By Satyaki Chakraborty
The indictment of former US president Donald trump by the Federal Grand Jury in Miami on June 8 has imparted a new dimension to the American political scene with the possibility of the right wing Republican mobilizing the warring groups as also the party support base in general in favour of his presidential bid against the president Joe Biden in 2024 elections.
Donald Trump has been indicted for a wide range of criminal felonies surrounding his illegal mishandling and retention of government documents, including secret and sensitive ones, at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Some of the documents he refused to give up were held in violation of the espionage act because they contained information the government says threatened the security of the United States.
The still sealed indictments for which Trump must surrender himself to the authorities in Miami next Tuesday involve seven counts, among them stealing documents that belong to the public, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, espionage, witness tampering and lying to the FBI. Each of the 7 counts is likely to include multiple charges, all of which come on top of his indictment in New York last month for 34 felonies including illegal attempts to influence an election with hush money payments to a porn star. Shortly after the New York indictments a jury also found him guilty of sexually attacking a woman in a New York department store.
If he is found guilty of only some of the serious crimes for which he is now indicted he would face many years in jail. If he wins the Republican nomination for the presidency he could be campaigning with an ankle bracelet attached to his body. But indications are that Donald trump will turn his present crisis into a big opportunity and turn the presidential election into a sort of referendum in his favour campaigning how a leader who wants to make America great, has been humiliated on false charges.
The Special Counsel has not yet filed charges related to Trump’s attempts to hold onto power after he lost the election, including the coup attempt and the attack on the Capitol. Never has a former or sitting U.S. president faced so many criminal charges. His use of the presidency to pile up wealth for himself and his family also involves criminal activity for which he is yet to be charged on any level. Next month he could well be indicted in Georgia, too, for criminal interference in the election. He tried to pressure the state to add votes he had not received to his totals so he could revers his loss in the state. In Georgia also the prosecutor is considering charges related to Trump’s scheme to line up false electors, denying the voters their real choice in the election.
If found guilty of that charge Trump will be in violation of the Espionage Act. The World War I-era Espionage Act treats such refusal, and willingness to give defence information to unauthorized people, as espionage. Defence documents do not have to be classified to make such mishandling, or even the threat of it, illegal.
The June 8 indictment marks the first time in U.S. history an ex-president has been indicted for federal crimes (his prior indictments are for state crimes), especially crimes against the government, and the first time since Richard Nixon, 49 years ago, that indictments were even considered against a president.
And this indictment isn’t the end of Trump’s legal troubles with the feds, even though it marks a major milestone in Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of Trump’s offenses.
For Trump, his campaign plan is now clear. The indictment itself nor a conviction would prevent Trump from running for the Presidential elections and winning the presidency..A trial will take place many months from now. Trump will have no problem in continuing his election campaign.. If he can somehow win the presidential elections in November 2024, the road will be clear to him. As president, he has the powers to stop the proceedings as the justice department is under his authority.
Already, the declared contenders for the Republican presidential nomination Ron Desantis, Mike Pence and Nikki Haley have come out defending Trump and there is groundswell of support among the Republican supporters in favour of their former president. This political mood will act against the other contenders in the campaign and Trump will capitalize on it. Experts feel that Trump’s poll rating will in fact go up among the Republicans and this will have positive impact for Trump even in non-Republican base.
The Justice Department declined to unseal the Florida indictment, or discuss its specifics. It will be unsealed no later than Trump’s appearance for arraignment and a plea in U.S. District Court in Miami, scheduled for 3p.m. on June 13. But Trump and his attorneys received summaries.
Reading from the summary, Trump attorney Jim Trusty said the indictment also includes the lies Trump told to federal probers. And Trusty confirmed the espionage charge.
Trump has repeatedly denied taking federal documents—classified or otherwise–with him to Mar-a-Lago. But he’s also admitted doing so, indirectly. Trump claimed, after he left office, that he could unilaterally declassify any document, even in his head, thus implying he kept them. When Fox News host Sean Hannity tried to help bail him out by saying on national television, “You would never wilfully remove classified material and take it with you, would you?” Trump incredibly did not take the escape route Hannity was offering him and declared, “Of course I would. I have every right to do that, they belong to me.”
And federal documents appeared in pictures of the 2022 FBI search at Mar-a-Lago. Agents, armed with a warrant, found and photographed documents, many stamped “secret” or “sensitive,” scattered on the floor of an unsecured storage room. They then carted them away. Some 300 were classified.
Before that, Trump had waved one very sensitive military document, a U.S. war plan against Iran, while addressing a crowd at his Bedminster, N.J., golf club six months after leaving the White House. Trump’s speech was filmed. Smith reportedly has the film.
And Trump obstructed justice by blocking the government’s efforts to reclaim those documents, the indictment summary said. The documents were finally recovered when the FBI, at National Archives request, got a subpoena to enter Mar-a-Lago for them. Trump also illegally conspired to move the documents to prevent their recovery by government officials, the summary says.
Indictment of Trump is an historical milestone for the U.S.: The first-ever felony charges against a former Oval Office occupant, much less the current front-runner in the Republican presidential race. (IPA Service)
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