An aide to Trump, Walt Nauta, was charged as a co-conspirator with six felony counts. Trump says he is innocent and has decried the criminal case, the second indictment against him in a matter of months, as an attempt by his political opponents to hinder his 2024 campaign. He is expected to make his first court appearance on Tuesday in Miami. Here are key takeaways from the indictment unsealed Friday:

What are the 37 charges?

Trump faces 37 felony counts, including 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information under the Espionage Act. Other charges include: conspiracy to obstruct justice; corruptly concealing a document or record; concealing a document in a federal investigation; and making false statements. Each of the willful retention counts pertains to a specific classified document found at Mar-A-Lago marked ‘SECRET’ or ‘TOP SECRET’.” Topics addressed in the documents include details about US nuclear weapons, the nuclear capabilities of a foreign country and the military activities or capabilities of other countries.

The conspiracy charges deal with Trump’s alleged attempts to hide documents from his lawyer or federal investigators. The false statement charges stem from Trump causing his lawyer to tell the FBI that no more classified documents were at Mar-a-Lago ‘ but then the FBI later found more than 100 documents during an August 2022 search. The most serious charges carry potential prison sentences of up to 20 years each. But judges have discretion and, if convicted, first-time offenders rarely get anywhere near the maximum sentence. Being a former president would also likely be a major consideration in any sentencing.

What is the alleged conspiracy to obstruct justice?

The indictment accuses Trump and Nauta of conspiring to hide the secret documents from the grand jury, which in May 2022 issued a subpoena for him to turn them over. The conspiracy allegation included a suggestion from Trump that has lawyer falsely tell investigators that the former president didn’t have any more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. It also involved moving boxes to hide the secret documents from Trump’s lawyer, and suggesting that Trump’s lawyer hide or destroy documents that investigators were seeking.

The indictment says that, at Trump’s direction, Nauta moved about 64 boxes of documents from a Mar-a-Lago storage room to the former president’s residence in May 2022. He then returned ‘approximately 30 boxes’ to the storage room on June 2, the same day Trump’s legal team came to examine the boxes and search for classified documents to return to the government, the indictment says.

Nauta had a brief phone call with Trump before returning those boxes, the indictment says. Neither Trump nor Nauta told the former president’s lawyers that Nauta had moved any of the storage room contents, the indictment says.

Is Trump accused of sharing classified information?

The indictment alleges that Trump showed classified documents to people who didn’t have security clearances on two occasions. The court papers detail a meeting Trump had in July 2021 with a writer and publisher about an upcoming book. Trump told the pair “look what I found” and showed them what he described as a senior military official’s “plan of attack,” according to an audio recording of that conversation obtained by investigators. Trump acknowledged during that meeting that the document was ‘highly confidential’ and ‘secret information’,” the indictment says. He also says that he could have declassified the document if he was still president.

“Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret,” he said, according to the indictment. A few months later, Trump showed a representative of his political action committee a classified map of a foreign country while discussing a military operation in the country that was not going well, the indictment says. Trump acknowledged that he shouldn’t be showing the map to the person and told him not to get too close, prosecutors allege.

What evidence do prosecutors have? 

In addition to the audio recording, prosecutors also relied upon text messages between Trump employees, photos of boxes of documents stored in various rooms throughout Mar-a-Lago and details about conversations between Trump and his lawyers that were memorialized by one of them. In one conversation with his lawyers, Trump said: “I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes.” Trump also asked one of his lawyers if it would be better ‘if we just told them we don’t have anything here,’ the indictment says.

Photographs in the indictment show boxes stacked on a stage in a ballroom as well as in a bathroom. Another shows boxes that spilled over in a storage room, including a document marked ‘SECRET/REL TO USA, FVEY,’ which means information releasable only to members of the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Where will the case be heard? 

While Trump’s first court appearance on Tuesday is expected to be in front of a magistrate judge in Miami, the case was filed in West Palm Beach, about 70 miles to the north. The case was assigned to Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, who issued rulings favourable to him last year and expressed repeated skepticism of Justice Department positions.

Cannon was broadly criticised last year for granting the Trump legal team’s request for a special master to conduct an independent review of the hundreds of classified documents seized from his Florida property last year. The move, which temporarily halted core aspects of the Justice Department’s investigative work, was overturned months later by a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court.

Source: AP

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The indictment enmeshes the Justice Department in the most politically explosive prosecution in its long history. Its first case against a former president upends a Republican presidential primary that Trump is currently dominating, and any felony charges would raise the prospect of a yearslong prison sentence.

Within 20 minutes of his announcement, Trump, who said he was due in court Tuesday afternoon, had begun fundraising off it for his 2024 presidential campaign. He declared in a video, “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!” and repeated his familiar refrain that the investigation is a “witch hunt.”

The case adds to deepening legal jeopardy for Trump, who has already been indicted in New York and faces additional investigations in Washington and Atlanta that also could lead to criminal charges. As the prosecution moves forward, it will pit Trump’s claims of sweeping executive power against Attorney General Merrick Garland’s oft-stated mantra that no person, including a former commander in chief, should be regarded as above the law.

The indictment arises from a monthslong investigation by special counsel Jack Smith into whether Trump broke the law by holding onto hundreds of documents marked classified at his Palm Beach property, Mar-a-Lago, and whether Trump took steps to obstruct the government’s efforts to recover the records.
Prosecutors have said that Trump took roughly 300 classified documents to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House, including some 100 that were seized by the FBI last August in a search of the home that underscored the gravity of the Justice Department’s investigation.

Trump and his team have long seen the special counsel investigation as far more perilous than the New York matter both politically and legally. Campaign aides had been bracing for the fallout since Trump’s attorneys were notified that he was the target of the investigation, assuming it was not a matter of if charges would be brought, but when.

But it remains unclear what the immediate and long-term political consequences will be for Trump. His first indictment spurred millions of dollars in contributions from angry supporters and didn’t damage Trump in the polls. No matter what, the indictment  and the legal fight that follows — will throw Trump back into the spotlight, sucking attention away from the other candidates who are trying to build momentum in the 2024 presidential race.

Trump has insisted that he was entitled to keep the classified documents when he left the White House, and has also claimed without evidence that he had declassified them. The case is a milestone for a Justice Department that had investigated Trump for years “as president and private citizen”  but had never before charged him with a crime. Garland was appointed by President Joe Biden, who is seeking reelection in 2024.

The former president has long sought to use the mounting legal troubles to his political advantage, complaining on social media and at public events that the cases are being driven by Democratic prosecutors out to hurt his 2024 election campaign. He is likely to rely on that playbook again, reviving his longstanding claims that the Justice Department  which, during his presidency, investigated whether his 2016 campaign had colluded with Russia is somehow weaponized against him.

Among the various state and federal investigations that Trump faces, legal experts “including Trump’s own former attorney general” had long seen the Mar-a-Lago probe as one of the most likely to result in indictment and the one where evidence seemed to favor the government. Court records unsealed last year showed federal investigators believed they had probable cause that multiple crimes had been committed, including the retention of national defense information, destruction of government records and obstruction of an investigation.

Since then, the Justice Department has amassed additional evidence and secured grand jury testimony from people close to Trump, including his own lawyers. The statutes governing the handling of classified records and obstruction are felonies that could carry years in prison in the event of a conviction.

Signs had mounted for weeks that an indictment was near, including a June 5 meeting between Trump’s lawyers and Justice Department officials. After that meeting, Trump said on social media that he anticipated he could be charged, even as he insisted that he had done nothing wrong.

Though the bulk of the investigative work had been handled in Washington, with a grand jury meeting there for months, it recently emerged that prosecutors were presenting evidence before a separate panel in Florida, where many of the alleged acts of obstruction scrutinized by prosecutors “including efforts to move the boxes” took place.

Trump’s legal troubles extend beyond the New York indictment and classified documents case. The special counsel has a separate probe underway focused on efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. And the district attorney in Georgia’s Fulton County is investigating Trump over alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election in that state.

The classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, along with thousands of other unclassified government records, were taken from the White House to the Florida club after Trump left office in January 2021.

The Justice Department has said Trump and his lawyers repeatedly resisted efforts by the National Archives and Records Administration to get the documents back. After months of back-and-forth, Trump representatives returned 15 boxes of records in January 2022, including about 184 documents that officials said had classified markings on them.

FBI and Justice Department investigators issued a subpoena in May 2022 for classified documents that remained in Trump’s possession. But after a Trump lawyer provided three dozen records and asserted that a diligent search of the property had been done, officials came to suspect even more documents remained. They obtained surveillance footage boxes of records being moved from a storage room at Mar-a-Lago.

The investigation had simmered for months before bursting into front-page news in remarkable fashion last August. That’s when FBI agents served a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago and removed 33 boxes containing classified records, including top-secret documents stashed in a storage room and desk drawer and commingled with personal belongings. Some records were so sensitive that investigators needed upgraded security clearances to review them, the Justice Department has said.

The investigation into Trump had appeared complicated “politically, if not legally” by the discovery of documents with classified markings in the Delaware home and former Washington office of President Joe Biden, as well as in the Indiana home of former Vice President Mike Pence. The Justice Department recently informed Pence that he would not face charges, while a second special counsel continues to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents.

But compared with Trump, there are key differences in the facts and legal issues surrounding Biden’s and Pence’s handling of documents, including that representatives for both men say the documents were returned as soon as they were found.

In contrast, investigators quickly zeroed on whether Trump, who for four years as president expressed disdain for the FBI and Justice Department, had sought to obstruct the inquiry by refusing to turn over all the requested documents. The focus on obstruction was reminiscent of the special counsel investigation Trump faced as president, when prosecutors examined whether Trump illegally tried to thwart the Russia probe, including by firing his FBI director.

Source: PTI

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Mike Pence was born a catholic democrat

Mike Pence was born into an Irish Catholic family of six children in Indiana on June 7, 1959.  After his grandfather immigrated to the US when he was 17, his family settled in the Midwest.

In his youth, Pence was Democrat along with the rest of his family and considered John F Kennedy to be a role model.

However, in college, he converted to evangelical Christianity and was influenced by former President Ronald Reagan to join the Republican Party.

His older brother, Greg, is a Republican in the US House of Representatives.

Mike Pence has a law degree

Mike Pence completed a Bachelor of Arts in History at Hanover College in Indiana in 1981. He also has a law degree from Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. He met his wife, Karen, while in law school. They have three children.

The former US vice president worked as a lawyer and conservative talk show host before running for Congress in 2000.

Mike Pence was first elected to US House in 2001

Mike Pence was first elected to the US House in 2001 and quickly became known as one of its most conservative members. On November 8, 2016, he was elected as the US Vice President and entered office on January 20, 2017.

As vice president, he had been an exceeding loyal defender of Donald Trump until the days leading up to January 6, 2021, when Trump falsely tried to convince Pence and his supporters that Pence had the power to unilaterally overturn the results of the 2020 election.

That day, a mob of Trump’s supporters violently stormed the US Capitol building after being spurred on by Trump’s lies that the 2020 election had been stolen. 

Pence has called Trump’s actions dangerous and said the country is looking for a new brand of leadership in the 2024 US Presidential election.

Mike Pence is a staunch opponent of abortion rights

Mike Pence is a staunch opponent of abortion rights and supports a national ban on the procedure. He has also campaigned against transgender-affirming policies in schools. He has argued that changes to Social Security and Medicare, like raising the age for qualification, should be on the table to keep the programs solvent. 

The veteran politician has also said the US should offer more support to Ukraine against Russian aggression.

Source: Bureau

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Onlookers, including some members of the official delegation onstage, watched in concern before Biden, who at age 80 is the oldest president in US history, returned to his seat to view the end of the ceremony. “I got sandbagged,” the president told reporters with a smile when he arrived back at the White House on Thursday evening before pretending to jog into the residence. Two small black sandbags had been onstage supporting the teleprompter used by Biden and other speakers at the graduation.

“He’s fine,” White House communications director Ben LaBolt tweeted after the incident. “There was a sandbag on stage while he was shaking hands.” Biden has been dogged by questions about his age and his fitness to serve, and his missteps have become fodder for political rivals as he campaigns for a second term in 2024. He has stumbled before going up the stairs and onto Air Force One and he once got caught up in his bike pedals while stopping to talk to reporters near his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

Biden’s personal doctor said after the president’s most recent physical exam in February that Biden “remains a healthy, vigorous 80-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency.” Dr Kevin O’Connor also documented the president’s stiffened gait, which O’Connor said was the result of spinal arthritis, a previously broken foot and neuropathy in the Biden’s feet.

Biden is far from the first national political figure to stumble in public. President Gerald Ford fell down while walking off Air Force One in 1975. GOP Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, the GOP presidential nominee at the time, fell off the stage at a campaign rally in 1996. President Barack Obama tripped walking up the stairs to a stage at a 2012 event. “I was so fired up, I missed a stair” he told the crowd.

President Donald Trump’s gingerly walk down a ramp at the 2020 West Point commencement also sparked concerns about his health. Trump, 76, was campaigning in Iowa when he heard about Biden’s stumble and alluded to his own episode. “He actually fell down. Well I hope he wasn’t hurt,” Trump said after an audience member told him about what had happened to Biden.”The whole thing is crazy. You gotta be careful about that … ’cause you don’t want that, even if you have to tiptoe down a ramp.”

The audience laughed as Trump recounted slowly inching his way down what he said had been a slippery ramp at the US Military Academy graduation. “If he fell, it’s too bad,” the former president said. “We gotta just get this thing back on track. That’s a bad place to fall when you’re making, I think it was the Air Force Academy, right? That’s not inspiring.”

Meanwhile, GOP presidential candidate and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis used the opportunity to take a political shot at Biden while at a campaign event in New Hampshire. “We hope and wish Joe Biden a swift recovery from any injuries he may have sustained,” he said, “but we also wish the United States of America a swift recovery from the injuries it has sustained because of Joe Biden and his policies.

Source: PTI

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