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Miami (AP) — Donald Trump Improperly storing classified documents on nuclear capabilities in a Florida mansion, repeatedly enlisting aides and lawyers to cover up records requested by investigators, and bluntly exposing Pentagon “attack plans” and classified maps. Show off, a high-profile felony indictment revealed. A portrait depicting the former president’s handling of national security information.
Acts Accused in Historic Indictments This is the first federal lawsuit against a former president and gets to the heart of the president’s responsibility to protect the government’s most valuable secrets. Prosecutors say he refused to return the documents he kept and, in some cases, showed them to visitors. It risked jeopardizing not only foreign relations, but also the security of its military and classified information.
Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, who filed the lawsuit, said in his first public statement that “our nation’s laws protecting defense information are vital to the safety and security of the United States and must be enforced.” rice field. “Violation of these laws puts our country at risk.”
Trump, now frontrunner for 2024 Republican presidential nominationis scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday afternoon in Miami for the first time. In rare good news for a former president, the judge who first handled the case said: He is the person appointed by him and criticized for ruling in his favor last year in a dispute over a special custodian tasked with reviewing seized classified documents. Meanwhile, two lawyers who worked on the case for months announced Friday they had resigned from Trump’s legal team.
Overall, President Trump faces 37 felony counts, 31 of which involve willful retention of defense information and the remainder related to alleged conspiracy, obstruction, and misrepresentation, for which he was convicted. If you do, you may be sentenced to significant imprisonment. Prosecutors have accused Trump’s aides of conspiracy and other charges to move dozens of boxes at his Florida mansion and lie to investigators about it, as well. indicted.
President Trump responded to Friday’s indictment by erroneously conflating his own case with another classified documents investigation involving President Joe Biden. Classified records were found at Biden’s home and office, but unlike President Trump, there is no indication that the president tried to cover them up or knew they were there.
“Nobody said I wasn’t allowed to see personal records I brought from the White House. There’s nothing wrong with that,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Case deepens legal dangers for Trump already indicted in New York Faces additional investigations in Washington and Atlanta It can also lead to criminal prosecution. But legal experts, as well as Trump’s own aides, say the Mar-a-Lago investigation poses the most dangerous threat and the ripest window of prosecution of all the various investigations he has faced. For a long time I had seen that there was an investigation. Since Trump’s lawyers were notified that he was under investigation, campaign aides braced for the aftermath, assuming the question was when, not if, they would be charged.
The indictments come as President Trump continues to dominate the Republican presidential primary. Trump campaign officials described the former president’s mood as “defiant,” and he is expected to do his best to rebuke the indictment in a speech before Republican officials in Georgia on Saturday afternoon. He will also speak in North Carolina.
Aides have become particularly cautious after the release of the indictment, given the gravity of the lawsuit and the threat it poses to President Trump beyond potential short-term political gain.
The dossier’s astonishing scope and sweeping allegations, including its reliance on surveillance video and recordings, make it nearly harder for Republicans to denounce than previous New York criminal cases that many legal analysts derided as weak. It’s certain.
The paperwork is a milestone for the Justice Department, which has investigated Trump as president and as a private citizen for years, but has never indicted him before. The most notable investigation was a previous special counsel investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia in 2016. But in that investigation, prosecutors cited the Justice Department’s policy not to indict a sitting president. But once he left office, that protection was lost.
Last November, Attorney General Merrick Garland made significant progress in the investigation.a soft-spoken former federal judge who has long said no one should be considered above the law, was appointed by SmithA war criminal prosecutor with a reputation for aggressive and hard-hitting accusations will lead both the dossier and a separate investigation into efforts to overthrow the 2020 election. That investigation is still pending.
The 49-page indictment centers on hundreds of classified documents Trump brought from the White House to Mar-a-Lago when he left office in January 2021. Between the end of President Trump’s presidency and August 2022, when the FBI obtained a search warrant, despite “tens of thousands of members and guests” visiting Mar-a-Lago, the documents documented “banquet halls, bus It was stored recklessly in spaces such as “rooms and showers, office spaces, bedrooms, warehouses.”
Part of Trump’s box was stored in one of Mar-a-Lago’s gilded ballrooms for two months, from January to March 15, according to the indictment. Photos included in the indictment show boxes stacked in rows on a ballroom stage.
Prosecutors have claimed, without evidence, that all documents were declassified before leaving office, and that Trump evaded his obligations to keep classified information under control, even though he understood it. there is It details a meeting in Bedminster in July 2021 when he boasted of having classified documents produced by the military about possible attacks on other countries.
“Secret. This is classified information. Look, look at this,” the indictment said, citing an audio recording. He also could have declassified the documents, according to the indictment, but said, “Not now, but this is still a secret.”
Using Trump’s own actions detailed to prosecutors by his lawyers, aides and other witnesses, the indictment not only states that he refused to return the documents despite more than a year of government demands, but also It argues for both measures Trump encouraged those around him to return the documents. Conceal records.
For example, according to prosecutors, after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for records in May 2022, Trump asked his lawyer if he could comply with the request, saying, “No one can give me my box.” I don’t want to be investigated,” he said. ”
“Isn’t it better to say there’s nothing here?” one of his lawyers described him as saying.
But before his lawyers searched the premises for classified records, the indictment said, Trump told his aides that Mar-a-Lago would not be found during the investigation and turned over to the government. He ordered the box containing the documents to be removed from the storage room. .
When Justice Department officials arrived in Mar-a-Lago a few weeks later to collect the records, they were handed only 38 documents and all the documents in response to the subpoena. It was a folder containing a false letter proving that According to the indictment, on that day, even though Trump had told investigators he was an “open book,” his aides stole several of Trump’s boxes on a plane to Bedminster. It is said that it was loaded into
But suspecting more documents were still inside, the FBI obtained a search warrant and returned in August to recover more than 100 additional documents. The Justice Department said Trump had more than 300 classified documents, including top-secret documents.
Walt Nauta, one of the personal aides who allegedly transported the box within the complex, is charged with lying to the FBI about moving the box and conspiring to hide it, according to the indictment. His attorney declined to comment.
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Associated Press reporter Bill Barrow of Atlanta, Michael R. Sisak of New York, Meg Kinnard of Greensboro, North Carolina, and Gary Fields and Zeke Miller of Washington contributed to this report. Tucker and Witherst reported from Washington. Colvin reported from Greensboro, North Carolina.
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