The former US president, who is a candidate to run again in the 2024 election, was charged in an indictment unsealed in Florida federal court on Friday.
The 37 counts against him include violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice conspiracy and false statements.
National security law experts were struck by the breadth of evidence in the indictment which includes documents, photos, text messages, audio and witness statements. They said this made a strong case for prosecutors’ allegation that Trump illegally took the documents and then tried to cover it up.
“The details are pretty shocking in terms of the carelessness with which these documents were handled, and the concerted effort to keep them out of the hands of the FBI,” said Elizabeth Goitein, a national security law expert at the Brennan Center for Justice.
Trump’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Trump has proclaimed his innocence and called the case a “witch hunt” orchestrated by political enemies.”There was no crime, except for what the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation have been doing against me for years,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform on Friday.Trump’s greatest peril could lie in the conspiracy to obstruct justice charges, which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Coverup worse than crime, say experts
Legal experts said the evidence appears to show that Trump was aware he had documents in his possession that were subject to a subpoena but refused to turn them over and encouraged his lawyers to mislead the FBI.
“That’s about as clear a case of obstruction as you could imagine,” said Clark Neily, a legal expert at the conservative Cato Institute. Obstruction of justice is a particularly difficult charge to defend against, attorney Mark MacDougall said.
“It offends people. Hiding things from a lawful legal process. Most people understand why that’s a crime,” he said. Legal experts said Trump’s alleged years-long effort to conceal documents was likely a major factor in special counsel Jack Smith’s decision to indict him. During the investigation, Trump’s lawyers told the FBI that they had turned over all classified documents in their possession, which was false. They deny intentionally misleading investigators. “This is a situation where the coverup is worse than the crime,” the Brennan Center’s Goitein said. “If he had only been negligent, no charges would have been brought.”
Conspiracy element
The conspiracy element makes the obstruction charges far more serious, and all prosecutors must prove is that Trump worked with another person to try to hinder the investigation, regardless of whether they succeeded. Cato’s Neily said that based on his reading of the indictment, prosecutors likely have many witnesses who have given them similar accounts of Trump’s efforts.
Trump has claimed he declassified the documents before taking them. That assertion is undercut by a taped conversation cited in the indictment, which said Trump showed a secret document to several people and said that he “could have declassified it” as president but did not. Prosecutors charged Trump under the Espionage Act, a World War I-era law that predates classification and criminalises only the unauthorised retention of “national defence information.” National defence information does not need to be classified to be covered by that law, security law experts said.
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