The charges brought against him Donald Trump for illegal possession of classified documents marks the first time in the history of the country that a former US president has been tried for federal crimes.

If proven guilty, Trump will join the infamous club that includes Malaysia’s Najib Rajak, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac, as well as South Korea’s Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak. All of them have been convicted of corruption and illegal activities in the last 15 years.

Tellingly, Bill Barr, the former Attorney General during Trump’s presidency, spoke of the most serious court case the Trump has ever faced. republican chairman.

The head of Trump’s legal team, Jim Trusty, told CNNi that the former president was duly informed that he was facing federal crimes under the country’s Espionage Act. In fact, he noted that this case is completely different from the Stormy Daniels case, so Trump’s legal counsel strategy won’t be as low-key.

What are the differences between the two categories?

In the 2016 New York case of Trump’s out-of-court settlement with Stormy Daniels, the case and indictment were drawn up by the New York District Attorney’s Office. In today’s case, the indictment is, in fact, drawn up by the Department of Justice, since this is a matter for the federal government.

How the documents were found

In August 2022, the FBI began seizing about 13,000 documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida. About 100 were classified, although his lawyer assured him that all the secrets had already been returned.

The former president justified his concealment of documents by declassifying them while still in office, but he did not provide any evidence of this, his lawyers did not present such a statement.

accusation

According to international media reports, Trump faces seven charges of unlawful and willful possession of classified documents, concealment of documents, obstruction of justice and false reporting.

Conviction for deliberate concealment or destruction of public documents is punishable by removal from office, however, legal experts disagree as to whether this refers to the presidency. Violating the Espionage Act by hiding national defense information could carry up to 10 years in prison and obstruction of justice up to 20 years, although Trump is unlikely to face the maximum penalty.

Trump pleaded not guilty in office, saying he was subpoenaed in federal court in Miami on Tuesday. “I never thought something like this could happen to a former President of the United States,” he wrote. Trump’s team called the indictment “an act of open legal warfare.”

How much does the new accusation affect Trump’s election?

Under US law, there is not the slightest legal barrier to Donald Trump not only running for a third time as a Republican, but also winning the presidential election, regardless of the outcome of his open court cases.

Even in the unlikely scenario that Donald Trump is convicted and sent to prison, he could, by virtue of the US Constitution, be elected president. “There really aren’t that many constitutional requirements to run for president,” said constitutional law professor Anna Kominsky. “There is no explicit prohibition in the Constitution on the existence of an indictment or even a conviction.”

The constitution in its first form contained only three criteria for a president: citizenship (a US citizen by birth, i.e. a citizen at the time of birth), age (at least 35 years old), and residence (at least 14 years in the US, not necessarily consecutively and not necessarily just before taking office). These are the only conditions.

If Trump had secured his party’s nomination through procedures designed by the Republican Party, no federal laws could have interfered, The Atlantic notes in its analysis.

As The New York Times recently reported, a number of political candidates ran under similar circumstances, including former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who was charged with two felony charges when he announced his candidacy for president in 2015. Debs, Socialist Party candidate in 1920, who was nominated by the federal penitentiary in Atlanta.

Source: New York Times, Guardian, AP, Atlantic.