MIAMI. US federal justice is going to bring the former president to criminal responsibility Donald Trump in the case of dozens of classified documents found at his Florida residence.

Ex-president expected to face charges seven criminal offenses for knowingly possessing classified US national security documents in violation of the Espionage Act, with a maximum penalty of ten years in prison. Trump is also charged with perjury and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

Trump will face formal charges in Florida federal court, whose office summoned Trump to a Miami courthouse on Tuesday morning. According to Trump himself, his associate Walt Nafta is also accused in the case, and two of his lawyers have resigned. His defense will now be taken over by another law firm, which will be announced shortly.

Trump, big favorite for his anointing Republican Party, politically survived two previous impeachment petitions against him by Congress while he resided in the White House. But this is the first time a former president has faced federal prosecution.

The espionage case is, after all, far more serious than the prosecution brought against Trump in early April by New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg on 34 counts of falsifying the Trump group’s accounting records. Shortly before the 2016 election, Trump bought the silence of porn star Stormy Daniels so that she would not speak about their extramarital affair, hiding these payments from the authorities.

On May 9, Trump wrote a new page of shame in the history of former presidents when a Manhattan civil court ordered him to pay $5 million in damages to a woman he raped 25 years ago in a New York department store.

The undisputed favorite

In the case of secret documents found in his mansion in Mar-a-Lago, he is supported by the Republicans.

However, these two court cases involving female victims failed to undermine Trump’s credibility among his followers. The former president has remained the clear favorite in the party primaries until this week, portraying the successive prosecutions against him as a plan by political opponents and the Deep State to destroy him politically. In a video released Thursday night, Trump said: “I am an innocent person. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Trump himself announced the intention of the federal judiciary to prosecute him a few hours earlier in a message on a social network. “How is it possible that the Justice Department is blaming me—me who did nothing—when no president has ever been impeached?” In his message yesterday, Trump called investigator Jack Smith a “Marxist special prosecutor” as the former president’s electoral base rushed to support him online. In another message, Trump blamed “Marxists and fascists in the Justice Department and the FBI.”

The campaign team of the former president made a new appeal for financial assistance already on Thursday evening. At the same time, many top GOP officials expressed support for Trump, denouncing “the instrumentalization of justice, a mortal threat to any free society,” according to Florida Gov. Ron de Sandys, Trump’s main opponent in the presidential nomination. party.

In a statement yesterday, Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy said, “Like every American who believes in the rule of law, I stand with President Trump in condemning this grave injustice.” The legal harassment the former president is facing doesn’t stop him from running for anointing or becoming president, even if he ends up in jail.

However, the study of Republicans in support of Trump masks the unease that prevails within the party. Only former New Jersey Gov. and longtime Trump ally Chris Christie called for restraint: “Trump Truth should not brief us on legal matters. Let’s wait to hear the exact accusation.”

Special Counsel Jack Smith, who served as a judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, is also in charge of investigating the attack by Trump supporters on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021.