Donald Trump, charged with keeping state secrets after leaving the White House, would he have trapped himself? The indictment quotes the ex-president extensively and his statements seem to do him a disservice.
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"No one will be above the law," added Donald Trump.
Special Prosecutor Jack Smith took him at his word on Friday: “The laws are the same for everyone,” he said, revealing the 37 charges brought by federal justice against the 45th president of the United States. United.
Donald Trump is accused of having taken in January 2021 confidential documents likely to jeopardize the security of the United States; to have kept them without any precaution in his luxurious residence in Florida; and then lying so as not to return them.
Since the opening of the investigation, he has used several lines of defense, notably ensuring that the documents had been "automatically declassified" when he left Washington.
But an interview, recorded in July 2021 and cited in the indictment, discredits him on this point.
At the time, he showed people who came to interview him "an attack plan" drawn up at his request by the Pentagon and which, according to American media, targeted Iran.
Stressing that the document was "highly confidential", he said: "As president, I could have declassified them (...) now I can't anymore, but they are still secrets".
- Listen to the meeting Lisée - Mulcair with Jean-François Lisée, former leader of the Parti Québécois and Thomas Mulcair, former leader of the NPD, among other things about Donald Trump, at the microphone of Richard Martineau via QUB radio :
"If we don't play the game?"
The indictment also mentions an exchange, dating from May 2022, between Donald Trump and two of his lawyers.
The ex-president has just received a judicial injunction to return the classified files. “What will happen if we don't respond or if we don't play the game?” he asks his advisers.
“I don't want anyone digging through my boxes,” he adds, according to the notes taken by one of his interlocutors. "Wouldn't it be better to tell them that I have nothing here?"
His lawyers did not follow up and one of them handed over 38 classified documents to federal agents on June 2.
But boxes had been transported to his client's apartments before he began his research, and thousands of pages escaped him.
This time, it is an exchange by text message between a member of the family of Donald Trump and his personal assistant who attests to the maneuver.
"I saw that you put the boxes in the room of POTUS" (abbreviation of "President of the United States", editor's note), wrote this relative, quoted in the indictment.
“I think he wanted to search inside, not take them away,” replied the assistant, Walt Nauta, implying that the instruction had been given to him by his boss.
The federal police will finally recover around thirty boxes in August 2022 during a spectacular search in Mar-a-Lago.
Donald Trump will appear in Florida on Tuesday to be formally notified of the charges against him. He should remain quiet during this hearing, every word can be used against him.
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