Trump Accused of Endangering United States with Secret Documents: Historic Indictment at Sensitive Election Time

Yesterday, Friday, the course of legal prosecutions against former US President Donald Trump entered a new crossroads, which may be the most dangerous for Trump, who is running for president again in the elections next year, and with regard to what the trial could lead to in terms of deepening the rift in the United States, between Republicans and Democrats, and among Republicans themselves.

And at the gates of a heated preliminary battle for the Republican Party to choose its candidate for the presidency, the accusation against Trump of endangering the United States, in the case of keeping confidential classified documents in his residence in Florida after leaving the White House, in 2021, embarrasses the Republican Party, despite the fact that many faces of the party turned against the president. the former, and openly calling on some of them to stay away from it.

While Trump portrays the case as part of the open battle against him from the “radical left”, referring specifically to the Democratic Party, the situation with the Republican Party after the accusation will not be the same as before. Trump continues to lead Republican presidential polls. And if the verdict in the case is not issued quickly, the preliminary battle will be exceptional and unprecedented, in terms of competition for a former president facing charges that may lead him to imprisonment, noting that the case has more serious repercussions in terms of what it revealed in terms of breaching US national security.

Indictment for the Mar-a-Lago investigation

Since last Thursday, Trump has been informed that Special Investigator Jack Smith, assigned by the Department of Justice to investigate the Mar-a-Lago document case (Trump’s headquarters in Florida), as well as the case of Trump’s supporters storming Congress on January 6, 2021, to obstruct the certification of Biden’s victory in the presidency. , has issued an indictment against Trump in the documents case. Trump announced this before Smith himself. According to the American media, Trump prepared a video to be published on his social networking platform, “Truth Social”, after informing his lawyer that Smith would announce the indictment on Friday.

A Trump-appointed judge will preside over Tuesday’s hearing

The case complicates the growing legal risks for Trump, who has already been indicted in New York and faces additional investigations in Washington and Atlanta that may also lead to criminal charges (the case of pornographic actress Stormy Daniels, the case of interference to influence the counting of votes in the presidential elections, the case of tax evasion case of sedition to storm Congress).

But among the various investigations Trump faces, legal experts, as well as aides to the former president himself, have long viewed the Mar-a-Lago investigation as the most serious and ripe threat to prosecution.

This view, and the charges against Trump, are supported by the amount of evidence held against him, its size, gravity, and the difficulty of refutation, after FBI agents raided Trump’s headquarters and confiscated documents last summer. Therefore, the former president’s legal team never asked if Smith would issue an indictment, but only when it would happen, according to the Associated Press.

Indeed, after the end of his investigation, Smith concluded that Trump may have endangered the United States by keeping, after leaving the presidency, secret documents, including military and nuclear secrets issued by the Pentagon and multiple intelligence agencies. Trump’s indictment can be described as historic and unprecedented for a former president. It consists of 49 pages and includes 37 charges, 31 of which are for intentionally keeping sensitive defense documents. A Trump aide, Walt Nauta, has also been charged with 6 counts of helping him hide documents.

During his disclosure of the indictment in a brief televised speech, Special Prosecutor Smith (appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate the documents issue in November 2022) said that “the laws in the United States apply to everyone,” stressing that those that “protect Information related to national defense is essential, and violating it puts our country at risk,” he said, calling for a “swift trial” of Trump. Among the charges against Trump in this case are “unlawful retention of information relating to national security”, “obstruction of justice” and “perjury”.

Trump is breaking the law

And there is a law in the United States that requires presidents to send all emails, letters, and other business documents to the National Archives after they leave the White House. Another law relating to espionage prohibits the keeping of state secrets in unauthorized and unsafe locations. But when he left the White House in January 2021 to settle in Florida, Trump took entire boxes of classified files with him. According to the indictment, the boxes were kept stacked in a hall before being moved to a “storage room” accessible from the swimming pool, where documents labeled “top secret” were seen on the floor. The indictment includes a photo showing stacks of boxes inside a large bathroom.

In January 2022, after repeated requests, Trump agreed to return 15 boxes containing more than 200 confidential documents, and his lawyers confirmed in a letter after that that there was no other document. But after examining the documents, the federal police saw that Trump had not returned everything, and that he still kept a large number of papers at his club in Palm Beach. Accordingly, on August 2, the FBI raided Trump’s residence in Florida, and confiscated about 30 other boxes containing 11,000 documents, some of which were very sensitive about Iran or China. Trump had confirmed that he had declassified the classified documents when he was president, but his defense team refused to present this argument in court documents.

Trump discussed with his lawyer the possibility of lying to the government

One of the documents deals with the support of a foreign country for terrorism, in contravention of American interests. The indictment states that these government materials originated from the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies. Prosecutors said Trump showed someone else a Defense Department document that described it as a “plan of attack” on another country, and conspired with his aide Naota to hide the documents. According to the indictment, Naota lied to the FBI when he told them he did not know how some documents moved to a suite in the Trump home, when in fact he was involved in moving them there from a storage room.

Trump not only kept the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, but also at his golf club in New Jersey. The indictment said the resort hosted tens of thousands of guests at more than 150 events during the time the documents were there.

According to the indictment, the documents included “information related to the defense capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries, and the US nuclear programs.” It also relates to “potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies in the event of a military attack, and plans for a possible response to a foreign attack.” According to the federal indictment, Trump discussed with his attorneys the possibility of lying to government officials seeking to recover the documents, storing some of them in boxes near a restroom, and distributing boxes containing some of the documents around his home so that authorities would not find them. The indictment quoted Trump as telling one of his lawyers, “Wouldn’t it be better if we told them we don’t have anything here?”, praising a former lawyer for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said he managed to delete 30,000 emails from her, describing his work. with “wonderful.”

Trump had anticipated Smith’s announcement, and confirmed Thursday that an indictment had been brought against him in the Mar-a-Lago document case, and that he had been summoned to appear before a court in Miami (Florida) tomorrow, Tuesday (the day before Trump turned 77). Trump stressed that he was “innocent”, portraying himself once again as a victim of a plot orchestrated by the Democrats to obstruct his access to the White House again. “This is no longer America,” Trump wrote on “Truth Social,” stressing that he “never had anything to hide.” The Attorney General also attacked Smith, writing about him: “He is a Trump hater, psychopath, deranged, who should not be concerned with any case related to justice.”

Trump and his team are aware of the seriousness of the accusations against him, not only in terms of their repercussions on his political future, but also because, if convicted, it is difficult for him to escape a prison sentence. Never before in American history has a federal court indicted a former US president. Since he will serve any potential penalties immediately, the maximum prison term he faces is 20 years for obstruction of justice.

Also, in a remarkable development that may affect the course of events, Judge Eileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in 2019 in the Florida district, was assigned to supervise the session next Tuesday, without knowing yet whether she would follow up on the entire case or preside over the trial as well. Cannon made headlines last year when she ruled in Trump’s favor at a pivotal point in the case, before overturning the ruling on appeal. Canon will determine several things, including the date of the trial and the sentencing of Trump, if convicted.

In addition to the legal ramifications, this case also has huge political implications in the country, potentially upending the Republican presidential primaries that Trump still controls. The case again tests the willingness of Republican voters, party leaders and the party system to commit to a candidate who has been indicted and may face more charges. The case paves the way for an exciting trial, focusing on the accusations that a man once entrusted with protecting the country’s most guarded secrets intentionally and illegally stored sensitive information related to national security, which puts his party in an embarrassing position, especially if the verdict is not issued before the party primaries. To choose a candidate for the presidency, scheduled for the beginning of next year.

According to the “Associated Press” agency, Trump launched a fundraising campaign for his presidential campaign, as soon as he was informed of the indictment, and spent Friday, according to the “Washington Post”, playing golf, after he repeated on “Truth Social” Thursday, that the investigation is a continuation of what He calls it a “witch hunt,” referring to the accusation he has been repeating since the investigation of Russian interference in the elections (2016), directed at the Democratic Party and what Trump sees as a “conspiracy” from the “deep state” against him. Trump has the right to continue his candidacy for the presidency, while he faces indictments, and he also has the right to remain a candidate, if he is convicted, but this has never happened in American history to a candidate from the two major parties.

In the words of the Washington Post, the indictment “tells a story of arrogance and hypocrisy,” referring to how Trump kept documents and lied to investigators. Yesterday, CNN revealed that Trump admitted in an audio recording owned by investigators that he had not declassified the documents. In the opinion of the “Washington Post”, the case can not only change the course of the race for the White House next year, but also the political dynamics of US national security, and the public’s view of the Ministry of Justice and the 45th President of the United States, i.e. Trump.

(The New Arab, AFP, Reuters, Associated Press)