DONALD TRUMP HAS become the first former president in US history to face federal criminal charges.
This comes less than three months after he was charged in New York with 34 counts of falsifying business records.
Here is a look at the new charges, the special counsel’s investigation and how likely this is to hit his fresh presidental bid.
Trump has been charged with seven counts related to the mishandling of classified documents, sources have said.
Trump’s lawyer Jim Trusty told CNN that his client has been indicted on seven charges including the willful retention of documents in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements, obstruction of justice and a count of conspiracy.
Though the precise details of the charges were not immediately clear, people familiar with the matter told The New York Times the conspiracy charge was related to obstruction of justice.
Trump, on his Truth Social app, called it “a DARK DAY for the United States of America”.
In a video post, he said, “I’m innocent and we will prove that very, very soundly and hopefully very quickly”.
Within 20 minutes of breaking the news, his 2024 presidential campaign sent out a fundraising missive telling his followers he had been indicted and asking for financial support.
The US Justice Department has not confirmed the indictment, and any charges have not been publicly filed.
Trump said he had been summoned to appear in court on Tuesday afternoon in Miami.
Trump was already the first former or sitting president to be charged with a crime – in his case over election-eve hush money payments to a porn star who said she had an affair with him.
That indictment was handed down 30 March by a grand jury in Manhattan on charges related to a hush money case stemming from the 2016 election.
When he was charged by the Manhattan district attorney in the New York case, Trump surrendered to authorities, where he was booked behind closed doors and appeared in the courtroom, sitting with his lawyers at the defence table.
Officials with the National Archives and Records Administration reached out to representatives for Trump in spring 2021 when they realised that important material from his time in office was missing from their collection.
According to the Presidential Records Act, White House documents are considered property of the US government and must be preserved.
A Trump representative told the National Archives in December 2021 that presidential records had been found at Mar-a-Lago.
In January 2022, the National Archives retrieved 15 boxes of documents from Trump’s Florida home, later telling Justice Department officials that they contained “a lot” of classified material.
That May, the FBI and Justice Department issued a subpoena for remaining classified documents in Trump’s possession. Investigators who went to visit the property weeks later to collect the records were given roughly three dozen documents and a sworn statement from Trump’s lawyers attesting that the requested information had been returned.
But that assertion turned out to be false. With a search warrant, federal officials returned to Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 and seized more than 33 boxes and containers totaling 11,000 documents from a storage room and an office, including 100 classified documents.
In all, roughly 300 documents with classification markings — including some at the top-secret level — have been recovered from Trump since he left office in January 2021.
Last year, US attorney general Merrick Garland picked Jack Smith, a veteran war crimes prosecutor with a background in public corruption probes, to lead investigations into the presence of classified documents at Trump’s Florida estate, as well as key aspects of a separate probe involving the 6 January 2021 insurrection and efforts to undo the 2020 election.
Smith’s appointment was a recognition by Garland of the politics involved in an investigation into a former president and current White House candidate. Garland himself was selected by US President Joe Biden, whom Trump is seeking to challenge for the White House in 2024.
Special counsels are appointed in cases in which the Justice Department perceives itself as having a conflict or where it is deemed to be in the public interest to have someone outside the government come in and take responsibility for a matter.
According to the Code of Federal Regulations, a special counsel must have “a reputation for integrity and impartial decision-making,” as well as “an informed understanding of the criminal law and Department of Justice policies”.
It remains unclear what the immediate and long-term political consequences will be for Trump.
However, it seems Trump can – and undoubtedly will – pursue his 2024 White House campaign despite facing criminal charges.
Nothing in the Constitution prevents someone from running for the nation’s highest office while facing charges, and even a conviction would not bar them from serving as president.
The 14th Amendment does prohibit anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding elected office.
The House of Representatives impeached Trump for “incitement of insurrection” for the 6 January 2021 attack on Congress by his supporters, but he was acquitted by the Senate.
A special counsel is currently looking into Trump’s role in the 6 January assault on the US Capitol and the former president could still potentially face charges on that front.
And as the New York case showed, criminal charges have historically been a boost to his fundraising.
The campaign announced that it had raised more than $4 million in the 24 hours after that indictment became public, beating its previous record after the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.
Speaking to The Journal, Boston lawyer and University of Galway law lecturer Larry Donnelly said in the short term, “based on what we’ve seen so far”, this could be a benefit to Trump.
However, he added: “In the long term, I cannot see it being a benefit. I think Trump has … lost the people who decide elections, that is the floating cohort in the middle. I think this development will cement that loss.
“But in the short term, everything else, every other legal problem he’s had has only helped him both to raise money and bolster his support.”
In an analysis today, the BBC noted that at least two people have, in the part, run for president with criminal convictions.
In 1920, socialist candidate Eugene Debs ran for president despite having been convicted of the Espionage Act in connection with a 1918 anti-war speech.
Conspiracist Lyndon LaRouche also ran for the presidency on multiple occasions despite having been convicted of fraud in 1988. One of his presidential bids, in 1992, took place while he was at a federal prison in Minnesota.
Both Debs and LaRouche lost the elections.
Again, as noted above, Trump said he had been summoned to appear in court on Tuesday afternoon in Miami.
The BBC outlined that once Trump’s arrest paperwork is completed, he will be considered under arrest and in custody.
Once the paperwork is processed, the former US president would be arraigned. This means he will hear the charges and enter a plea in court.
Prior to the news breaking of the indictment, University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias told the BBC that Trump’s arrest would likely follow a pattern similar to that of his arrest in April on the hush money charges.
As noted above, at the time Trump surrendered to authorities in New York, where he was booked behind closed doors and appeared in the courtroom, sitting with his lawyers at the defence table.
Tobias told the BBC that he thinks it’s improbable Trump would be handcuffed or have his mugshot taken this time round.
“I think it’s unlikely, given his stature as a former president and the slim likelihood that he’s a flight risk,” Tobias said.
“He’s going to show up to at least negotiate or fight … but I don’t think they need to use those type of procedures,” he said.
CBS News has previously reported that the provision of the Espionage Act for which Trump is under investigation has a maximum 10-year prison sentence. BBC reports that obstruction of justice – also a felony – carries a maximum penalty of 20 years.
It remains unclear at present whether Trump would be convicted, however.
Larry Donnelly said it’s “very hard to say” at this stage whether Trump will actually be convicted.
“I think it’s too early to make any predictions about where this is going to lead, legally,” Donnelly said.
Yes, but the circumstances of their cases are vastly different from the situation involving Trump.
After classified documents were found at Biden’s think tank and Pence’s Indiana home, their lawyers notified authorities and quickly arranged for them to be handed over. They also authorised other searches by federal authorities to search for additional documents.
There is no indication either was aware of the existence of the records before they were found, and no evidence has so far emerged that Biden or Pence sought to conceal the discoveries. That is important because the Justice Department historically looks for willfulness in deciding whether to bring criminal charges.
A special counsel was appointed earlier this year to probe how classified materials ended up at Biden’s Delaware home and former office.
But even if the Justice Department were to find Biden’s case prosecutable on the evidence, its Office of Legal Counsel has concluded that a president is immune from prosecution during his time in office.
As for Pence, the Justice Department informed his legal team earlier this month that it would not be pursuing criminal charges against him over his handling of the documents.
Many of Trump’s challengers for the Republican nomination jumped to his defence on Thursday night after news of the indictment broke.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis accused the Justice Department of political bias in charging the former president.
“The weaponisation of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society,” DeSantis tweeted. “We have for years witnessed an uneven application of the law depending upon political affiliation.”
He questioned why the Justice Department had been “so zealous” in bringing charges against Trump and “so passive” about going after former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton or Biden’s son Hunter.
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said he felt the justice system’s “scales are weighted” based on politics.
“In America, every single person is presumed innocent, not guilty,” Mr Scott said on Fox News, decrying “the weaponization of the Department of Justice against the former president”.
However, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, who called for Trump to drop out of the race after the New York charges were filed, said the federal indictment marked “a sad day for our country” and “reaffirms the need for Donald Trump to respect the office and end his campaign”.
Includes reporting by Press Association and © AFP 2023
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say