Global Courant
Trump, 76, faces seven charges, including unauthorized withholding of classified files, US media reported. The charges are not yet public.
The Republican leader is campaigning to return to the White House in 2024 and legal experts say the impeachment will not limit Trump’s ability to run for president again.
“I never thought it possible that something like this could happen to a former president of the United States,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social social network Thursday, adding:
“This is indeed a dark day for the United States of America. We are a country in serious and rapid decline, but together we will make America great again.”
“I have been accused, apparently, for the deceit of the boxes”he said in reference to the boxes with classified government documents that were found a few months ago in his mansion in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
Details of the prosecution about the classified documents have not been released.
multiple charges
The former president He must appear next Tuesday in a Miami courtin Florida, as confirmed by his attorney, Jim Trusty.
Trusty told CNN that the former president had received details of the charges in a subpoena document, including conspiracy, false statements, obstruction of justice and unlawful withholding of classified documents under the Espionage Act. .
(GETTY IMAGES)
In addition to claiming he is innocent, Trump said in a video later posted on Truth Social that this is an attempt to stop his campaign for the White House: “They are coming for me because we are leading in the polls again, by far, against Biden, against the Republicans”.
“Our country is going to hell and they are coming after Donald Trump… They are tearing our country apart.”
The Justice Department declined to comment and the indictment has not been published. New York special counsel Jack Smith has been poring over evidence since he was assigned to the case by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November.
Smith, a former war crimes lawyer who enjoys a reputation as a tough investigator, is also overseeing an independent investigation into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
What will happen in the Miami court?
Trump will have to appear before a federal court in Miami on June 13.
Former federal prosecutor Joe Moreno told the BBC it is unlikely the public will be able to see live what will happen when Trump appears, as tIt will take place behind closed doors.
“Trump’s motorcade may be seen arriving at the federal courthouse and he may be seen briefly exiting the vehicle,” Moreno explained.
“But in the end, all it will be behind the scenes and behind closed doors, and there will be an uncomfortable negotiation between the secret service and other federal court security agents about how to handle this unprecedented and frankly embarrassing situation.”
When he was indicted in New York, some photographs showed Trump in the Manhattan courtroom. (Reuters)
By having the trial in the state of Florida, Trump’s legal team cannot argue that the trial and the jury are on adverse ground for him, since Washington DC – the prosecutor’s other choice – is overwhelmingly Democratic.
Florida overwhelmingly voted for Trump in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.
The choice of where a trial is held could affect how the jury is tilted.
The find at Mar-a-Lago
Last year, FBI agents raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida.
In the operation they seized more than 11,000 documents, including around 100 marked as classified. Some of these were labeled top secret.
Last week, an audio recording was released in which Trump acknowledged putting away a classified document after leaving the White House.
It is a crime for federal officials, including the president, to remove or retain classified documents in an unauthorized location.
The Justice Department released a photo of some of the documents found at Mar-a-Lago. (US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE)
Trump noted in his post on Thursday that classified documents have also been found in President Joe Biden’s private quarters.
“Joe Biden had 1,850 boxes at the University of Delaware, additional boxes in Chinatown, DC, even more boxes at the University of Pennsylvania, and documents scattered all over the floor of his garage where he parks his Corvette, which is ‘insured’ only for a garage door that is paper thin, and open most of the time,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Will it affect your campaign?
The first criminal indictment against former President Donald Trump filed by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in March did not stop his presidential re-election bid from moving forward.
And it is unlikely that the new ones charges what stopaccording to some experts.
“You can be accused any number of times and that won’t stop your can to run for office“explains David Super, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.
Super notes that Trump could continue to run for president even if found guilty in the case of the Mar-a-Lago documents, but whether the GOP will want to back it remains to be seen.
Trump has held multiple campaign events after the indictment in the Stormy Daniels case, as the law does not prevent him from doing so. (GETTY IMAGES)
Politically, the expert notes, the Mar-a-Lago case may not have much of an impact among Trump supporters.
“The Manhattan case doesn’t seem to have done any real damage to his poll numbers and I’d be surprised if this one did,” Super says.
What reactions have there been?
As happened after the April indictment, conservative politicians, with a few notable exceptions, have rallied around the former president.
“If the people in power can jail their political opponents at will,” the senator tweeted. josh hawley“we will not have a republic”.
Other Republicans in Congress, including Sen. Chuck Grassley and the congressmen Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz Florida accused the Justice Department of aggressively prosecuting the former president while turning a blind eye to alleged crimes committed by President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
“Joe Biden has classified documents everywhere,” Greene tweeted. “Literally on the garage floor next to the garage door that opens and closes, but the corrupt and complicit FBI and DOJ do nothing.”
But one of his staunchest critics, the former governor of Arkansas Asa Hutchinsonissued a statement condemning the former president and asking him to end his campaign.
“Donald Trump’s actions, from his willful disregard for the Constitution to his disrespect for the rule of law, should not define our nation or the Republican Party,” he said.
