Re: The Tiny Scandals and Trials
Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2023 1:49 am
Trump charged in secret documents case
The former president is first ever to face federal criminal charges
The charges include illegal retention of government secrets, obstruction of justice and conspiracy, according to people familiar with the matter. It is the second time he has been criminally charged since March, when he was indicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments from 2016.
By Devlin Barrett, Perry Stein and Josh DawseyUpdated 53 minutes ago
Former president Donald Trump said Thursday night that he’s been charged by the Justice Department in connection with the discovery that hundreds of classified documents were taken to his Mar-a-Lago home after he left the White House — a seismic event in the nation’s political and legal history.
Trump, who is the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said he has been summoned to appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday at 3 p.m. Several Trump advisers confirmed the charges.
A seven-count indictment has been filed in federal court naming the former president as a criminal defendant, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a case that has yet to be unsealed.
The charges include illegal retention of government secrets, obstruction of justice and conspiracy, according to people familiar with the matter. It is the second time Trump has been criminally charged since March, when he was indicted in state court in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments from 2016. Trump, who has denied wrongdoing in both cases, is the only former president ever charged with a crime.
“I have been indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax,” Trump posted on social media site Truth Social. He claimed he was being treated unfairly. “I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States,” he said in a screed that ended: “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!”
A spokesman for special counsel Jack Smith, who has been running the investigation since November, declined to comment.
The charges cap a high-stakes investigation that began in early 2022 and slowly built steam over the summer, until FBI agents conducted a court-ordered search of Trump’s home and private club in early August that turned up more than 100 classified documents, even after Trump’s advisers had claimed they had conducted a diligent search in June for such papers and — in response to a subpoena — handed over all they could find.
(...)
While a president has never been charged with such crimes, prosecutions related to the mishandling of classified materials are not rare, said Steven Aftergood, a classified information expert. “This reflects the Justice Department applying the law to a former president, and that is really encouraging,” Aftergood said. “It really underscores the fact that no one is above the law.”
Much of the Justice Department’s investigation centered around the actions of Trump and his closest advisers following a May subpoena from the government for the return of all documents with classified markings. Witness and videotape evidence gathered by the FBI indicated that Trump may have sought to keep documents, people familiar with the investigation said, despite having turned over some material to authorities in response to the subpoena.
In November, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith to serve as special counsel and take charge of the Mar-a-Lago case, saying that Trump’s announced candidacy for the presidency and President Biden’s likely reelection bid meant there should be another layer of independence for the investigations involving Trump.
A separate special counsel, Robert Hur, has been appointed to investigate how a much smaller number of classified documents were taken to Biden’s home and office. Trump has claimed that he should not be charged because Biden’s conduct was worse, but to date the known evidence against the former president appears to dwarf the facts of the Biden case.
For many months, Justice Department prosecutors have questioned witnesses in the case before a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C.
The secret proceedings yielded evidence of potential mishandling as well as obstruction of justice, people familiar with the investigation have said, making the federal courthouse in the nation’s capital the focal point of a waiting game: Would Trump be the first former president indicted by the Justice Department?
In early May, the parade of witnesses to that grand jury appeared to stop, but in fact it had been redirected to a federal courthouse a thousand miles south, in Miami. That courthouse is much closer to Mar-a-Lago, where most of the alleged conduct under scrutiny took place.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Justice Department lawyers had concluded the case against Trump would be more safely brought in Florida than Washington, in order to avoid potentially time-consuming legal fights over the proper venue.
After months of speculation and anticipation, it had become clear the case of the United States vs. Donald J. Trump was moving toward a momentous decision.
After receiving a formal notice that Trump was a target of the criminal investigation, the former president’s lawyers met Monday at Justice Department headquarters with Smith and other officials, including a senior career lawyer. Trump’s lawyers tried to convince the prosecutors not to file charges.
People familiar with the conversation said the meeting did not go well, and Trump’s team left the meeting expecting their client would soon be indicted.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... ar-a-lago/
TL;dr
The former president is first ever to face federal criminal charges
The charges include illegal retention of government secrets, obstruction of justice and conspiracy, according to people familiar with the matter. It is the second time he has been criminally charged since March, when he was indicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments from 2016.
By Devlin Barrett, Perry Stein and Josh DawseyUpdated 53 minutes ago
Former president Donald Trump said Thursday night that he’s been charged by the Justice Department in connection with the discovery that hundreds of classified documents were taken to his Mar-a-Lago home after he left the White House — a seismic event in the nation’s political and legal history.
Trump, who is the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said he has been summoned to appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday at 3 p.m. Several Trump advisers confirmed the charges.
A seven-count indictment has been filed in federal court naming the former president as a criminal defendant, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a case that has yet to be unsealed.
The charges include illegal retention of government secrets, obstruction of justice and conspiracy, according to people familiar with the matter. It is the second time Trump has been criminally charged since March, when he was indicted in state court in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments from 2016. Trump, who has denied wrongdoing in both cases, is the only former president ever charged with a crime.
“I have been indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax,” Trump posted on social media site Truth Social. He claimed he was being treated unfairly. “I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States,” he said in a screed that ended: “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!”
A spokesman for special counsel Jack Smith, who has been running the investigation since November, declined to comment.
The charges cap a high-stakes investigation that began in early 2022 and slowly built steam over the summer, until FBI agents conducted a court-ordered search of Trump’s home and private club in early August that turned up more than 100 classified documents, even after Trump’s advisers had claimed they had conducted a diligent search in June for such papers and — in response to a subpoena — handed over all they could find.
(...)
While a president has never been charged with such crimes, prosecutions related to the mishandling of classified materials are not rare, said Steven Aftergood, a classified information expert. “This reflects the Justice Department applying the law to a former president, and that is really encouraging,” Aftergood said. “It really underscores the fact that no one is above the law.”
Much of the Justice Department’s investigation centered around the actions of Trump and his closest advisers following a May subpoena from the government for the return of all documents with classified markings. Witness and videotape evidence gathered by the FBI indicated that Trump may have sought to keep documents, people familiar with the investigation said, despite having turned over some material to authorities in response to the subpoena.
In November, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith to serve as special counsel and take charge of the Mar-a-Lago case, saying that Trump’s announced candidacy for the presidency and President Biden’s likely reelection bid meant there should be another layer of independence for the investigations involving Trump.
A separate special counsel, Robert Hur, has been appointed to investigate how a much smaller number of classified documents were taken to Biden’s home and office. Trump has claimed that he should not be charged because Biden’s conduct was worse, but to date the known evidence against the former president appears to dwarf the facts of the Biden case.
For many months, Justice Department prosecutors have questioned witnesses in the case before a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C.
The secret proceedings yielded evidence of potential mishandling as well as obstruction of justice, people familiar with the investigation have said, making the federal courthouse in the nation’s capital the focal point of a waiting game: Would Trump be the first former president indicted by the Justice Department?
In early May, the parade of witnesses to that grand jury appeared to stop, but in fact it had been redirected to a federal courthouse a thousand miles south, in Miami. That courthouse is much closer to Mar-a-Lago, where most of the alleged conduct under scrutiny took place.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Justice Department lawyers had concluded the case against Trump would be more safely brought in Florida than Washington, in order to avoid potentially time-consuming legal fights over the proper venue.
After months of speculation and anticipation, it had become clear the case of the United States vs. Donald J. Trump was moving toward a momentous decision.
After receiving a formal notice that Trump was a target of the criminal investigation, the former president’s lawyers met Monday at Justice Department headquarters with Smith and other officials, including a senior career lawyer. Trump’s lawyers tried to convince the prosecutors not to file charges.
People familiar with the conversation said the meeting did not go well, and Trump’s team left the meeting expecting their client would soon be indicted.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... ar-a-lago/
TL;dr
