The new indictment a federal grand jury returned against former President Donald Trump over his allegedly illegal retention of national security documents after he left the White House in January 2021 is politically motivated, legal experts told The Epoch Times.
While the filing of federal charges against a former U.S. president is itself unprecedented, the indictment is also unique because Trump is currently the leading candidate for the Republican Party’s nomination for president in the 2024 election.
Democrats say the indictment is justified and long overdue, but Republicans say it and other criminal charges pending against Trump constitute interference by Democrats in the upcoming election.
Trump himself said in a four-minute video made public the evening of June 8 that any criminal charges won’t stop him from running to unseat President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
He called the various investigations “election interference.”
“I am an innocent man. I did nothing wrong,” said the former president, who previously handed over 15 boxes of disputed papers to the National Archives.
Trump was impeached twice, and the news was saturated with coverage of the impeachment each time. The first was by the then-Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives in December 2019 on articles charging him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress related to communications with the Ukrainian president.
He was impeached a second time in January 2021, a week before he left office, on an article charging incitement of insurrection related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach that led to an hours-long delay of the congressional certification of the 2020 election. Both times, he was acquitted by the U.S. Senate. Trump was the third president to be impeached, after Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998, both of whom were also acquitted by the Senate.
The legal document charges Trump with 37 felony counts related to his handling of government records at his residence in the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida.
The indictment states that Trump stored classified documents in unauthorized locations at his home, including in his bedroom, a bathroom, and a ballroom. Trump also allegedly shared some of the materials with individuals who lacked security clearances.
“The classified documents Trump stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack,” the indictment reads.
“The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.”
Longtime Trump aide Waltine Nauta, a former sailor in the U.S. Navy, is also accused of crimes in the indictment. Nauta allegedly removed government documents from the White House and helped Trump keep them away from federal officials who demanded their return.
“It’s just amazing, what the Biden administration and its allies are willing to do to ensure that they stay in power and punish their enemies," Curt Levey, an attorney who’s president of the conservative Committee for Justice, said in an interview with The Epoch Times.
“I mean, they are willing to blow up our entire legal system.”
Levey noted that Rubio is “no Trump fan.”
“I think it’s very important to call this what it is: It’s President Biden trying to imprison his likely 2024 opponent ... rather than letting the voters decide” his fate, he said.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and DOJ special counsel Jack Smith both “work for Biden—he could fire them at will anytime he wanted.”
“There is no point in pretending that the Department of Justice is somehow independent or the special prosecutor is independent,” Levey said, referring to Biden’s claim that he wasn’t involved in the investigation into the national security documents.
“I guess the only thing that saves us from being a banana republic and a laughingstock to the rest of the world is the fact that Supreme Court precedent makes it clear that you can’t add conditions—such as not being in prison—to the U.S. Constitution’s qualifications for the presidency.
“So they can’t really stop him from running for president—or for that matter winning—but they’re certainly doing their best to do that. It’s a lot harder to run for president from prison. So they’re certainly doing their best to put their thumb on the scale.”
The bulk of the charges against the former president appears to be for so-called process crimes such as obstruction and making false statements, he said.
“Of course, that’s what the Justice Department is famous for when they don’t have a strong case on the merits,” Levey said.
He also accused the DOJ of applying a double standard to Democratic politicians accused of doing the same thing Trump is accused of.
When Hillary Clinton was accused of illegally having classified government documents on her home computer server, the DOJ used its discretion and decided to not prosecute her, he said.
And nowadays, “we hear nothing about charges against Biden,” who allegedly illegally retained classified government documents after his vice presidency ended in January 2017, according to Levey.
“It’s pretty clear which side the Justice Department is on here,” he said.
The lawyer paraphrased Soviet secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria: “Show me the man; I’ll show you the charges.”
“If you want to put your political opponents in jail, you can always find a nominal reason to do so. Let’s be clear. This is about politics and has nothing to do with the rule of law,” Levey said.
Attorney Paul Jonna, a partner at LiMandri and Jonna, said the charges are part of a larger “witch hunt.”
“My initial thoughts when I hear about this is that you’ve got one of the leading candidates” in next year’s election and his opponent “is basically weaponizing the Department of Justice,” Jonna told The Epoch Times.
“We’ve seen this with this Department of Justice repeatedly now.
“But to me, it’s hard to take seriously. This is basically a witch hunt that we’re seeing right now with this Department of Justice.
“I think the justice system will work properly, and it will be unsuccessful.”
Attorney J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a good government group that focuses on election integrity, questioned the motives of the Biden administration in pursuing the indictment.
“Obviously DOJ is pretty unhinged and cannot be trusted broadly,” Adams, who previously worked as a civil rights lawyer at the Justice Department, told The Epoch Times by email hours before the indictment was made public.
“But sometimes they get it right. I just don’t know enough about the facts here.”
Trump has also been indicted in New York on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with a $130,000 payment in October 2016—a month before that year’s election—that he’s said to have arranged to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. The remittance—characterized by critics as “hush money”—was made in accordance with a nondisclosure agreement she signed in which she vowed to not publicly discuss an alleged affair she had with Trump a decade before. Trump has denied the affair.
Trump said Daniels violated the agreement, and he sued her for defamation. In December 2018, Daniels lost in court and was ordered to pay Trump about $293,000 in attorney’s fees, costs, and sanctions. Later the same month, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for making the 2016 payment that court papers described as an “excessive campaign contribution.”
The former president has denied any wrongdoing in the legal episode. Two other investigations into his conduct are currently ongoing.
Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social that he has been directed to appear in federal court in Miami on June 13 to answer the new charges.
