(Washington) Donald Trump endangered the “national security” of the United States by keeping American nuclear secrets after his departure from the White House, according to a historic indictment made public on Friday.
The Republican billionaire, who is seeking a second term in 2024, is the subject of 37 charges including “illegal retention of information relating to national security” and “obstructing justice”, according to this document.
He is also accused of perjury and having agreed with his personal assistant Walt Nauta – also prosecuted – to hide documents requested by the federal police, the FBI.
Donald Trump announced Thursday that he had been indicted by federal justice for his management of the White House archives, a first for a former president, and that he was summoned to court in Miami on Tuesday.
“I am innocent,” he proclaimed, presenting himself as the victim of a plot orchestrated by his Democratic opponents.
The nature of the lawsuits had been described by his lawyer, but the court file remained under seal, the Department of Justice observing absolute silence.
Democratic President Joe Biden, also in the running for the 2024 ballot, took care to ensure on Friday that he would not be in contact with Attorney General Merrick Garland in this very sensitive file.
“I haven’t spoken to him at all and I won’t speak to him. And I have no comment on that,” he replied to a reporter.
” In the shower ”
In the United States, a law requires presidents to send all their emails, letters and other working documents to the national archives. Another, on espionage, prohibits keeping state secrets in unauthorized and unsecured places.
In January 2021, when he left the White House to settle in his luxurious Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Donald Trump had however taken away dozens of boxes full of files.
A year later, after several reminders, he agreed to return 15 boxes containing nearly 200 classified documents.
The federal police, however, estimated that he had not returned everything and still kept a lot in his club in Palm Beach. FBI agents had carried out a spectacular search there on August 8 and had seized around thirty other boxes, containing 11,000 documents.
PHOTO US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
This undated image released by the US Department of Justice shows a photo attached as evidence to a court filing by the Southern District of Florida Court, of documents allegedly seized at Mar-a-Lago spread out on a carpet.
According to the indictment, classified documents were found “in a ballroom”, but also “in a bathroom, in the shower”, or even in “an office” or “a bedroom”. .
They “included information on the defense capabilities of the United States and foreign countries”, “on American nuclear programs” and “on potential vulnerabilities in the event of an attack on the United States and its allies”.
Their potential “dissemination would have endangered the national security of the United States, their international relations”, adds special prosecutor Jack Smith, appointed last November to oversee the investigation independently.
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Another special prosecutor is investigating in parallel classified documents found earlier this year in a former office and at the home of Democratic President Joe Biden by his lawyers.
These embarrassing finds, along with others from ex-Vice President Mike Pence, allowed Donald Trump to downplay the seriousness of his conduct, even though Joe Biden has always cooperated with justice, voluntarily returning the documents, in much smaller numbers.
For now, Republicans are closing ranks around Donald Trump, including his rivals for the party’s presidential nomination, which he is well ahead of.
The same solidarity was manifested in April, when the justice of the State of New York had also indicted him, for accounting fraud this time, as part of a payment in 2016 to an actress of X films so that she conceals an alleged affair.
Donald Trump’s setbacks will probably not stop there. A Georgia prosecutor must announce by September the result of her months-long investigation into the pressure he exerted to try to change the result of the 2020 presidential election.
And prosecutor Jack Smith, who has during his career notably prosecuted perpetrators of war crimes in Kosovo, is still investigating Donald Trump’s role in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.