By the time Jack Smith, the particular counsel, was introduced in to supervise the investigation of former President Donald J. Trump’s makes an attempt to overturn the 2020 election, the inquiry had already focused for months on a group of lawyers close to Mr. Trump.

Many confirmed up as topics of curiosity in a seemingly endless flurry of subpoenas issued by a grand jury sitting within the case. Some had been family names, others much less acquainted. Among them had been Rudolph W. Giuliani, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell.

On Tuesday, most of those identical legal professionals confirmed up once more — albeit unnamed — as Mr. Trump’s co-conspirators in a federal indictment accusing him of a wide-ranging plot to stay in workplace regardless of having misplaced the election.

The look of the legal professionals on the heart of the case suggests how necessary prosecutors judged them to be to the conspiracy to execute what one federal decide who thought of among the proof referred to as “a coup in search of a legal theory.”

The legal professionals’ placement on the coronary heart of the plot whereas remaining uncharged — for now — raised questions on why Mr. Smith selected to carry the indictment with Mr. Trump as the only defendant.

In advanced conspiracy instances, prosecutors typically select to work from the underside up, charging subordinates with crimes to place stress on them to cooperate towards their superiors. It stays unclear exactly what Mr. Smith could also be in search of to perform by flipping that script.

Some authorized specialists theorized on Wednesday that by indicting Mr. Trump alone, Mr. Smith may be in search of to streamline and expedite the case forward of the 2024 election. If the co-conspirators had been indicted, that will nearly actually decelerate the method, doubtlessly with the opposite defendants submitting motions and in search of to splinter their instances from Mr. Trump’s.

“I think it’s a clean indictment to just have Donald Trump as the sole defendant,” stated Soumya Dayananda, a former federal prosecutor who served as a senior investigator for the House Jan. 6 committee. “I think it makes it easier to just tell the story of what his corrupt activity was.”

Another rationalization may very well be that by indicting Mr. Trump — and leaving open the specter of different costs — Mr. Smith was delivering a message: cooperate towards Mr. Trump, or find yourself indicted like him. By not charging them for now, Mr. Smith may very well be giving the co-conspirators an incentive to achieve a take care of investigators and supply details about the previous president.

While the specter of prosecution may loom indefinitely, it’s doable that the decide overseeing the case would possibly quickly ask Mr. Smith’s staff to reveal whether or not it plans to subject a brand new indictment with further defendants. And some authorized specialists count on further costs to return.

“It’s clearly a strategic decision not to charge them so far, because it’s out of the ordinary,” stated Joyce Vance, a former U.S. legal professional who’s now a University of Alabama regulation professor. “I don’t see an advantage to giving people this culpable a pass.”

That stated, no less than one of many co-conspirators — Mr. Giuliani — and one other doable co-conspirator — Boris Epshteyn, a lawyer and strategic adviser near Mr. Trump — have already sat with prosecutors for prolonged voluntary interviews. To prepare for such interviews, prosecutors sometimes consent to not use any statements made through the interview in future prison proceedings towards them until the topic is decided to have been mendacity.

But these protections don’t stop Mr. Smith from charging anybody who sat for an interview. He nonetheless has the choice of submitting costs towards any or the entire co-conspirators at kind of any time he chooses.

He used that tactic in a separate case towards Mr. Trump associated to the previous president’s mishandling of categorized paperwork, issuing a superseding indictment last week that accused a brand new defendant — the property supervisor of Mr. Trump’s personal membership and residence in Florida — of being a part of a conspiracy to hinder the federal government’s makes an attempt to retrieve the delicate supplies.

Some of the legal professionals named as Mr. Trump’s co-conspirators within the indictment filed on Tuesday have successfully acknowledged to being named within the case by their legal professionals.

In an announcement issued Tuesday night time, Robert J. Costello, a lawyer for Mr. Giuliani, stated it “appears” as if the previous New York City mayor had been Co-Conspirator 1. The assertion additionally leveled a blistering assault on the indictment — and a protection of Mr. Trump — suggesting that Mr. Giuliani was an unlikely candidate for cooperating towards the previous president.

“Every fact that Mayor Giuliani possesses about this case establishes the good-faith basis President Donald Trump had for the action that he took,” Mr. Costello stated.

Not lengthy after, Charles Burnham, a lawyer for Mr. Eastman, implicitly admitted his shopper’s function as Co-Conspirator 2 by issuing an announcement “regarding United States v. Donald J. Trump indictment” wherein he insisted Mr. Eastman was not “involved in plea bargaining.”

“The fact is, if Dr. Eastman is indicted, he will go to trial,” the assertion stated. “If convicted, he will appeal.”

Some sleuthing was required to find out the identities of the opposite co-conspirators.

The indictment refers to Co-Conspirator 3, as an example, as a lawyer whose “unfounded claims of election fraud” sounded “crazy” to Mr. Trump.

That description matches Ms. Powell. She was greatest identified through the postelection interval for submitting 4 lawsuits in key swing states claiming {that a} cabal of unhealthy actors — together with Chinese software program firms, Venezuelan officers and the liberal financier George Soros — conspired to hack into voting machines produced by Dominion Voting Systems and flip votes from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden.

Mr. Clark is a detailed match to the outline of Co-Conspirator 4, who’s recognized within the costs as a Justice Department official who labored on civil issues and plotted with Mr. Trump to make use of the division to “open sham election crime investigations” and “influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.”

Against the recommendation of high officers on the Justice Department, Mr. Trump sought to put in Mr. Clark, a high-ranking official within the division’s civil division, because the appearing legal professional normal within the waning days of his administration after Mr. Clark agreed to help his claims of election fraud.

Mr. Clark additionally helped draft a letter to Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican, urging him to name the state legislature right into a particular session to create a slate of false pro-Trump electors regardless that the state was gained by Joseph R. Biden Jr.

A batch of paperwork obtained by The New York Times helped to determine Mr. Chesebro as Co-Conspirator 5, who’s described within the indictment as a lawyer who helped to craft and implement “a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.”

The emails obtained by The Times laid out an in depth image of how a number of legal professionals, reporting to Mr. Giuliani, carried out the so-called faux elector plot on behalf of Mr. Trump, whereas protecting a lot of their actions obscured from the general public — and even from different legal professionals working for the previous president.

Several of those emails appeared as proof within the indictment of Mr. Trump, together with some that confirmed legal professionals and the false electors they had been in search of to recruit expressing reservations about whether or not the plan was sincere and even authorized.

“We would just be sending in ‘fake’ electoral votes to Pence so that ‘someone’ in Congress can make an objection when they start counting votes, and start arguing that the ‘fake’ votes should be counted,” a lawyer primarily based in Phoenix who helped set up the pro-Trump electors in Arizona wrote to Mr. Epshteyn on Dec. 8, 2020.

In one other instance, Mr. Chesebro wrote to Mr. Giuliani that two electors in Arizona “are concerned it could appear treasonous.”

At one level, the indictment quotes from a redacted message despatched by an Arizona lawyer on Dec. 8, 2020, that reads, “I just talked to the gentleman who did that memo, [Co-Conspirator 5]. His idea is basically. …”

An unredacted model of that e-mail obtained by The Times has the identify “Ken Cheseboro” within the place of Co-Conspirator 5.

The indictment additionally cites a authorized memo dated Nov. 18, 2020, that proposed recruiting a bunch of Trump supporters who would meet and vote as purported electors for Wisconsin. The court docket submitting describes it as having been drafted by Co-Conspirator 5. That memo, additionally obtained by The Times, reveals it was written by Mr. Chesebro.

A separate e-mail, reviewed by The Times, offers a touch that Mr. Epshteyn may very well be Co-Conspirator 6.

The e-mail — bearing a topic line studying, “Attorney for Electors Memo” — was despatched on Dec. 7, 2020, to Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Giuliani’s son, Andrew.

“Dear Mayor,” it reads. “As discussed, below are the attorneys I would recommend for the memo on choosing electors,” including the names of legal professionals in seven states.

Paragraph 57 of the indictment asserts that Co-Conspirator 1, or Mr. Giuliani, spoke with Co-Conspirator 6 about legal professionals who “could assist in the fraudulent elector effort in the targeted states.”

It additionally says that Co-Conspirator 6 despatched an e-mail to Mr. Giuliani “identifying attorneys in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin” — the identical seven states talked about within the e-mail reviewed by The Times.

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan contributed reporting.