A shock search by the FBI, boxes of top secret documents from the Pentagon or the CIA in a residence open to social events: the affair of the confidential archives of the Trump presidency illustrates the habit of the Republican billionaire, criticized for his lightness towards vis-à-vis state secrets, to shake up rules and conventions.
For supporters of Donald Trump, his indictment is just more proof of the political “witch hunt” carried out to prevent him from winning back the White House in 2024.
But in Washington, where the culture of secrecy is entrenched, the possibility of highly confidential information being mislaid is a nightmare that demands that the former president be taken out of harm’s way.
“The laws that protect national defense information are essential to the safety and security of the United States” and their “violation” puts “our country in danger”, recalled the special prosecutor in charge of the investigation, Jack Smith, inviting the public to read the indictment to measure the “seriousness” of the facts.
Donald Trump, 76, has been charged with 37 counts, including ‘unlawfully withholding national security information’, ‘obstructing justice’ and ‘false testimony’, charges that carry up to 20 years in prison .
For his critics, he could have avoided prosecution if he had simply returned the documents when the National Archives had discovered in May 2021 that some were missing among those handed over by his administration, or after formal requests from the federal police (FBI ).
“Isn’t it better to tell them that we have nothing here,” he instead told one of his lawyers in May 2022, according to the indictment.
“To sum up, the indictment depicts a man who knew what he was doing was wrong and went to great lengths to cover it up. Mr. Trump knew exactly how damaging the discovery of the documents would be. and he wanted them to be destroyed or hidden”, asserts the magazine The Atlantic in a column entitled “The stupidest crimes imaginable”.
When Donald Trump leaves the White House in January 2021, he takes dozens of boxes full of files, photographs, memories, loaded into trucks and shipped to his luxurious Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
However, in the United States, a law obliges presidents to transmit all their emails, letters and other working documents to the National Archives. Another, on espionage, prohibits keeping state secrets in unauthorized and unsecured places.
According to the indictment, the boxes remained stacked here and there, in particular on the stage of a “ballroom”, in a bedroom or an office, before being transported to an accessible “junk room”. of the swimming pool, where certain documents marked with the mention “secret defense” were seen spread out on the ground.
A symbol of disorder and a treat for social media, a photo in the court document shows stacks of boxes behind a toilet in a large bathroom.
In January 2022, after several reminders, Donald Trump agreed to return 15 boxes containing nearly 200 classified documents to the National Archives. Some are stamped with the highest levels of confidentiality.
The FBI is convinced that there are still many left. Donald Trump’s lawyers hand the FBI’s counterintelligence chief an envelope containing everything they — they say — found, but surveillance video will show Mar-a-Lago employees moving boxes of documents from a storage room in the basement.
The federal police ended up launching a spectacular search at Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022, which allowed them to seize around thirty other boxes, or 11,000 documents.
According to the indictment, the latter “included information on the defense capabilities of the United States and foreign countries”, “on American nuclear programs” and “on potential vulnerabilities in the event of an attack on the United States and its allies.
For supporters of Donald Trump, these are minor issues. They point to the fact that since the Mar-a-Lago raid, classified documents have also been discovered in files that Joe Biden took with him in 2017 after the end of his term as vice president, as well as at the home of Mike Pence, who was Donald Trump’s vice president. Both voluntarily reported and handed over the documents.
When he took office in 2017, Donald Trump immediately displayed his contempt for the American intelligence community, willingly playing with the secrets he learned during confidential meetings.
During a meeting in the Oval Office with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, he discussed intelligence from Israel about an Islamic State plot.
Against the advice of his aides, he also posted on Twitter a top-secret reconnaissance photo of an Iranian rocket that had exploded.
According to the indictment, after leaving the White House, Donald Trump also twice showed top-secret military documents to acquaintances at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
10/06/2023 21:05:44 – Washington (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
