Ex-president is being prosecuted for violating Espionage Act and obstruction over documents held at Mar-a-Lago and has been summoned to court next week

 

Federal prosecutors have charged Donald Trump over his retention of national security documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them, according to multiple people familiar with the matter, a historic development that poses the most significant legal peril yet for the former president.

 

The exact nature of the indictment, filed in federal district court in Miami, is unclear because it remains under seal and the justice department had no immediate comment.

Trump confirmed the indictment on his Truth Social social media platform on Thursday afternoon, shortly after his lawyers received an email from prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith that outlined the charges and summoned the former president to surrender himself to authorities in Miami next Tuesday.

The charges listed in the summons included: willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document, corruptly concealing a document, concealing a document in a federal investigation, engaging in a scheme to conceal and false statements, people familiar with the matter said.

Trump’s lawyer Jim Trusty confirmed in an appearance on CNN that prosecutors had listed seven charges on the summons paper. Trusty said he had not seen a copy of the indictment but added he was hopeful that it might be unsealed before Trump makes his initial appearance in court.

From his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey, Trump lashed out at the indictment in a series of posts on Truth Social. “I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States,” Trump said, adding: “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!”

The former president was said to be resigned to the fact that he would probably be indicted after prosecutors impaneled a new grand jury in Florida to take evidence in the case last month, which his advisers saw as a sign that the case had been moved from Washington for its final stages.

But even though Trump’s lawyers were told last week that the former president had been designated a “target” in the criminal investigation – the clearest indication that charges were forthcoming – the news of the indictment appears to have taken Trump and his inner circle by surprise.

 

Trump spent the early part of the evening calling allies on Capitol Hill to rally support and watching who was defending him on cable news, a person close to the former president said. He then went for dinner at the golf club and played DJ, selecting songs to play over its loudspeakers.

The former president’s team also later released a short video, recorded a day beforehand, in which he again proclaimed his innocence.

In Washington, the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, called the charges a “dark day” in a post on Twitter that falsely suggested the Biden administration, rather than a grand jury, had returned the indictment. “House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable,” he added.

Criminal charges in the Mar-a-Lago documents case deepen the legal peril for Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, after he was indicted earlier this year on state charges in New York by the Manhattan district attorney over his role in hush-money payments to an adult film star.

 

Trump also remains under criminal investigation for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.*

For more than a year, prosecutors have examined whether Trump knowingly retained classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after he left office and took steps to conceal the materials after the justice department issued a subpoena for their return.  

-The Guardian

 *ARTICLE 1: INCITEMENT OF INSURRECTION

The Constitution provides that the House of Representatives “shall have the sole Power of Impeachment” and that the President “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment, for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Further, section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits any person who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the United States from “hold[ing] an office ... under the United States.’ In his conduct while President of the United States — and in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, provide, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed — Donald John Trump engaged in high Crimes and Misdemeanors by inciting violence against the Government of the United States, in that:

On January 6, 2021, pursuant to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, the House of Representatives, and the Senate met at the United States Capitol for a Joint Session of Congress to count the votes of the Electoral College. In the months preceding the Joint Session, President Trump repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the Presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by State or Federal officials. Shortly before the Joint Session commenced, President Trump, addressed a crowd at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. There, he reiterated false claims that “we won this election, and we won it by a landslide.” He also willfully made statements that, in context, encouraged — and foreseeably resulted in — lawless action at the Capitol, such as: “if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.” 

Thus incited by President Trump, members of the crowd he had addressed, in an attempt to, among other objectives, interfere with the Joint Session’s solemn constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 Presidential election, unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress, the Vice President, and Congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive and seditious acts.

President Trump’s conduct on January 6, 2021, followed his prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 Presidential election. Those prior efforts included a phone call on January 2, 2021, during which President Trump urged the secretary of state of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to overturn the Georgia Presidential election results and threatened Secretary Raffensperger if he failed to do so.

In all this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government. He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government. He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore, Donald John Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law.  

-from the Impeachment of Donald J. Trump

Donald J. Trump thus warrants "disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States," especially since the corrupt and cowardly Republican Senate did not impeach him twice. Most importantly, Trump must be indicted, along with his Republican henchmen, tried in a court of law and imprisoned for both treason and sedition. 

-Glen Brown