Indicted Again: Donald Trump Faces Federal Espionage & Conspiracy Charges in Classified Docs Probe

indicted again Donald Trump has become the first president to face Federal criminal charges as a grand jury in Florida indicts him over the mishandling of classified documents after leaving office Trump is expected to surrender to authorities in Miami on Tuesday at 3 pm Eastern the indictment remains sealed according to news accounts Trump has been indicted on seven charges which could mean many many counts on Thursday night Trump's attorney Jim trustee appeared on CNN to discuss what he knew about the charges from the summary sheet there does have some language in it that suggests what the seven charges would be not 100 clear that all of those are separate charges but they basically break out from an Espionage Act charge which is ludicrous under the facts of this case and I can certainly explain it and several obstruction-based type charges and then false statement charges which are actually again kind of a crazy stretch just from the facts as we know it so there's a lot to pick at eventually from the defense side but that appears to be the charges and it appears to be something that will get off the ground on Tuesday the indictment stems from an investigation by special counsel Jack Smith who's also probing Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his role in the January 6 Insurrection Trump could still face additional federal charges in those investigations two months ago Trump was also indicted in New York on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels and others the new federal charges come nearly a year after the FBI found 300 classified documents during searches of Trump's properties including at his Mar-A-Lago estate in Florida part of the Justice Department's case may rely on Trump's own comments CNN recently reported Trump had acknowledged on tape during a 2021 meeting that he had kept secret military information about Iran according to a transcript Trump said quote secret this is secret information Trump dismissed the indictment describing it as the quote boxes hoax and a post on a social media platform Trump wrote I am an innocent man the charges come at a time when the former president is running again for the White House on Thursday his presidential rival Florida Governor Ron DeSantis blasted we called the weaponization of federal law enforcement house Speaker Kevin McCarthy said the indictment was a quote dark day for the country we're joined right now by Dennis aftergott he's a former Federal prosecutor currently of counsel to lawyers defending American democracy his new piece for the bow work is titled no one above the law Trump indicted on federal charges Dennis welcome to democracy now why don't you start off by just responding to this indictment how historic it is and what do these counts on conspiracy and espionage mean Amy first it's a privilege to be here historic really doesn't even begin to describe it no former president has ever been federally indicted now we have a former president who's been indicted by two grand juries in two different jurisdictions New York and the federal government on two different sets of facts alleging two different sets of crimes that does not happen very often and when it does it only happens with people who live on the wrong side of the law with respect to the Espionage counts they are extraordinarily serious the reported allegation is the one that has been expected he willfully retained defense related documents that he was not authorized to have after his presidency ended we also have the information that you described from the tape that he was talking about them to others and there may be very serious allegations we'll need to wait to see the indictment about whether there were any disclosures of top secret highly sensitive National Security secrets uh Dennis uh uh I wanted to ask you about a couple of things one is if there's a conspiracy charge there is an assumption that there are other people involved in the conspiracy what do you make of that and also the decision by the justice department to do this indictment in Florida rather than Washington because presumably the documents were taken in Washington DC originally although they ended up many of them in Florida your sense of why this decision to to conduct the indictment and the trial presumably in uh in the sun in Florida that is really an excellent question uh reasonable prosecutors could differ about where it should be indicted under the Sixth Amendment a defendant is entitled to a trial by an impartial jury in the district where the crime is committed it's not quite that simple though because crimes can be continuing and can occur into jurisdictions and there's a pretty good argument that that's exactly what happened here the reason and the issue of conspiracy I'm sorry and the issue of conspiracy yes uh the the issue of conspiracy you're absolutely correct it takes two to tango in a conspiracy a conspiracy is an agreement by two or more people to commit an unlawful Act they both have to share the intent to do something unlawful there are reports that there are five sealed indictments and so they may tell us we need to await the unsealing of those indictments which may happen on Tuesday at Trump's arraignment it could happen before that issue of conspiracy who are the possible people here and of course we're going to know much more next week but we learned that Mark Meadows has testified his former Chief of Staff and what that conspiracy could be um you have all this new information about wolf nauta who is on the valet for Donald Trump in Mar-A-Lago the flooding of the server room when they said they were emptying the pool the moving of the boxes from one place to another and then talk about how serious these charges are I mean conspiracy Espionage these are decades in jail uh it's going to be hard for me to improve on what you just said Amy Walt NATA is the is the most obvious candidate it's unclear with respect to Meadows the reports are that Meadows has agreed to plead and is cooperating on that basis so if that's true major if there then he could be an unindicted co-conspirator although he was more clearly by inference a co-conspirator in removing the documents from Washington we don't know what his role was in obstructing justice you need to remember with respect to the conspiracy to obstruct that it was 18 months between the time the the National Archives first asked for the documents back and when the FBI conducted a court authorized search in August as you said in your introduction of 2022 almost a year ago that recovered uh at least a hundred classified documents so there could have been several people involved in the stall the long long stall to try to prevent the return of the documents that Trump was unauthorized to possess Walt NATA would be at the top of the list as the person who is described as having moved the documents right after the subpoena for them there was a grand jury subpoena in May of 2022 but there are many other people there's uh the allegations about gaps in the tapes and Jack Smith is likely to know a lot more that we may find out about when the indictment is revealed and a lot more than that when a trial occurs uh Dennis I'm wondering if you could uh speculate in terms of the political impact of all of this because clearly for Trump supporters and for men perhaps other Americans there does seem to be a concerted effort by the government to go after uh after Donald Trump and this the trials will probably last into the the presidential race itself uh what the how do you respond to the issue that of that the speaker McCarthy is saying and and Ron DeSantis or others that the federal government is weaponizing law enforcement I would say that is a combination of distraction and projection about what the house is doing weaponizing the law I would say that the concerted effort is a concerted effort for against a Serial law breaker we do not have Kings here we have the rule of law and no one is above it including a former president it's a sad day for the country when a former president is indicted and it is a necessary day when the evidence is so serious against him were there not an indictment we would not have a rule of law we would not have a rule where no one is above the law Dennis aftergood I wanted to ask you about a piece you recently co-authored in salon Clarence Thomas Ken Paxton and Donald Trump the corrupting influence of oligarchy in which you write quote it's tempting to attribute the scandals now enveloping two right-wing icons Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to both men's lack of an ethical Compass resisting that temptation is necessary if we're to learn a larger lesson about the roots of much political corruption in this country if you could go on from there and for people who don't know Ken Paxton he was just impeached by he is the Republican Attorney General of Texas and was just impeached by the Republican legislature the point the central point of that piece is that one needs to look at the structural elements of corruption and it's not just in this country Amy it's around the world and the structural element is this it's a connection between corruption oligarchs people of enormous wealth and influence in the society and right-wing parties we quote a study out of Germany in which they look at 104 countries and found a an elevated level of corruption in countries ruled by right-wing parties and if you think about it it makes a lot of sense people of wealth tend and this does not apply to every person of wealth of course but they tend to want to preserve the status quo or return to the past where their rights to do things were unregulated in a let's say fair kind of economy and right-wing parties and right-wing politicians stand for the status quo or the past and so it's kind of intuitive that they want to capture political leaders who have influence over the economy it's kind of intuitive that those are going to be people on the right who agree with them ideologically well we're going to link to that piece as well as your piece on again this historic indictment of President Donald Trump he goes to court on Tuesday at three o'clock in Miami and now his home state of Florida Dennis aftergott a former Federal prosecutor is currently of council to lawyers defending American democracy

Channel: Democracy Now!

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Keywords: Democracy Now, Amy Goodman, News, Politics, democracynow, Independent Media, Breaking News, World News

Id: DvQHj7GtfeI

Length: 15min 46sec (946 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 09 2023