The billionaire, who intends to return to power next year, is the target of 37 charges, including “illegal retention of information related to national security”, “obstruction of justice” and “false testimony”.
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In the boxes of documents he kept (some of them stored in a bathroom) are nuclear secrets, according to the 44-page indictment minutes revealed on Friday.
Violating national security laws “puts our country in danger,” said special prosecutor Jack Smith, who oversaw the investigation for months.
The 76-year-old businessman considers himself the victim of a “witch hunt” aimed at obstructing his presidential candidacy and blames “the radical left”.
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For now, Republicans are closing ranks around him, but some people said they were surprised by the content of the documents.
Among them, his former Justice Minister Bill Barr, who became one of his critics. On Sunday, he said he was shocked by “the degree of sensitivity of these documents and how many there were”.
“If only half of this is true, then (he) is burned,” Barr told Fox News. “It’s a very detailed indictment and it’s very, very damning,” she added.
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Legal problems
This is the first time that a former American president has been charged at the federal level.
But Trump had already been denounced for accounting fraud by the New York state court, due to a payment made before the 2016 presidential elections to silence a porn actress who claims to have been his lover.
Trump arrived in his private plane in Miami, where he will appear on Tuesday at 15pm local time (16pm Brasília time) before a federal court. According to one of his lawyers, he will say he is not guilty.
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In the United States, legislation requires presidents to send all their emails, letters and other working documents to the National Archives and another prohibits keeping state secrets in unauthorized and unsafe locations.
In January 2021, when he left the White House to go live in his mansion in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, Donald Trump took with him dozens of boxes full of files. And, according to the indictment, he did what he could to keep them, despite the court asking him to return them.
It is unknown what impact the case will have on his chances of becoming the Republican candidate in the presidential election.
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Many of his supporters are convinced that he is the victim of a plot and support him, but it cannot be ruled out that the fact that the documents are linked to national security could harm him.
A recent survey by the YouGov Institute showed that only half of those interviewed consider it serious to falsify accounting documents to buy a porn actress' silence about an alleged affair.
But two-thirds of those interviewed consider that having taken secret Defense documents from the White House with them and hindering authorities' attempts to recover them is serious.
Trump's legal problems are not limited to these cases.
A Georgia prosecutor will announce by September the results of an investigation into whether Trump exerted pressure to try to change the result of the 2020 presidential election, won by Democrat Joe Biden.
In Miami, authorities reinforced security after calls on social media to defend Trump.
“We take this event extremely seriously. We know that things can happen, including the worst, but it's not Miami's way,” said the city's police chief, Manuel Morales, during a press conference.
Security, made up of local and federal agents, is prepared to face crowds of 5.000 to 50.000 people, he added.
After his court appearance, the former president will travel to New Jersey, where he will give an evening speech at his Bedminster golf club.
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