Trump Says He Has Been Indicted in Classified Documents Probe

Former President Donald Trump appears in court at the Manhattan Criminal Court in New York on April 4, 2023.

Former president Donald Trump said on June 8 that his attorneys that he has been indicted by special counsel Jack Smith in connection to the investigation into the handling of classified documents.

“The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. He went on to the parallel investigation in President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents.

Trump said that he has been summon to appear at the federal courthouse in Miami at 3 p.m. on Tuesday.

“I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States, who received far more votes than any sitting President in the History of our Country, and is currently leading, by far, all Candidates, both Democrat and Republican, in Polls of the 2024 Presidential Election. I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!” Trump wrote.

The action one day after Trump’s lawyers spent about two hours inside the Department of Justice (DOJ) on June 5, apparently addressing their concerns about the way the case has been handled.

His attorneys had requested yesterday’s meeting in a May 23 letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, “to discuss the ongoing injustice” of the special counsel’s investigations of Trump.

Trump’s March 30 indictment on state business records charges in New York already put him in the history books. That case made him the first former U.S. president to be indicted for a felony; he has pleaded not guilty to all 34 charges arising from an attorney’s “hush-money” payment to an adult film actress.

While Trump’s critics maintain that he deserves to be held accountable, he and his supporters contend that he is the victim of politicized persecution. His attackers are trying to play spoiler, they say, blocking Trump’s raging-bull quest to upend Washington’s bureaucracy.

But indicting Trump federally for documents allegations in the midst of an election campaign seems to cross a point-of-no-return for America, some legal observers say. For the first time in U.S. history, the administration of an incumbent president, Joe Biden, is using the machinery of the American justice system to wound his strongest challenger from the opposing party.

“The Democrats’ indictments of Trump for these non-crimes…are part of a lawfare campaign to keep Biden in power,” attorney Mike Davis, founder and president of The Article III Project, which seeks to uphold the Constitution, told The Epoch Times.

Leaks about the pending indictment of Trump surfaced at a crucial time for Biden.  Information is surfacing over then-vice president Biden’s alleged connection to a multimillion-dollar bribe from a Ukrainian business that employed his son, Hunter.

Davis said that Trump’s persecutors are “deflecting from Biden’s own espionage, foreign bribery and corruption, obstruction of justice, and other criminal activities.”

“And these partisan Democrat operatives have crossed the Rubicon,” he said. “In their pursuit of power, they’re tearing apart our country.”

Trump alleges that federal prosecutors tried to bribe an attorney representing a witness and also offered a lawyer a judgeship in the Biden administration if his client would “flip” against Trump. The Department of Justice (DOJ) told The Epoch Times that it would not comment on Trump’s accusations.

More charges could follow in other investigations. Smith and a Georgia prosecutor are also investigating Trump on allegations related to his dispute of the 2020 election results declaring Biden the winner.

At the same time, another special counsel, Robert Hur, has been probing Biden’s handling of records found at several locations, including a locked garage where he stores his Corvette; Biden’s home was not raided but Trump’s was. Another difference: Biden, as a vice president or member of the Senate, would not have had the power to declassify the records that he possessed, Trump has pointed out.

“The corrupt DC Swamp targets who they hate and fear the most!” Trump’s son, Donald Jr., wrote in a June 8 tweet as talk of the looming indictment intensified.

The tweet also highlighted a quote from his father, former president Trump: “If I were going to lose the election, or if I wasn’t running, they wouldn’t even waste their time…This is the greatest witch hunt of all time. This is election interference.” Those words appeared in a Washington Examiner article June 8.

Some political commentators, including NewsMax TV’s Greg Kelly, suggest that corrupt government actors entrapped Trump, purposely setting him up for prosecution as they sought to keep a lid on damning information in documents that Trump ordered declassified just before his presidency ended.

A court record, filed in Florida, where Trump lives, says the government was conducting a criminal investigation about “improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces, as well as the unlawful concealment or removal of government records.”

Under federal law, a person who has “unauthorized possession” of any document that could be used to hurt the United States faces imprisonment of up to 10 years. Other laws also forbid concealing, mutilating, falsifying or destroying certain records; some sections of the law carry a potential 20-year prison term.

Authorities cite The Presidential Records Act of 1978 (PRA), which transferred records of U.S. presidents and vice presidents to public ownership. It also set up new laws that presidents and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) must follow.

The PRA established a new statutory structure for presidents and NARA to manage records from their administrations.

On June 4, former Trump lawyer Timothy Parlatore told NBC’s “Meet The Press” that NARA deviated from its customary procedures that had been used with past outgoing presidents.

Usually, the Government Services Administration (GSA) transfers the records to a facility near the former president’s residence, then allows the president two years to sort out anything that is personal, Parlatore said.

Then the remaining presidential records are returned to NARA. Instead, GSA moved the records to Trump’s home–and demanded that the records be returned immediately to NARA, Parlatore said. That led to a dispute between Trump and NARA. He says the whole thing could have been resolved if NARA had suggested moving the documents to a facility near Trump’s home at Mar-A-Lago, Florida.

Instead, authorities alleged that Trump and his team were being uncooperative, leading to the FBI’s infamous raid of Mar-A-Lago on Aug. 8, 2022, while Trump was away in New York.

Since that date, Davis of the Article III Project, said he has been pointing out that Biden’s DOJ was going to attempt to charge Trump with obstruction and espionage for possessing records that he is entitled to “Trump is allowed to have his presidential records, classified or not; National Defense Information or not, under the Presidential Records Act,” Davis told Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast on June 7.

To charge Trump, the DOJ must “ignore the Presidential Records Act, which has no criminal components,” Davis said.  the president makes the determination, what are presidential records

As he introduced a clip of the Parlatore interview, Kelly remarked, “This was a setup. This was an absolute setup by the National Archives, the Biden administration, all a plot to get Trump.”

Kelly described actions that NARA took to assist other presidents with records. “But for Trump, they just said, ‘You’re gonna have to find some room for it somewhere in your house.’ …They didn’t brief him…They didn’t give him the courtesy and respect so deserves, and it’s such a shame. This is really happening. I feel like it’s ‘The Twilight Zone.’”

Trump has repeatedly railed against the possible indictment on his Truth Social account, just as he had done when rumblings intensified about the New York case.

On June 5, Trump posted an all-capital-letters message about the documents probe on his Truth Social account, incredulous that the DOJ could possibly charge him despite seemingly similar documents issues with past presidents as well as with the current one.

“Joe Biden won’t be charged for anything,” Trump said, despite “the fact that he has 1,850 boxes, much of it classified.” Some of the records date back to Biden’s time as a U.S. senator. In addition, Trump said, both former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Trump’s 2016 election opponent, Hillary Clinton, went unprosecuted despite being found to have sensitive records in less-than-secure conditions.

Trump said that singling him out in this way amounts to “the greatest witch hunt of all time!”

Trump’s railings against Smith date back at least to Jan. 12. Trump called Smith “a Trump-hating thug” who is married to a “serial and open Trump Hater.” In that same post, Trump also alleged that Smith, while he worked as a prosecutor in Europe, “put a high government official in prison because he was a Trump-positive person.” Further, Trump said Smith is “best friends with the craziest Trump haters.”

And, Trump declared at that time: “The boxes scam is a hoax.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-says-he-has-been-indicted-in-classified-documents-probe_5322466.html