DONALD TRUMP has been charged with working to overturn the results of the 2020 United States presidential election in the run-up to the violent riot by his supporters at Washington’s Capitol building.

Tuesday’s four-count indictment is the third criminal case against the former president. 

The charges set out a long series of lies by Mr Trump about the election results and say that even when those falsehoods resulted in a chaotic insurrection on January 6 2021, he sought to exploit the violence by pointing to it as a reason to further delay the counting of votes that sealed his defeat.

Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, whose office has spent months investigating Mr Trump, called the attack on the Capitol an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy.

“It was fuelled by 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.”

Mr Trump is aiming to win the presidency back at next year's elections. His campaign team labelled the charges “fake” and asked why it took two-and-a-half years to bring them.