The former US President has been charged with 37 charges for taking thousands of documents, some of them confidential, with him when he left the White House.
The answer. On Saturday, June 10, Donald Trump castigated the American justice system as “corrupt” in his first public speeches since his indictment by federal judges the previous day. An unprecedented fact for a former American president, with uncertain implications for the 2024 Republican primary.
The former real estate magnate faces 37 charges for taking thousands of documents with him when he left the White House, some of which were confidential when he should have entrusted them to the national archives, and then refusing to release most of them to return it despite warnings from the FBI.
“You’re dealing with crazy people”
Donald Trump, who has consistently reiterated that he is the victim of political intrigue, attended two Republican conventions in the US Southeast on Saturday, first in Georgia and then in North Carolina, and fought off what he called a unfair legal attack on him . “You’re dealing with frenzied lunatics,” the former president said in Greensboro, North Carolina. “The baseless charges against me by the Biden administration’s instrumental Department of Justice will rank among the most horrific abuses of power in our country’s history,” he said.
Earlier in Columbus, Georgia, Donald Trump told the crowd that he was the target of lawsuits over his bid for a second term in the White House. “That’s why they do it. If I wasn’t (a candidate for a new presidential term), there would be no witch hunts, there would be no indictments,” he argued to his supporters.
Both rallies came just three days before he appeared in federal court in Miami. He is accused of endangering United States national security by storing confidential documents, including military and nuclear secrets, as he left the White House.
The prosecutor responsible for the investigation described himself as “disturbed”
This indictment, the second in two months after the New York City judiciary’s first indictment in April for accounting fraud, paves the way for a 2024 presidential election like no other, in which the outgoing Democratic president’s Justice Department is suing the Republican primary favorite.
Donald Trump had already reacted to the announcement of his indictment with a series of publications on his network Truth Social and described the special counsel Jack Smith responsible for the investigation as “disturbed”. The candidate had also denounced election interference allegedly orchestrated by his rival Joe Biden. The latter said he had “not spoken” to his justice minister on the matter.