Global Courant
WASHINGTON — As former President Donald Trump faces 37 federal counts for hoarding hundreds of classified documents after he left the White House, many of his supporters argue that Trump has been unfairly targeted.
They rightly point out that in recent years Trump is not the only public figure who has classified material outside secure settings.
But what they don’t say is that Trump is the only former official who refused to return all classified documents when asked. Nor do they say that Trump is the only official who tried to prevent investigators from discovering additional classified documents in his possession, as alleged in the indictment against him.
Trump’s alleged intent, which is to keep the documents, and his lack of transparency about what he had, is what elevates his case from an unfortunate reporting mishap to a crime, experts say.
Clinton, Biden and Pence
US President Joe Biden answers a question during a joint press conference with Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Rishi Sunak in the East Room of the White House on June 8, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Drew Anger | Getty Images
Hillary Clinton, while she was Secretary of State, maintained an email server containing classified information contained in some emails on a PC server at her home. After a lengthy investigation that dominated the 2016 presidential campaign, the FBI advised the Justice Department not to press charges while saying Clinton and her colleagues were “exceedingly careless.”
But it’s not just Democrats. Mike Pence, Trump’s vice president, searched his own home after the Biden documents were found and discovered a dozen classified documents, which he immediately turned over to the National Archives. A voluntary FBI search of Pence’s home turned up another document with classification markers, for a total of 13. On June 1, the Justice Department informed Pence that it was closing its case and no charges would be filed.
So why is Trump being indicted, and Pence and Clinton not? Experts say the crucial difference is intent, which is what Trump would have done after learning that the National Archives wanted the classified documents he had back.
“I think if Donald Trump and his team had responded to the subpoena and turned over everything they had, we wouldn’t be here today,” said Jon Sale, a Miami attorney who accepted an offer to join the legal team. turned down from Trump. ‘That’s why we’re here. That’s why this case has been charged.’
The boxes, the lawyer and the ex-president
The DOJ indictment includes photos of classified documents found at the Mar-A-Lago residence of former President Donald Trump.
Source: DOJ
By spring 2022, the National Archives had spent a year trying to get Trump to turn over presidential documents that didn’t belong to him, resulting in 15 boxes, containing nearly 200 classified documents, being returned to D.C.
But photos from Mar-a-Lago show that Trump brought more than 80 boxes of presidential documents to Florida when he left the White House, meaning there were dozens of documents he still hadn’t returned, the records of which are clearly on were aware. including classified documents. With no options left, the records referred the case with missing classified documents to the Justice Department, which obtained a grand jury subpoena on May 11 for any remaining classified material in Trump’s hands.
Just before lawyers arrived in Mar-a-Lago to retrieve the documents cited in the subpoena, prosecutors captured security footage of Trump’s valet and co-defendant, Walt Nauta, moving dozens of boxes between Trump’s personal residence and a storage unit. The lawyers were only allowed to search the storage room.
Sale, who heads white-collar defense practice at Nelson Mullins, said Trump could have argued to the records that he deserved to keep the documents he took.
“If they felt there was a legal reason not to hand over something, they could have provided privilege by saying, ‘We think some of this is privileged and we’re not handing it over.’ Those are the options,” Sale said Tuesday on MSNBC. “There’s no option to say, ‘Let’s tell them we don’t have it.'”
Yet that is exactly what Trump would have asked his lawyer, according to notes taken the day of the search.
Cooking it down
Former US President Bill Clinton, right, and Hillary Clinton, former US Secretary of State, during an interview for an episode of “The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations” at 92nd Street Y in New York, US, on Thursday, May 4, 2023.
Jeenah Maan | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Trump’s apparent intent to keep the records while allegedly misleading authorities about them and showing them to visitors is what sets his case apart from those of Clinton, Pence and Biden.
“When you’re talking about President Biden and former Vice President Pence, you’re talking about full transparency,” David Kelley, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, told the PBS program “NewsHour” this week.
“But if you go ahead and you’re told you have documents you’re not supposed to have, and then you hide it, and then you lie about it, that’s a criminal problem because it shows knowledge and an intent to make laws. violate.” the law.”
Instead of turning everything over, prosecutors allege Trump deliberately withheld classified material from everyone for more than a year and conspired with Nauta to keep it hidden.
To this day, Trump insists that the presidential documents sought in the archives belong to him, and he does not deny that he refused to return them.
Instead, on Tuesday night, hours after pleading not guilty in the case, he claimed that the boxes of classified documents actually contained “memorabilia” and that he “hadn’t had a chance to go through all the boxes.” tedious work, it takes a long time.”
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When FBI agents searched the boxes in August 2022, they found more than 100 classified documents that Trump and his lawyers had failed to return. By the time FBI agents had finished searching Mar-a-Lago, the total amount of classified documents Trump took from the White House, including those he previously returned, totaled more than 300.
This number of records, compared to Pence’s and Biden’s 13 records and 16 documents, respectively, is another key factor differentiating Trump’s situation.
It also echoes one of the factors cited by then-FBI Director James Comey in 2016 when he explained what elements elevate a discovery of classified documents to the level of a crime.
“All of the prosecuted cases involved a combination of: obvious willful mishandling of classified information; or massive amounts of material exposed in such a way as to support a suspicion of willful misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or attempts to obstruct the course of justice,” Comey said at the time.
“We don’t see those things here,” he added, in reference to the Clinton case.
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