Former US President Donald Trump was brought before Judge Jonathan Goodman of Miami Federal Court on Tuesday afternoon, where he was formally arrested and charged with, among other things, illegally keeping secret documents. at his private residence in Mar-a-Lago after his electoral defeat and his departure from the White House in 2021.
Through the voice of his lawyers, he pleaded not guilty to 37 charges brought against him, before being released.
This is the second indictment in two months for the populist, after he appeared before a New York Court judge last April for a story of a bribe paid to silence a witness in a sex story. . The new legal procedure is also a first in the history of the United States, where never, in 247 years, has a president or ex-president been exposed to criminal charges.
“The charges against Donald Trump are not to be taken lightly since he is accused of having intentionally, recklessly and illegally kept documents at Mar-a-Lago that could compromise military plans, nuclear weapons, threaten national security, endangering the lives of military personnel and human intelligence sources, but also severing relations between the United States and other countries, said in an interview with the Duty political scientist Alain Sanders of Saint Peter’s University in New Jersey. These are very serious accusations for anyone, but become even more so when they target the highest official in the United States, who has an obligation to protect and defend the country and the American Constitution. »
In the United States, a law obliges presidents to turn over all their e-mails, all their letters and all other working documents to the National Archives when their mandate ends. Another law prohibits them from keeping secret documents in unauthorized and unsecured places.
However, the special counsel of the Department of Justice, Jack Smith, responsible for the file, established that Donald Trump had violated several laws, including that on espionage, by having kept secret information after leaving office. He also shared this information with people who did not have the required security clearances, ordered an assistant to move boxes of documents to conceal them, and suggested that his lawyer hide or destroy documents, or even pretend wrongly that he had handed over all the remaining documents in his possession.
“The United States has never been faced with such a situation, that of a former president accused of criminal charges who is also a candidate for re-election,” said Mr. Sanders. Donald Trump was the first Republican to enter the race for his party’s nomination, last November, for the 2024 presidential election. He is currently leading the race, facing a dozen candidates, still ahead of his most serious rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
“The Republican Party, but also the Democratic Party, therefore now finds itself in unknown territory as to how to react and especially how to campaign in such a context, since there is no political precedent to study or follow. about it,” says Sanders.
Loss of popularity?
Donald Trump’s indictment on Tuesday was played out amid relatively calm around the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. Courthouse in downtown Miami, where a handful of opponents and supporters of the former president s were reunited, reported the New York Times. Despite the calls to demonstrate launched in the last few days by the ex-president and several members of his bodyguard, the local authorities claimed not to have had to deal with violent acts.
Donald Trump remains still and always very popular with the Republican electorate, 81% of whom believe that he is the victim of a political campaign aimed at destabilizing him, according to a probe launched by Ipsos on behalf of Reuters and whose the results were released on Tuesday. 43% still and always make him their favorite candidate to face Joe Biden in 2024, far ahead of Ron DeSantis (22%). For now.
“No party really knows how the public will react and, above all, will vote in several months, during the primary elections [qui débutent en février prochain] and general elections [qui vont se tenir en novembre 2024] “, says Alain Sanders, joined in Jersey City. “If Trump’s opponents manage to focus on the issue of his accountability, however, Trump could face significant headwinds. »
On Tuesday, on CNN, Donald Trump’s ex-press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, said her former boss should be “dejected” by this new charge. “He’s absolutely discouraged,” she said. He doesn’t want to be arrested… He doesn’t like it. He thinks it’s not elegant. He thinks it takes away some of his power. But Trump being Trump, he’s going to double, triple the bet. He’s going to raise funds for this case. He will play the victim. »
Since last week and the announcement of his indictment, Donald Trump and his team have multiplied appeals for donations to counter the attack of the “deep state” against him – a reference to a conspiracy theory which the populist has since abused 2016. On Tuesday evening, the billionaire returned to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he had been for the past few days, to hold a political rally there. The evening continued with a fundraiser targeting donors contributing more than $100,000 to his campaign at a “candlelight dinner”.
Donald Trump, however, is not at the end of his sentences after his indictment in New York in April and that of Tuesday in Miami. He is still in the crosshairs of American justice after the congressional committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 recommended that charges be brought against him for “calling for insurrection”. That day, he launched his supporters against the dome of American democracy in an attempt to have the results of the 2020 presidential election annulled, granting victory to Joe Biden.
Georgia justice could also bring charges against him after he sought to rig the 2020 election results in his favor in this southern state, which fell into the hands of the Democrats at the end of the billionaire’s first and only term. .
With Agence France-Presse