Trump announces he faces indictment in classified documents case | Donald Trump News

Former United States President Donald Trump has claimed on his Truth Social platform that he faces possible indictment on federal charges of mishandling classified documents upon leaving the White House.

I was summoned to the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, Trump wrote in the message. I would never have thought possible that such a thing could happen to a former president of the United States.

The sealed indictment would represent another first for the outraged Republican: never before has a US president, current or former, faced federal charges.

In April, Trump became the first US president to face criminal charges, after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced 34 state-level felony charges for falsifying business records in a case involving a silent payment to an adult film actress.

I am an innocent man, Trump claimed in a video posted shortly after the announcement on Thursday. I did nothing wrong.

A Justice Department court filing, dated August 2022, speaks to classified information recovered from Donald Trump’s residence [File: Jon Elswick/AP Photo]
A months-long investigation

Thursday’s announcement came amid an ongoing investigation by the US Department of Justice, led by Special Counsel Jack Smith, into boxes of classified documents recovered from Trumps Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

News agencies including the Associated Press and Reuters reported that the ex-president faces seven charges related to the investigation. The specific charges will become public once the indictment is unsealed.

Our country is going to hell. And they come after Donald Trump, weaponizing the Justice Department, weaponizing the FBI, Trump said in the video, saying the indictment is meant to derail his 2024 bid for the Republican presidential nomination. This is called election interference. They are trying to destroy a reputation so they can win an election.

Following a raid of Mar-a-Lago in August, several other high-profile politicians, including current US President Joe Biden and former Trump Vice President Mike Pence, also came forward to hand over classified documents held in their residences.

But many experts have indicated that Trump’s case is different. Initially, as Trump prepared to leave office in January 2022, the National Archives collected 15 boxes of documents from Mar-a-Lago, some of which contained classified information.

There were even more records there, however. The FBI had to issue a subpoena in May of that year for classified documents that remained in the former president’s possession.

And when FBI investigators came to believe there were even more documents at Mar-a-Lago despite a signed statement from Trump’s legal team alleging a search warrant had been issued in August for the property. It resulted in the recovery of approximately 100 additional documents with classified markings, bringing the total to 300.

The volume of documents recovered was also remarkable: a total of 33 boxes, containing almost 11,000 documents, were removed from Mar-a-Lago.

Hundreds of classified documents reportedly recovered from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida [File: Steve Helber/AP Photo]
Possible illegal concealment

Experts have warned that Trump could face obstruction charges for his conduct in the investigation. An FBI affidavit, dated August, describes a criminal investigation into the improper deletion and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces, as well as the illegal concealment or removal of government documents.

As Al Jazeera correspondent Shihab Rattansi explained, early speculation indicates that Trump could face charges of conspiracy to obstruct, misrepresentation and willful withholding of documents.

It could be a charge under the Espionage Act, he explained. The Espionage Act does not necessarily mean espionage. It may just mean poor document management that you shouldn’t have.

But, Rattansi warned, even Trump’s own lawyers don’t have the details.

They don’t have the fillers either. They don’t have the indictment. What they received was a subpoena to appear in court in Miami next Tuesday. And from the language in that documentation and some other communications, they may have gleaned what the charges might be, Rattansi explained.

The indictment cannot be unsealed before that court date on Tuesday. We just don’t know.

Ongoing rivalry with Biden

In his social media posts on Thursday, Trump lashed out at Biden, who defeated him in his 2020 re-election campaign.

The corrupt Biden administration informed my lawyers that I have been charged, apparently for the box hoax, Trump wrote, referring to the 15 boxes removed. He accused Biden of hypocrisy, claiming without evidence that the current president had documents strewn across his garage floor when officials searched his Delaware residence.

The indictment represents perhaps the biggest legal hurdle Trump has faced since leaving office. In addition to the 34 felony charges he faces in New York, the former president was found guilty of defamation and sexual assault last month in a civil suit brought by writer E Jean Carroll, which received 5 millions of dollars in damages.

Trump is also facing investigations into whether he sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, one in the southern state of Georgia and another at the federal level, also led by the special counsel Smith.

The Republican leader has repeatedly described this election as rigged, and a group of his supporters attempted to disrupt the Electoral College vote count on January 6, 2021, storming the US Capitol and forcing lawmakers to flee.

Different probes, different scenarios

Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith as special counsel for the two-part investigation into Trump in November. Garland also brought in attorney Robert Hur in January to serve as special counsel in a review of Bidens’ handling of classified documents.

But the legal stakes will likely be different for Trump and Biden. In the latter case, attorneys contacted the National Archives after discovering about 10 classified documents related to Bidens’ time as vice president, under Barack Obama.

That discovery at a Washington, DC, think tank in November led to the recovery of a second batch of documents from Bidens Wilmington, Delaware, home. Bidens’ lawyers quickly turned over what they described as a small number of documents and authorized a search of the home, which took place over 1 p.m. and revealed six other files.

There was no evidence that Biden was aware of the documents, or that he attempted to conceal them, two issues that persist in the Trump case.

Similarly, in the Pences case, his attorneys proactively flagged a small number of classified documents in the former Indiana vice president’s home, and a subsequent FBI search revealed an additional classified file. On June 2, the Justice Department announced that it had terminated its investigation into Pences’ handling of the documents without bringing any charges.

The three men Trump, Pence and Biden have announced their candidacy for the 2024 presidential race.

Republicans rally behind Trump

Trump remains the favorite on the Republican side, setting him up for a potential rematch against Democrat Biden. Immediately after Trump’s social media posts on Thursday, at least one of Trump’s Republican presidential rivals, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, commented on the indictment news, urging caution. .

We do not receive our news from the Trumps Truth Social account. Let’s see what the facts are when a possible indictment is released, Christie, a prominent Trump critic, wrote on Twitter.

He added: No one is above the law no matter how badly they want to be. We will have more to say when the facts are revealed.

Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, largely rallied behind the former president, denouncing what they saw as a politically motivated attack.

Today is indeed a dark day for the United States of America, Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House of Representatives, said on Twitter.

I and all Americans who believe in the rule of law stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will blame this brazen militarization of power.

An unprecedented indictment

Bruce Fein, deputy assistant attorney general under former Republican President Ronald Reagan, told Al Jazeera that the federal charges are the first of their kind against a US president, but only just.

Richard Nixon was about to be indicted by [special prosecutor] Leon Jaworski for obstruction of justice, perjury, Fein said, referring to the former Republican president embroiled in the 1970s Watergate scandal.

He was pardoned by Gerald Ford, Fein continued. So he was about to be charged, but grace saved him.

What stands out in the Trump case, Fein argued, is the outrageous way the former president conducted himself before, during and after his single term. Fein pointed to statements made by Pence this week, alleging that Trump presented him with a choice on the day of the Capitol attack: that I choose between him and the Constitution.

No other president in the history of the United States, in more than 230 years, has ever asked a vice president to trash the 12th Amendment, Fein said, referring to a part of the US Constitution that governs the presidential elections. So yes, it is unprecedented because the wrongdoing is unprecedented.

Fein also dismissed Trump’s claim that the latest charges were part of a larger witch hunt against his political career: What else is new? That’s all he has to say. You will notice that he presents no exculpatory evidence that shows he is innocent. He just starts screaming and screaming.

It’s just the same playbook, Fein added. I think his base is shrinking. I think Republicans are going to be divided, especially that other presidential candidates, even Ron DeSantis, could turn against Trump.

Trump said he was due in federal court in Miami, Florida at 3 p.m. US Eastern Time (1900 GMT) on Tuesday.

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