Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted former President Donald Trump this Friday. Jose Luis Magana (AP)
The laws protecting information related to national defense “are fundamental to the security of the United States and must be respected,” said Jack Smith, the special counsel who has indicted former President Donald Trump on 37 counts, during an appearance Friday in Washington. in connection with boxes of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, his private residence in Florida. “Violations of these laws endanger our country,” he said.
The prosecutor didn’t take the questions as concise as expected in a statement: He spoke at the Justice Department for barely two and a half minutes before leaving. “We only have one version of the laws in this country, and those laws apply to everyone.” The application of those laws and the collection of data will determine the outcome of an investigation. Nothing more and nothing less,” he said.
With his testimony, Smith wanted to respond to the criticism expressed by Trump when he announced on social networks last night that charges had been brought against him. With the usual capital letters, exclamations and outbursts, he had accused the officers investigating him of corruption and partisanship. “There is no equality before justice, there is no equal application of the law. There is one set of rules for Democrats, another for Donald Trump and the conservatives and everyone who moves around them in particular. “Our JUDICIAL SYSTEM has been ARMED,” the former president wrote on Truth Social, the network he founded after being kicked off Twitter after leaving the White House.
Smith has defended the rigor with which the investigation commissioned by Justice Department Chief Merrick Garland last year was conducted. “The prosecutors in my office are among the most capable and experienced in the department,” he said. “You have investigated this case to the highest standards and will continue to do so.”
He also recalled that the accused — he never named the former president — must benefit from the presumption of innocence until proven guilty in the trial, which is scheduled to begin next Tuesday at 3:00 p.m. local time in a Miami court time (21:00 Spanish Peninsula Time). His office will try to ensure that the trial proceeds expeditiously, “in a manner consistent with the public interest and the rights of the accused,” he has indicated.
Shortly before his appearance, the Justice Department had published the 49-page indictment against the former president. A total of 37 charges related to seven federal crimes. Most involve the willful withholding of information that compromises national defenses, in violation of the Espionage Act. The rest includes conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding of documents, unauthorized concealment of a document, concealment of a document in the course of an investigation, and misrepresentation.
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All the charges relate to boxes of classified documents that had been stored in Mar-a-Lago without official authorization since Trump’s invasion of the White House in January 2021, until FBI agents raided the mansion in August 2021. 2022. The attached photos of the complaints show that the boxes were kept in the most random of places: in a ballroom, in a bedroom and even in a bathroom next to a shower.
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