For the second time in a few months, former US President Donald Trump has been charged. This time not by a local prosecutor, as in April in New York, but by a federal grand jury at the instigation of a special prosecutor who conducts various criminal investigations into the former president on behalf of the Justice Department. With this federal criminal complaint, the 2024 election, in which Trump is currently the leading Republican presidential candidate, will take a new turn with unpredictable consequences.
Appearing on CNN Thursday evening, one of Trump’s lawyers stated that his client must report to court in Miami on Tuesday afternoon for arraignment. This case revolves around the possession of state secret documents and the refusal to submit them to the National Archives as outgoing politicians and government officials are required to do.
The prosecutor’s office released the indictment on Friday: the unlawful possession of secret documents in violation of the espionage law, making false statements, and obstruction of justice. Trusty and another lawyer involved in the case were replaced by Trump on Friday, with no explanation other than that this is “a logical time” to bring in other lawyers.
Trump released a video Thursday through his own platform, Truth Social, in which he says: “I am an innocent man.” He also released a statement in which he suspects a series of lawyers at the Public Prosecution Service.
Confidential and top secret
After the lost 2020 election, the former president took several boxes of documents with him when he left the White House. Despite repeated requests from the archive, Trump has consistently refused to return everything. Because the documents would also contain confidential and top-secret material, the judiciary has been called in. In August last year, the FBI searched his home in Florida and indeed found confidential and secret state documents, such as letters from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. This criminal investigation follows from that.
Trump himself has advanced several, sometimes contradictory, arguments for his innocence. He stated that he had ‘declassified’ all the documents and that ‘just by thinking that’. American media recently reported about an audio recording in which Trump can be heard explaining to his company that he has, in his own words, “highest confidential” and “secret” documents about a possible attack on Iran.
This indictment creates a politically precarious situation in which a Republican presidential candidate is prosecuted in the course of the election campaign by the prosecution, which works under the responsibility of a minister of his political opponent in the same election. The White House said on Thursday that it had only heard from the media about the indictment against Trump.
How this indictment will affect Trump’s chances is impossible to predict. The effect of Trump’s arraignment in April was that he rose significantly in the polls against possible Republican rivals and that he received additional financial donations from his supporters.
A version of this article also appeared in the June 10, 2023 newspaper.