Former US president Donald Trump was not acting alone in his brazen bid to overturn the 2020 election result and had enlisted six cronies to aid his “criminal efforts”, it has been alleged.

The indictment against Mr Trump states he recruited four of his own lawyers, a Justice Department official and a political consultant to do his illegal bidding.

Their names have been kept secret in the latest charges against the former president.

But the 45-page indictment offers clues that have led US media to expose their identities.

Mr Trump was slapped with four felonies on Wednesday morning (AEST) for his efforts to hang onto power after his election loss to US President Joe Biden.

As his legal woes reached a crescendo, he again used the publicity to seek public donations amid reports his main fundraising group had spent more than $US21 million ($32 million) on legal fees in the first half of 2023.

The indictment alleges Mr Trump was aided by six “co-conspirators” in his quest to “retain power”.

They included a lawyer “willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies”, who media have named as key Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani is believed to be co-conspirator number 1. Photo: Getty

A second attorney was another Trump lawyer John Eastman, who hatched a plan for then vice-president Mike Pence to obstruct the certification of the election.

The indictment says a third lawyer, who privately said claims of a stolen election were “crazy”, had publicly amplified the disinformation. The US media has named her as another Trump lawyer, Sidney Powell.

Former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark is believed to be the fifth co-conspirator, who used the agency to open “sham election crime investigations” and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.

Co-conspirator five was yet another Trump lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro who helped with a plan to submit fake slates of presidential electors to obstruct the election certification process.

The sixth political consultant, who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the election certification process, is not known.

The indictment accuses Mr Trump of going to unlawful lengths between the November 2020 election and the Capital Hill riots in January 2021.

This included a coordinated conspiracy across multiple states, in which Mr Trump and his allies pushed claims of fraud they knew to be untrue in a desperate attempt to undermine American democracy and cling to power.

After a fiery Trump speech, his supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, to try to stop Congress from certifying Mr Biden’s victory.

Mr Trump was ordered to make an initial appearance in Washington federal court on Thursday (local time).

The charges stem from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the election interference.

In a brief media statement, Mr Smith placed the blame for the January 6 attack squarely on Mr Trump’s shoulders.

“The attack on our nation’s capital on January 6th, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy.

“As described in the indictment, it was fuelled by lies — lies by the defendant, targeted at obstructing the bedrock function of the US government,” Mr Smith said.

“My office will seek a speedy trial,” he added, indicating his intent to take Mr Trump to trial well before the 2024 election.

Mr Trump and others organised fraudulent slates of electors in seven states, all of which he lost, to submit their votes to be counted and certified as official by Congress on January 6, the indictment said.

The indictment lays out numerous examples of Mr Trump’s election falsehoods and notes that close advisers, including senior intelligence officials, told him repeatedly that the election results were legitimate.

“These claims were false, and the defendant knew that they were false,” prosecutors wrote.

When the push to certify the fake electors failed, Mr Trump sought to pressure Mr Pence to disallow the certification of the election, and took advantage of the violence outside the Capitol to do so, according to prosecutors.

During the violence, Mr Trump rebuffed calls from his advisers to issue a calming message.

“The defendant attempted to use a crowd of supporters that he had gathered in Washington, DC to pressure the vice-president to fraudulently alter the election results,” the indictment reads.

In a statement issued through his campaign, Mr Trump said he had always followed the law.

“The lawlessness of these persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union, and other authoritarian, dictatorial regimes,” the campaign said.

Mr Trump already had become the first former US president to face criminal charges. He has sought to portray the prosecutions as part of a politically motivated witch hunt.

The latest charges represent a second round of federal charges by Smith, who was appointed a special counsel in November by US Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Mr Trump pleaded not guilty after a federal grand jury in Miami convened by the special counsel charged him in June in a 37-count indictment over his unlawful retention of classified government documents after leaving office in 2021 and obstructing justice.

Prosecutors accused him of risking some of the most sensitive US national security secrets.

Last Thursday, prosecutors added three more criminal counts against Mr Trump, bringing the total to 40, accusing him of ordering employees to delete security videos as he was under investigation for retaining the documents.

The first charges brought against Mr Trump emerged in March when a grand jury convened by Manhattan’s district attorney indicted him.

Mr Trump in April pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts accusing him of falsifying business records concerning a payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she said she had with him. Trump has denied the encounter.