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WASHINGTON, June 12 (AP) – Donald Trump and his allies are stepping up efforts to undermine the criminal case against him and spark protests as the former president prepares to appear in a history-making federal court this week, Dozens of felony counts against him accuse him of illegal hoarding of classified information.
Trump’s appearance in Miami on Tuesday afternoon will be the second time in months that he has faced a judge on criminal charges. But unlike the New York case, which some legal analysts have derided as relatively insignificant, the Justice Department’s first indictment of the former president involves what prosecutors say is an act of endangering national security and involves Espionage Act charges that could carry a heavy sentence if convicted. punishment.
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Ahead of the arraignment, Trump tightened his rhetoric against the Justice Department special counsel who filed the case, calling Jack Smith “unhinged” and his team of prosecutors a “thug” for repeating his claims without any evidence. It is said that he is politically persecuted.
He called on his supporters to join a planned protest Tuesday at a Miami courthouse, where he will face charges.
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“Our country needs strength right now,” Trump told longtime friend and adviser Roger Stone in an interview on WABC radio. “They have to go out, they have to protest peacefully. They have to go out.”
“Look, our country has to protest. We’ve got a lot to protest. We’ve lost everything,” he continued.
He also said he would not drop out of the 2024 race under “under any circumstances,” which has so far dominated the Republican primary.
Other Trump supporters have defended him with similar language, including Arizona’s defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who bluntly said over the weekend that if prosecutors “want to get close to President Trump,” they would “Will have to go” passed me, and 75 million Americans like me. Most of us are licensed members of the NRA. “
Trump’s protest calls echoed his exhortations before his court appearance in New York last April, where he faced charges over hush money payments during the 2016 presidential campaign, though he complained that those who were there were “too far apart” “No one knows about them,” as in that case, he plans to address supporters in a Tuesday night speech within hours of the court opening.
Trump is expected to leave for Miami on Monday and spend the rest of the day in Florida, huddled with advisers. After his court appearance, he will return to New Jersey, where he plans to hold a news conference to publicly address the charges.
Trump supporters also plan to load buses from other parts of Florida to Miami, raising concerns among law enforcement officials who are bracing for possible unrest around the courthouse. Mayor Francis Suarez is expected to announce more details about the preparations on Monday, although there was little police presence near the courthouse until Sunday afternoon and barricades had not been erected nearby, in stark contrast to the protests planned by New York City police several days ago. weeks, even without violence in the end.
The Justice Department unsealed an indictment on Friday charging Trump with 37 felonies, 31 of which relate to knowingly withholding national defense information. Other charges include conspiracy to obstruct and false statements.
The indictment alleges that after Trump left the White House in January 2021, he deliberately retained hundreds of classified documents that he brought from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. The material he stored included bathrooms, ballrooms, bedrooms and showers, and included material about U.S. and foreign governments’ nuclear programs, defense and weapons capabilities, and the Pentagon’s “plans of attack,” the indictment said. Prosecutors said the information, if leaked, could have put members of the military, classified human resources and intelligence-gathering methods at risk.
Among other things, he tried to thwart the government’s efforts to recover the documents, prosecutors said, including instructing Walt Nauta, a personal aide charged with Trump, to move boxes to hide them and to report to himself Lawyers advised him to hide or destroy documents the Justice Department subpoena seeks.
Some Republicans have sought to highlight Trump’s case of unfair treatment, citing the Justice Department’s decision in 2016 not to charge Democrat Hillary Clinton with handling classified information through a private email server she relied on as secretary of state. But those arguments ignore that FBI investigators found no evidence that Clinton or her aides knowingly violated laws on classified information or obstructed the investigation.
On Sunday, Republican Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire told CBS News in an interview that there were “huge discrepancies” between the two surveys but “must be explained to the American people.”
Earlier this month, the Justice Department notified former Vice President Mike Pence that charges would not be filed against him for storing classified documents at his Indiana home. A separate investigation by the Justice Department’s special counsel into the discovery of classified records at President Joe Biden’s home and office continues, though as in the Clinton case, no evidence of obstruction or willful violations has surfaced.
Trump’s own former attorney general, William Barr, made a grim prediction about Trump’s fate, saying on Fox News that Trump had no authority to keep such sensitive records.
“Even if it’s half true,” Barr said of the allegations in the indictment, “then he’s screwed. I mean, it’s beautiful — it’s a very detailed indictment and it’s very, Abhorrent. The idea of ​​painting Trump as a victim here – a victim of a witch hunt is absurd.” (AP)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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