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Former US President Donald Trump said he has been indicted by the US Department of Justice for “mishandling” classified government documents during his administration. Trump would have been subpoenaed to testify in a Federal Court in Miami next week.
“The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my lawyers that I have been indicted, apparently for cheating on the boxes…” Trump wrote on his TruthSocial profile, a social network owned by the former president, also referring to the Justice Department investigation that seized some 13,000 classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
The New York tycoon has also advocated for his cause in a post on his social network, emphasizing that “he is an innocent man.”
According to Trump’s legal team, the former president would face seven charges, including obstruction of justice and withholding of classified documents that, if true, would greatly affect the presidential aspirations of the now candidate for the Republican party’s nomination for the elections. presidential elections of 2024.
Since the seizure of the thousands of documents from the former president’s residence in the state of Florida, the US Department of Justice has examined the possibility that Trump had withdrawn classified reports from the national archive when he left the presidency in January 2021.
Despite the fact that the former president has alleged that the documents found in his residence were declassified by him during his time in the White House, Trump’s legal team has refused to file this claim in court.
The former president’s announcement has provoked various reactions within the Republicans. Asa Hutchinson, Trump’s rival for this party’s candidacy, mentioned that the former president’s actions “should not represent the Republican Party.”
“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,” Hutchinson said.
On the other hand, the president of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, expressed his support for the American magnate through a publication on his Twitter account. “I, and any American who believes in the rule of law, support President Trump,” are some of the words in McCarthy’s trill.
Today is indeed a dark day for the United States of America.
It is unconscionable for a President to indict the leading candidate opposing him. Joe Biden kept classified documents for decades.
I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump…
—Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) June 9, 2023
The lawsuit over the classified documents found at the former president’s residence is a matter that has been stalled for months, although now Trump could face legal consequences, a historic milestone for a former US president.
incomplete returns
In January 2022, the former president had to deliver 15 boxes of government documents to the federal authorities, although the latter believe that he did not return all the documents that would be in his possession. For this reason, in May 2022, the Justice Department formally asked Trump to return all the documents.
Faced with the former president’s refusal, a government team went to the Trump residence in Mar-a-Lago to search for and recover the material. Trump’s legal team led agents to a storage room in the house with multiple boxes, however they did not allow officers to open them to see if the documents were found.
In August 2022, FBI agents returned to the residence and managed to seize the boxes, which contained around 13,000 government documents, including some 100 of them classified.
Today, Trump is the first former president in American history to face criminal charges, however, it is not the first time that the New Yorker has to appear in court as a former president, who so far has a variety of open cases in his against.
The Stormy Daniels Case
The former president is accused by a court in Manhattan for the alleged falsification of commercial records, including a payment of about 130 thousand dollars to the porn actress Stormy Daniels in 2016, before the presidential elections that led him to stay at the White House.
Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, would have paid such an amount to Daniels to buy his silence about a sexual encounter that the actress would have had with the former US president in 2006.
On April 4, Donald Trump appeared in the Manhattan court where he pleaded not guilty to the accusations of the prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, for 34 criminal charges.
The trial is scheduled to begin on March 25, 2024, however, the former president has criticized the Manhattan prosecutor on numerous occasions and would seek to move the case to a Federal Court.
responsible for sexual abuse
On February 9 of this year, the Federal Court in Manhattan found the ex-president guilty of sexually abusing and defaming the American writer, E. Jean Carroll, although he was not responsible for Carroll’s rape, according to the court’s ruling.
The writer reported that she met Donald Trump at the Bergdorf Goodmann clothing store in the 1990s, when the tycoon proceeded to rape her in the dressing room of the store located in Manhattan. In addition, Trump would have damaged her reputation by calling her a liar in several posts on her TruthSocial profile.
Despite the victory, the writer would seek to sue Trump again, this time for the comments that the former president offered to against the verdict in which he was found responsible for sexual abuse.
The previous cases are added to open complaints over Trump’s involvement in the assault on the Capitol after his electoral defeat against Joe Biden in 2021, a situation that, on the eve of next year’s presidential elections, does not benefit the aspirations of a second mandate for Donald Trump.
with Reuters
