Donald Trump accused of putting the United States in danger by keeping top secret documents

Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: MANDEL NGAN / AFP 22:31 p.m., June 09, 2023

Donald Trump endangered the "national security" of the United States by keeping nuclear secrets after his departure from the White House, according to a historic indictment made public Friday. In the United States, "the laws are the same for everyone," said the special prosecutor in charge of the investigation, Jack Smith, revealing this document during a brief televised address. Those that "protect information related to national defense are essential" and "violating them puts our country in danger," he said, asking for a "speedy trial" for the Republican billionaire.

Donald Trump had announced Thursday that he had been indicted by the federal justice for his management of the archives of the White House, a first for a former president, and that he was summoned Tuesday before a court in Miami. "I am innocent," he claimed, presenting himself as the victim of a plot orchestrated by his Democratic opponents to block his way to the White House, which he hopes to win back in 2024. The nature of the prosecution was described by his lawyer, but the Justice Department declined to comment. The indictment was eventually made public. It contains 37 charges, including "unlawful withholding of national security information", "obstruction of justice" and "false testimony".

"Information on the defense capabilities of the United States and foreign countries"

In the United States, a law requires presidents to forward all emails, letters, and other working documents to the National Archives. Another, on espionage, prohibits keeping state secrets in unauthorized and unsecured locations. In January 2021, when he left the White House to settle in his luxurious Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Donald Trump had taken dozens of boxes full of files. According to the indictment, they had remained piled on the stage of a "ballroom", before being transported to an accessible "storage room" of the pool, where some documents marked "secret defense" had been seen spread out on the floor. A photo reproduced in this document shows stacks of boxes behind a toilet in a large bathroom.

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In January 2022, after several reminders, he had agreed to return 15 boxes containing nearly 200 classified documents. The federal police, however, had estimated that he had not returned everything and still kept many in his club in Palm Beach. In May, a subpoena to produce the missing documents was sent to Donald Trump. His lawyers had returned an additional 38 documents. Still convinced that it lacked, FBI agents had carried out a spectacular search at Mar-a-Lago on August 8 and had seized about thirty other boxes, containing 11,000 documents.

According to the indictment, these "included information on the defense capabilities of the United States and foreign countries," "on U.S. nuclear programs" and "on potential vulnerabilities in the event of an attack on the United States and its allies." In addition to Donald Trump, the indictment concerns his former personal assistant, Walt Nauta, accused of moving, at the request of his boss, boxes to hide them.

X movie actress

Another special prosecutor is also investigating classified documents found earlier this year in a former office and home of Democratic President Joe Biden by his lawyers. These embarrassing findings, as well as others in former Vice President Mike Pence, have allowed Donald Trump to minimize the seriousness of his conduct, even though Joe Biden has always cooperated with justice, voluntarily returning the documents, in much smaller numbers. Anxious not to fuel accusations of "political persecution", the Democratic president, who will also seek a second term in 2024, assured Friday that he had "not spoken" about the file with his Minister of Justice, Merrick Garland, and had "no comment".

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For their part, 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 shown in April, when the New York State justice had also indicted him, this time for accounting fraud, as part of a payment in 2016 to an actress of X movies to keep quiet about an alleged affair. Prosecutor Jack Smith, who has prosecuted war crimes in Kosovo during his career, is still investigating Donald Trump's role in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.