United States federal prosecutors notified Donald Trump in recent days that he is under investigation in relation to the handling of classified documents; that is to say, for hiding hundreds of secret papers in his residence in Mar-a-Lago, as reported on Wednesday by the ABC network and later by other news outlets in the country.
The jurists and analysts who collaborate in these media see the processing of this formal communication as the possible prelude to a criminal charge against the former president of the nation.
As soon as he left the White House after losing the 2020 elections, the former president transferred hundreds of documents marked “confidential”, “secret” and “top secret” to his Florida mansion and private club. The institution of National Archives, realizing that these papers were missing, required him several times to deliver them. But he only gave a part.
The concealment of a portion of the classified records led the Department of Justice and the US Attorney General’s Office to order the entry and search of the Mar-a-Lago house through a high-profile FBI operation last August. The agents found dozens of papers whose existence Trump and his lawyers had denied until the previous month.
Both in the order for that search and in subsequent documents presented before a court, the prosecutors indicated “indications” of different crimes in which the ex-president could incur with his concealment; especially that of obstruction of justice, without ruling out others of destruction of official documents and violations of the Espionage Law.
After months of investigations by two grand juries, one in Washington and one in Florida and both under the direction of the special prosecutor appointed for this case and that of the assault on the Capitol, Jack Smith, Trump’s lawyers met with Department officials of Justice earlier this week: another possible sign that an indictment would be forthcoming.
Last November, Donald Trump formalized his candidacy for re-election in the 2024 presidential elections. The accusations against the FBI and the Prosecutor’s Office for mounting different investigations to use justice as a “political weapon” constitute one of his electoral arguments, in this case in the code of victimhood.
The former president was recently indicted on criminal charges of forgery linked to the bribery of porn actress Stormy Daniels. And he has just been convicted of sexual assault and defamation of the writer Jean Carroll, in this case in civil jurisdiction.
Under US law, no indictment or conviction can, however, prevent Trump from running in the presidential election. Only an invocation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution by Congress, in connection with a rebellion, could prevent him from holding any public office.
