Why has Donald Trump been indicted and not Mike Pence or Joe Biden?

A “corrupt” and “instrumentalized” judicial system, a “witch hunt” aimed at preventing him from running in the 2024 presidential elections: Donald Trump is likely to deploy his favorite arguments again in the speech he plans to deliver on Tuesday, November 13. June from New Jersey, following his first appearance in Miami (Florida) for the case of the presidential files.

Since the announcement of his indictment on Friday, the former US president and his supporters have not ceased to denounce the double standards of the Justice of the North American country. In particular, they have been based on two apparently similar cases involving former Vice President Mike Pence and the current occupant of the White House, Joe Biden, who also kept classified documents in unauthorized or secure places.

“It is unconscionable that a president would impeach his main opponent. Joe Biden has kept classified documents for decades. I, and all Americans who believe in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice,” said Kevin McCarthy, President Republican of the House of Representatives.

In January, Biden’s lawyers announced that they had discovered several confidential documents in a former office of the president in Washington, and later in his private residence in Delaware, dating from his time as vice president.

A few days after these revelations, the classified documents plot had a new twist with Pence’s arrival on the scene: the former vice president also possessed sensitive documents at his Indiana home. In the United States, presidents and vice presidents are required to submit all documents related to their tenure to the National Archives.

While Biden remains under investigation, the Justice Department informed Pence’s legal teams in early June that no criminal charges would be filed against him. This is further evidence, according to Trump supporters, of the judicial persecution against the former president, the first in the history of the United States to face federal prosecution.

An unprecedented volume of documents

However, a quick examination of the Trump impeachment shows why this case is difficult to compare with those involving Biden and Pence. The difference lies, first of all, in the number of documents recovered. Although no exact figure has been officially made public, Biden’s lawyers discovered a dozen classified documents in his old Washington office and “a small number” at his Delaware home, according to US media.

This small number contrasts with the 325 classified documents found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. According to the indictment, the classified documents “included information about the defense capabilities of the United States and foreign countries,” “about US nuclear programs,” and “about potential vulnerabilities in the event of an attack against the United States and its allies.”

Several of the documents found bore the acronym SCI, which means Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Informationthe highest level of authorization and which only affects ultra-sensitive information.

The US Justice also revealed that, in July 2021, the billionaire revealed to four people without secret defense authorization “an attack plan” that the Ministry of Defense had prepared for him when he was president. Until proven otherwise, neither Biden nor Pence have shared sensitive documents with third parties.

“It’s a pretty detailed allegation. And it’s damning,” Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, a former ally who has become a critic of the former president, said on Fox News.

cover-up and perjury

But the most significant difference between these cases is Trump’s attitude during the process. While Biden and Pence worked closely with the Justice Department and returned all documents to the National Archives, citing “inadvertence,” the billionaire appears instead to have wanted to hide documents he had knowingly taken with him when he left. the White House.

Entire boxes of documents sat stacked for years in his luxurious Mar-a-Lago, Florida residence, particularly in a “ballroom” setting, in a bedroom and in a bathroom. According to the indictment, Trump and his aide Walt Nauta obstructed the investigation by trying to hide those documents, despite multiple requests by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

According to the exchanges of messages revealed by the US Justice, Nauta lied to the investigators by stating that he had not been aware of the presence of those boxes of documents, despite the fact that he himself had helped to transfer them to Florida at the request of his boss.

This case is not about the type of documents that were taken, but about what President Trump did when the government tried to find them, says Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor interviewed by ‘The Washington Post’.

As a general rule, there are no prosecutions where documents have been retained by mistake or inadvertently. According to several legal experts, Trump could have easily gotten rid of the accusation by handing over all the documents required by the National Archives. In fact, the former president was not prosecuted for the nearly 200 documents that he voluntarily handed over in January 2022 under pressure from the FBI.

“In short, the indictment portrays a man who knew what he was doing was wrong and went to great lengths to hide it. Mr. Trump knew exactly how damaging discovery of the documents would be, and he wanted to destroy or hide them,” it states. ‘The Atlantic’ magazine in a column titled “The Stupidest Crimes Imaginable”.

Trump faces 37 charges, including “unlawful withholding of national security information,” “obstruction of justice” and “perjury,” and is expected to face several decades in prison.

This article was adapted from its original in French.