Charges have been Filed against former US President Donald Trump

World | June 9, 2023, Friday // 09:58
Bulgaria: Charges have been Filed against former US President Donald Trump

Charges have been filed against former US President Donald Trump, he and his lawyer announced.

He is charged with seven counts of the Espionage Act as part of the investigation led by Special Counsel Jack Smith into possession of classified documents. Among them are: obstruction of justice, knowingly withholding classified documents concerning national defense; destruction or falsification of documentation; conspiracy; concealment scheme, false testimony.

For the first time, a former US president will face charges at the federal level.

The special counsel is investigating how Trump handled the classified documents he took to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after he left the White House in January 2021. He is also investigating whether Trump prevented authorities from retrieving the documents.

Investigators seized more than 10,000 documents from Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida about a year ago. 100 of those documents were marked "secret," although lawyers for the Republican assured that all documents marked in such a way had already been returned to the government. Trump, on the other hand, said that while he was president, he declassified the documents in question, but never presented evidence in this direction, Reuters recalls.

Trump has been subpoenaed to appear in federal court in Miami next Tuesday.

His lawyer has not yet seen the text of the charges. Jim Trusty assured that his client would appear and doubted that Trump would then be detained.

The special counsel and the Department of Justice have not yet made statements on the case. The White House also had no comment.

In April, Trump was indicted for falsifying accounting records. But then the charges were not at the federal level.

Last fall, US Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to lead the investigation against Trump. This came after Trump announced that he was running for president. The purpose of this appointment was to make the investigation independent of the Justice Department from the Biden administration.

Trump announced that he was indicted with the sentence: "The corrupt Biden administration informed my lawyers that I have been indicted, possibly in the fake case with the boxes" and assured that he was innocent. The "boxes" are 15 and contained documents that the National Archives was able to retrieve in January 2022 from Trump's Florida estate. The archive subsequently informed the Department of Justice that they contained a lot of classified material. In May 2022, the FBI and Department of Justice issued a seizure order for the remaining classified documents in Trump's possession. Investigators went to the mansion several weeks later and were handed about three dozen documents, and sworn statements were made to Trump's lawyers that the requested documents had been returned. But these statements turned out to be false. Federal agents returned to Mar-a-Lago in August with a search warrant and seized 33 boxes of a total of 11,000 documents from a warehouse and office. Among them were the 100 classified documents. About 300 documents marked "classified" have been seized from Trump since he left the White House in January 2021.

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