Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP/dpa
Secret documents found with Donald Trump are said to have kept the former president open, according to US media reports. He also had boxes with documents removed – at a suspicious time.
no time? Blue News sums it up
- The investigation into allegations against Donald Trump of theft and improper safekeeping of classified documents continues.
- In addition, the former president is being investigated for obstruction of justice. Above all, there must be new incriminating findings.
- According to a report by The Washington Post, Trump is said to have placed the documents in his office and showed them to other people.
- He also had boxes of unknown documents removed just one day before the first documents were to be handed over to the US authorities. These may be other confidential documents.
- In addition, Trump trained his staff to remove documents – even before he received a subpoena for missing documents.
In the investigation of Trump over secret government documents found at his home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, the evidence against the former US president appears to be intensifying.
In June 2022, Trump’s lawyers turned over some classified documents to the authorities. Suspicious that all the documents were in fact there, the FBI examined Trump’s possessions in August and found several other documents, some of which are of the highest level of classified.
So the Republican must answer charges of improper theft and keeping of confidential documents, illegal concealment of government documents, and obstruction of justice.
Placing confidential documents visible in the office
Washington Post mentioned Now about several developments in the investigation that are likely to put additional pressure on Trump. The newspaper relies on anonymous sources from the investigative environment.
The attorney general’s office is said to have collected evidence that Trump temporarily kept some classified documents found with him in a place in his office where they were clearly visible to visitors. He is said to have shown some documents.
Des Weiteren soll Trump Angestellten nur einen Tag, bevor das FBI und Vertreter*innen der Staatsanwaltschaft in Juni nach Mar-a-Lago kamen, um die ersten Dokumente entgegenzunehmen, eine verdächtige Anordnung gegeben haben: Sie sollten Kisten mit mehreren Unterlagen an einen anderen Ort bring.
Trump allegedly removed the documents
According to a lawyer for one of the two employees Trump hired to do the job, his client didn’t know what boxing was. He just helped a Trump staffer get a few boxes into an SUV. He had no reason to assume that the chests had any special content.
Investigators likely don’t know what was in the boxes either. But the suspicious timing of the action leads them to believe that Trump may have been hiding something from the authorities.
Additionally, there are findings indicating that he supposedly had his staff hold a rehearsal in which documents were removed. This is said to have happened even before Trump was informed of the suspicions raised against him by subpoena in May 2022.
Accusation of renewed obstruction of justice
If these suspicions prove correct, Trump will be heavily burdened with allegations of obstruction of justice. This wouldn’t be the first time that a special counsel has found Trump guilty of this crime.
In 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded that the then-president had obstructed investigations into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. However, the suspicion that Trump himself cooperated with the Russian government could not be confirmed.
Dispute about the correct version of documents
There were already media reports about the status of the investigation last week. CNN news channel mentionedalso citing anonymous sources, that the National Archives plans to turn the documents over to Special Counsel Smith.
It would prove that Trump and his advisors already knew during his tenure how to properly issue state government documents.
Just two weeks ago, in an interview with CNN host Caitlan Collins, Trump once again claimed that he acted correctly under the Presidential Records Act: the documents were automatically released when he took them with him. However, according to this law, the management of such records is the responsibility of the National Archives.
Biden has also stored classified documents without permission
Trump is not the only US leader with whom he has kept secret government documents. These documents were also found on Vice President Mike Pence and current President Joe Biden.
In March, National Archives officials testified to a House committee that since the Ronald Reagan administration, every U.S. administration had improperly handled classified documents. Reagan was in office from 1981 to 1989.
Yet the Trump, Pence, and Biden cases marked the first time such important documents were so conspicuously missing that the Justice Department had to get involved.
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