(Washington) Lawyers for Donald Trump took part in a meeting at the Justice Department on Monday, where the investigation into his handling of the White House archives appears to be nearing its end, US media reported.
John Rowley, James Trusty and Lindsey Halligan were filmed by CBS as they arrived at the department, but they did not comment.
They pleaded that their client should not be charged for keeping classified documents after he left Washington, according to an anonymous source quoted by the Washington Post.
Several sources familiar with the investigation, quoted by CBS, believe that a decision about a possible indictment is imminent.
“How could the Justice Department indict me when I did nothing and […] Joe Biden is not being prosecuted” for keeping documents related to his term as vice president, Donald Trump wrote at the same time on his Truth Social network.
Contacted by AFP, neither the department nor the lawyers reacted.
Leaving the presidency to settle in his luxurious Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Donald Trump took entire boxes of documents.
However, a law of 1978 obliges any American president to transmit all of his emails, letters and other working documents to the National Archives. Another law, on espionage, prohibits anyone from keeping documents classified as confidential in unauthorized and unsecured places.
In January 2022, Donald Trump returned 15 boxes. After examination, the federal police estimated that he probably kept others in his club in Palm Beach.
FBI agents carried out a spectacular search there on August 8 on the basis of a warrant for “withholding classified documents” and “obstructing a federal investigation”, and seized around thirty other boxes.
Donald Trump, who is seeking a new term in 2024, said he was “persecuted” by justice in the hands of the Democrats.
To quell those charges, Attorney General Merrick Garland in November appointed a special prosecutor, Jack Smith, to oversee that investigation, as well as another into Donald Trump’s role in the Capitol assault.
Another special prosecutor is investigating in parallel documents classified as confidential found at the beginning of the year in a former office and at the home of Democratic President Joe Biden by his lawyers, who sent them themselves to justice.
The Republican billionaire was also charged in April by a New York State court for falsifying accounting documents linked to the payment of $130,000 to a porn star before the 2016 election, in exchange for his silence. on a supposed connection.
It is the first time in American history that a former president has faced criminal charges.