Donald Trump will speak Tuesday evening, June 12, from one of his golf courses in New Jersey, after his first appearance in federal court in Miami (Florida), his campaign team announced on Sunday. The former US president, a candidate for the Republican nomination in the race for the White House for 2024, is charged with 37 counts including “illegal retention of information relating to national security”, “obstructing justice” and “false testimony”.
Accusations he disputes: According to relatives of the former far-right president, the documents that the federal justice accuses him of having withheld from the authorities are nothing more than personal “notes” or declassified documents . On Fox News, one of his lawyers Alina Habba confirmed on Sunday that he will plead not guilty in this case, the political consequences of which are difficult to measure for Donald Trump, still favorite in the Republican primary.
According to an ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday, 47% of a sample of 910 Americans polled Friday and Saturday believe the lawsuits in the case are “politically motivated,” compared to 37% who don’t. But at the same time, 61% of respondents believe these lawsuits are “very serious” (42%) or “fairly serious” (19%), including 38% of Republicans.
The former real estate magnate is accused of having, when he left the White House, took away thousands of documents, some of which were confidential, when he should have entrusted them to the National Archives, and of having then refused to return most of it despite requests from the federal police (FBI).
Arguments undermined by the indictment
In this context, the allies of the 76-year-old candidate have redoubled their efforts on television sets to ensure that he had nothing to be ashamed of. “He has every right to hold classified documents that he had declassified,” assured his lawyer Alina Habba. “Those are notes, things he’s allowed to take,” she added.
“The President’s ability to classify and control access to national security information flows from the Constitution (…) He said he declassified this material, he can put it wherever he wants, he can treat as he pleases,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, a close ally, told CNN.
The argument, already put forward by Donald Trump, is undermined by the indictment. We thus learn that in July 2021, the tempestuous billionaire showed four people without secret-defense clearance “a plan of attack” that the Ministry of Defense had prepared for him when he was president. “As president, I could have declassified them (…) now, I can’t anymore, but it’s always about secrets”, says the one who is already no longer, at the time, president of the States States, on an audio recording cited by the court document.
Also according to the indictment, the confidential documents “included information on the defense capabilities of the United States and foreign countries”, “on the American nuclear programs” and “on the potential vulnerabilities in the event of an attack on the United States and its allies”.
“It’s a pretty detailed indictment. And it’s damning,” Donald Trump’s former attorney general Bill Barr, now critical of the former president after being one of his allies, told Fox News. “The idea that the president has total authority to decree that any document is personal is ridiculous,” Barr said.
