All allegations against Donald Trump explained easy
Former President Donald Trump is running for the White House as he faces three indictments and another sideline criminal investigation. Never before has a former president been criminally charged, much less a leading candidate in another presidential race.
As the still-ongoing investigation nears possible charges and those indicted near trial, Trump has repeatedly said he will continue his campaign even if convicted.
Let's summarize the allegations and defense.
The accusation of hidden documents
The most developed case so far concerns the preservation of documents of the Trump presidency. Special Counsel Jack Smith charged Trump and two of his employees with 37 felonies, including illegal retention of national defense information, obstruction of the government and perjury to the government.
The trial is set for May 2024, but some observers predict further delays.
The case dates back to Trump's departure from the White House in January 2021. His personal belongings and some documents from his tenure were packed in boxes and shipped to his home at the Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach, Florida.
The indictment argues that it was at this point that Trump committed 31 counts of illegally withholding national defense information, which allegedly "caused" the boxes of documents to be moved. While this offense, under the Espionage Act, requires criminal intent, so far no evidence has emerged that Trump was aware of the presence of the 31 documents in question in the boxes.
It seems that Trump was under the impression that he could go through the boxes at will and could keep what he deemed personal. However, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) was of a different opinion and demanded the return of all presidential documents as soon as possible.
Under the Presidential Records Act, all official presidential documents must be turned over to NARA, and former presidents can only bring along personal items, such as diaries and artifacts, that were not intended for official government business. The problem is that the law does not provide for an enforcement mechanism.
In 2012, when Judicial Watch tried to force former President Bill Clinton to hand over dozens of interview tapes from his presidency that he had been keeping, Clinton argued that the tapes were personal, and the court agreed. Judge Amy Berman Jackson, nominated by President Barack Obama, argued that the Court has no way to judge a President's statement about what is or isn't personal.
“Since the President is fully charged with managing and even disposing of presidential documents during his term, it would be difficult for this Court to conclude that Congress intended that he have less authority to do as he pleases with what he considers the his personal papers,” Judge Jackson wrote.
Trump repeatedly cited that case as justification for keeping whatever documents he wanted. However, the charges have been brought in Florida, where the case does not set a major precedent.
Trump sent 15 boxes of the material to NARA in January 2022. NARA then made a referral to the Department of Justice (DOJ) after it found some of the documents had secrecy markings. Shortly thereafter, the Justice Department launched an investigation.
On May 11, 2022, the Justice Department obtained a subpoena requiring Trump to turn over all documents with classification marks, including electronic files, to Mar-a-Lago.
Some defense attorneys and former prosecutors argued that Trump should have appealed the subpoena as being too broad. The subpoena did not specify whether it concerned only the originals or copies as well, and whether it covered obviously declassified documents. There are millions of declassified documents online that still have visible classification marks. Locating all of these documents in Trump's possession at Mar-a-Lago – all physical copies ever printed and all such files on all computers and storage media in his possession – would be a monumental task.
Most of the obstruction charges focus on this point, alleging that Trump had his assistant, Walt Nauta, move the boxes from a storage facility in Mar-a-Lago so they could not be searched by the attorney.
On July 27, Smith added other allegations, alleging that Trump allegedly asked his Mar-a-Lago administrator Carlos de Oliveira to have security camera footage deleted after the Justice Department requested a subpoena to some footage in June 2022. Smith claims the footage showed Mr. Nauta moving boxes in and out of the warehouse. The updated indictment cites no direct evidence that this happened, only unsubstantiated presumptions.
Mr. Smith's addition of new charges and an additional defendant at this point may displease the judge overseeing the case, Trump-appointed Aileen Cannon. Just a few weeks ago, Mr. Smith had requested that the trial take place in December – a rather short timeline if Mr. Smith already knew that more charges could come.
Trump could theoretically void the entire case if he wins the election and grants himself a pardon, although some legal scholars question whether presidents can do this.
Smith, former Chief of the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, was appointed as a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland on November 18, 2022 to investigate the retention of Trump's documents and his involvement in the January 6, 2021 protest and riot at the Capitol.
Case of January 6th
On August 1, Smith revealed the indictment of Trump as part of the January 6 riots investigation . He charged the former president with conspiracy to “undermine, obstruct, and undermine” the gathering and counting of electoral votes, conspiracy against the right of Americans to vote, obstruction of the counting of electoral votes by Congress on January 6, 2021, and conspiracy to obstruct the counting of electoral votes.
Trump said he was notified on July 16 that he was the subject of a grand jury investigation into the Jan. 6 incident.
The case centers on Trump's claims of fraud and other illegalities in the 2020 election and how these affected events on Capitol Hill, where part of the massive protest over the election results escalated into violence, with some people who broke into the building and clashed with the police.
The prosecution alleges that Trump knew his attacks on the election results were false, largely because people, including state and federal officials, told him certain claims were false and he kept repeating them.
The 45-page indictment also focuses on Trump repeatedly urging Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes from states where Trump had contested the results.
The indictment also alleges that Trump incited the January 6 violence by telling protesters he hoped Pence would "send [electoral votes] back to the states to recertify them," even knowing Pence had repeatedly rejected the idea.
There is plenty of evidence of illegality during elections, including illegal changes to election rules under the guise of the COVID-19 pandemic and some cases of fraud. None of these charges, however, have been successfully prosecuted to overturn the election result in any state. Many cases have been dropped on procedural grounds, rather than the merits of the evidence.
Trump argued that if indicted, the proceedings would give him an opportunity to disclose information about election irregularities.
Electoral case in Georgia
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis began investigating Trump shortly after he took office in Georgia's largest county in January 2021.
On January 24, 2022, the Fulton County Superior Court granted Willis' request to establish a special grand jury that cannot make charges, but can call witnesses. The jury worked for about eight months, questioning about 75 witnesses starting in May 2022, local media reported.
Ms Willis recently said she was "ready to go", following up on her earlier promises to file charges by 1 September.
According to local media, the centerpiece of the investigation is a phone call Trump made to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2, 2021.
The content of the phone call was selectively leaked to the media to create the narrative that Trump asked Raffensperger to "find" him enough votes to overturn the election.
When the transcript of the call was released, it emerged that Trump said he believed hundreds of thousands of ballots were illegally voted in the state, particularly in Fulton County, which includes the Democratic bastion of Atlanta. He lambasted Raffensperger for not investigating the fraud allegations sufficiently.
“Why wouldn't you want to find the right answer?”. Trump asked.
Raffensperger and his team countered some of the allegations on the call, saying they had already been investigated.
Several times throughout the conversation, Trump pointed out that he only needed to identify about 11,000 illegal votes because that was the margin by which he lost the state.
“ If you check Fulton County, you'll have hundreds of thousands of them because they've dumped ballots in Fulton County and the other county next door,” Trump said.
“So what are we going to do here, folks? I just need 11,000 votes. Guys, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. We know, we already have plenty.”
Another part of Ms. Willis's investigation appears to focus on the alternative set of electors who gathered on Capitol Hill on December 14, 2020 to cast their votes for Trump, despite the official vote count giving the Trump's opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden.
Ms. Willis informed voters they were the subject of her investigation and at least eight of the 16 were granted immunity in exchange for their testimony, the Washington Post reported in May.
On July 31, the state Republican Party launched a website criticizing the Willis investigation for targeting big voters. The site claims that the "contingent voters" cast their votes with the explicit understanding that they would only be counted if Trump's lawsuit contesting the state's election results went through.
The website refers to a similar incident that occurred in 1960 when John F. Kennedy sued to overturn the election results in Hawaii. A group of major Democratic voters had cast their vote for Kennedy, despite the state having already certified the vote count, with Richard Nixon as the winner. The lawsuit was successful and the alternative votes were tallied.
In Trump's case, the lawsuit was only heard on January 8, 2021, two days after the electoral votes were counted. The suit was dismissed on procedural grounds and he never got a hearing on his evidence.
A judge barred Ms. Willis from pursuing charges against one of the alternate voters, Georgia's new lieutenant governor Burt Jones, after Ms. Willis hosted a campaign fundraiser for Jones's opponent in the 2022 race. Charlie Bailey.
The Hush Money case
The first criminal charges against Trump came in March from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office in New York.
Bragg argued that Trump committed 34 felonies because payments marked on his books as legal fees were actually reimbursement by then-attorney Michael Cohen for payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
Ms. Daniels notified Trump, ahead of the 2016 election, of her intention to sell her story that she had an affair with Trump in 2006 to the press; she said she was willing to keep the story to herself if paid for. Mr. Trump actually charged Cohen about $130,000 in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement, which Ms. Daniels ended up breaking. Mr. Trump's company then reimbursed Cohen.
Mr. Bragg is treating accounting records of payments to Mr. Cohen as violations of the New York law against forgery of business records. Such violations would only be misdemeanors, unless committed as part of another crime. Mr. Bragg argued that this is the case, although the prosecution does not specify what the other crime should be. The media speculated that the other offense was a violation of the campaign law. The argument would be that Mrs. Daniels' hush money was, in fact, an illegal campaign contribution.
The trial is scheduled for March 25, 2024.
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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/tutte-le-accuse-contro-donald-trump-spiegate-facili/ on Thu, 03 Aug 2023 05:35:49 +0000.