump loyalists violently broke into the building, attacked police officers and disrupted the congressional counting of electoral votes.

In between the election and the riot, Trump urged local election officials to undo voting results in their states, pressured former Vice President Mike Pence to halt the certification of electoral votes and falsely claimed that the election had been stolen, notion repeatedly rejected by judges.

The mounting criminal cases against Trump are unfolding in the heat of the 2024 race. A conviction in this case, or any other, would not prevent Trump from pursuing the White House or serving as president.

In New York, state prosecutors have charged Trump with falsifying business records about a hush money payoff to a porn actor before the 2016 election.

The trial begins in late March.

The latest federal indictment against Trump focuses on actions taken in Washington, and the trial will be held there, in courthouse located between the White House he once occupied and the Capitol his supporters stormed.

No trial date has been set.

Prosecutors in Georgia are investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to reverse his election loss to Biden there in 2020. The district attorney of Fulton County is expected to announce a decision on whether to indict the former president in early August.

Rudy Giuliani, a Trump lawyer who pursued post-election legal challenges, spoke voluntarily to prosecutors as part of proffer agreement, in which person’s statements can’t be used against them in any future criminal case that is brought.

Prosecutors also interviewed election officials in Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan who came under pressure from Trump and associates to change voting results in states won by Biden, a Democrat.

Trump has been trying to use the mounting legal troubles to his political advantage. He has been claiming without evidence on social media and at public events that the cases are driven by Democratic prosecutors out to hurt his 2024 campaign.

The indictments have helped his campaign raise millions of dollars from supporters, though he raised less after the second than the first–there are questions whether subsequent charges will have the same impact.

Attorney General Merrick Garland last year appointed Smith, an international war crimes prosecutor who also led the Justice Department’s public corruption section, as special counsel to investigate efforts to undo the 2020 election and Trump’s retention of hundreds of classified documents at his Palm Beach, Florida, home, Mar-a-Lago. Although Trump has derided him as “deranged” and suggested that he is politically motivated, Smith’s past experience includes overseeing significant prosecutions against high-profile Democrats.

The Justice Department’s investigation into the efforts to overturn the 2020 election began well before Smith’s appointment, proceeding alongside separate criminal probes into the Jan. 6 rioters themselves.

More than 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the insurrection, including some with seditious conspiracy.