Round 2: Trump Indicted For The Second Time In Ten Weeks, Will Be Arrested And Charged Next Tuesday (The Day Before His Birthday!)
He will be charged on seven counts, including violation of the Espionage Act (willfully retaining national defense secrets), making false statements, and conspiracy to obstruction justice.
UPDATE!
The exact nature of the seven-count indictment is unclear because it remains under seal . . .
At least some of the counts filed in federal district court in Miami by the office of special counsel Jack Smith include the willful retention of national defense information, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to obstruct, false statements and concealment under title 18 of the US criminal code, the person [familiar with the matter] said.
Speaking on CNN, Trump lawyer Jim Trusty confirmed the charges include conspiracy, false statements, obstruction of justice, and illegally retaining classified documents under the Espionage Act. . . .
Investigators seized roughly 13,000 documents from Mar-a-Lago nearly a year ago.
Yes, an attorney for the biggest liar in history is called Trusty — you can’t make this shit up.
Former president Donald Trump has been criminally charged in connection with the discovery that hundreds of classified documents were taken to his Mar-a-Lago home after he left the White House — and more than 100 remained there even after officials issued a subpoena demanding their return. The extraordinary decision by the U.S. Department of Justice and special counsel Jack Smith to charge a former president — who is again seeking the Republican presidential nomination — follows an investigation that stretched more than a year and included an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home and private club, in August. . . .
Several Trump advisers confirmed the charges. Trump, who is the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said he has been summoned to appear in federal court in Miami on Tuesday at 3 p.m.
The indictment is the second for Trump since March, when he was charged in New York City with falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments. He has pleaded not guilty in that case.
The former president is also under investigation for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Smith is conducting a federal probe of those matters, and the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., is leading a separate, state-level investigation.
New York Times:
The Justice Department took the legally and politically momentous step of lodging federal criminal charges against former President Donald J. Trump . . .
The indictment, filed in Federal District Court in Miami, is the first time in American history a former president has faced federal charges. It puts the nation in an extraordinary position, given Mr. Trump’s status not only as a onetime chief executive but also as the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination to face President Biden, whose administration will now be seeking to convict his potential rival.
Mr. Trump was charged with a total of seven counts, including willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements and an obstruction of justice conspiracy, according to people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Trump is expected to surrender himself to authorities in Miami on Tuesday, according to a person close to him and his own post on Truth Social.
The indictment, filed by the office of the special counsel Jack Smith, came about two months after local prosecutors in New York filed more than 30 felony charges against Mr. Trump in a case connected to a hush money payment to a porn star in advance of the 2016 election.
Mr. Smith is also investigating Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging efforts to retain power after his election loss in 2020, and how those efforts led to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
Public filings in the documents case have painted a picture of Mr. Trump repeatedly stonewalling efforts by both the National Archives and Records Administration and the Justice Department to retrieve the trove of hundreds of sensitive government records that the former president took with him from the White House and kept mostly at his private club and residence in Florida, Mar-a-Lago.
While the nature of a few of the documents found in Mr. Trump’s possession is known — he had held onto letters from the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, for example — it remains unclear what other classified materials were found at Mar-a-Lago and what national security damage his possession of them caused, if any.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly characterized the investigation as a politically motivated witch hunt, and in recent weeks his lawyers have sought to raise what they say are issues of prosecutorial misconduct.
Here’s what to know:
The indictment reaches back to the end of Mr. Trump’s term in January 2021, when the documents — many of which were said to be in the White House residence — were packed in boxes along with clothes, gifts, photos and other material, and shipped by the General Services Administration to Mar–a-Lago.
After lengthy efforts by the National Archives throughout much of 2021 to get Mr. Trump to turn over the material he had taken with him — considered government property under the Presidential Records Act — Mr. Trump turned over 15 boxes of material in January 2022. The boxes turned out to contain highly sensitive material with classified markings, prompting a Justice Department investigation.
Last August, federal agents descended on Mar-a-Lago to conduct an extraordinary search that turned up material that Mr. Trump had failed to turn over in response to a subpoena months earlier demanding the return of any classified documents still in his possession.
The Justice Department has repeatedly questioned Mr. Trump’s level of cooperation with the efforts to recover the documents, saying that it had recovered more than 100 documents containing classified markings even after an attestation by one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers that a “diligent search” by his legal team had not turned up any further materials.
Mr. Trump still faces other open criminal investigations. They include Mr. Smith’s inquiry into Mr. Trump’s efforts to hold onto power following his election loss — and how they led to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol — and an investigation by a prosecutor in Georgia into his attempts to reverse his 2020 election loss in that vital swing state. Mr. Trump is scheduled to go on trial in Manhattan next March after he was charged in connection with a hush-money payment to a porn star.
President Trump is 76 years old. If the Department of Justice gets its way, he will die in federal prison.
Here is what Trump posted to Troth Senchal:
Trump knows everything. He has inside information on precisely how thick the door of Biden’s garage is and how many hours a day that door is closed, he knows Biden’s secret hiding places where there are thousands of boxes of stolen documents. Plus he knows exactly how many boxes are stashed away at the University of Delaware. Why hasn’t he called the cops? He wants to see Biden in handcuffs. This seems like a simple way to make that happen.
A whiny crybaby plays air accordian for four minutes:
I AM AN INNOCENT MAN. THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION IS TOTALLY CORRUPT. THIS IS ELECTION INTERFERENCE & A CONTINUATION OF THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!
The Department of Justice should have waited one additional day and scheduled Trump’s arrest and charges for next Wednesday — which is his 77th birthday.
A few tweets from the Cult:
Trump’s attorney Alina Habba: “I’m ashamed to be a lawyer. I’m ashamed this is the state of our country...It is Russia third-world stuff, and it should not be happening.”
I am also ashamed you’re a lawyer.
Additional Good News: The world’s supply of oxygen is no longer being wasted on Pat Robertson, a long-time grifting racist homophobic misogynistic piece of dog shit motherfucker. . . . Why can’t hell be real?
Happy Indictment Day!