Trump could be charged with breaking a law that was passed to stop the KKK from terrorizing former slaves

• Trump could be charged with breaking a law that was originally passed to target the KKK.
• It's one of three laws Trump may have violated in connection to the deadly Capitol riot.

Former President Donald Trump may be charged with breaking a law that was originally passed to stop the Ku Klux Klan from terrorizing former slaves trying to exercise their constitutional rights.

The special counsel Jack Smith's office sent Trump a target letter over the weekend informing him that he could face criminal prosecution on several charges in connection to the Capitol riot, according to The New York Times.

The letter laid out three possible charges: obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the government, and conspiracy against rights.

The third statute prohibits "two or more persons" from conspiring "to injure, threaten, or intimidate a person in any state, territory, or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him or her by the Constitution or the laws of the U.S."

Congress passed the law during the Reconstruction era to enforce the rights guaranteed by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments to the Constitution. At the time, the US Senate's website notes, "forces in some states were at work" to "deny Black citizens their legal rights. Members of the Ku Klux Klan, for example, terrorized Black citizens for exercising their right to vote, running for public office, and serving on juries."

In response, the US legislature enacted "a series of Enforcement Acts in 1870 and 1871 ... to end such violence and empower the president to use military force to protect African Americans."

But, as The Times noted, the conspiracy against rights statute has been applied more broadly in the modern day, and the special counsel Jack Smith may be considering using it to prosecute Trump over his efforts to tamper with the election results in a number of 2020 battleground states.

The former president has repeatedly and falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential race was "rigged" against him and that Joe Biden was not a legitimate winner. And in addition to pressuring federal and state officials to declare him the winner in multiple battleground states, he called on thousands of his diehard followers to march to Congress on January 6, 2021 and "fight like hell" to stop it from certifying Biden's victory.

Trump's supporters subsequently stormed the Capitol, and a bipartisan Senate report concluded that at least seven people died in connection to the riot. The Justice Department has charged more than 1,000 people related to the failed insurrection, and the department said in May that nearly 600 have pleaded guilty.

The former president, meanwhile, insists he did nothing wrong. He announced via Truth Social that he got the target letter from Smith on Sunday, adding that such a letter "almost always means an Arrest and Indictment."

Insider has reached out to a spokesperson for the Justice Department and a lawyer for Trump.