Why this is the indictment that could harm Donald Trump
CBC
This is the big one. The gravest legal threat Donald Trump has ever faced, the one most likely to rattle his political comeback and imperil his very freedom.
The former president announced he's been indicted and been ordered to appear in a Miami court next Tuesday, on what his lawyers say are seven charges, including Espionage Act violations over wilful mishandling of classified documents.
"I'm an innocent man," Trump said in a video late Thursday. "This is warfare for the law. We can't let it happen."
So the breaker of political barriers is about to bust a new one. The first president to be impeached twice; he recently became the first ex-president charged with a crime. He now becomes the first ex-president charged twice, and the first charged with federal crimes.
Make no mistake: this is in a different legal league than his earlier arrest this spring on New York state charges of hush money payments to hide a sexual affair.
Even some vocal Trump critics questioned that earlier arrest, calling those charges weak. His former attorney general, Bill Barr, called it a miscarriage of justice.
Barr views this case differently.
"I've said for a while that I think this is the most dangerous legal risk facing the former president," Barr told CBS earlier this week, speaking of the documents investigation.
"From what I've seen there's substantial evidence there. … There's no excuse for what he did here."
What Trump did, allegedly, was take classified documents with him upon leaving office, then brush off requests to hand them back.
Trump argues that he had the right to take those documents and, if he's charged, why wouldn't President Joe Biden be too, given his own mishandling of numerous classified documents?
What makes Trump's case different, Barr said, is how his former boss behaved when federal authorities told him in 2021 they wanted the documents returned.
Media reports say special counsel Jack Smith has been questioning people in Trump's orbit about whether he knowingly lied, and directed others to lie afterwards.
"This would have gone nowhere had the president just returned the documents. But he jerked [the government] around for a year and a half," said Barr, who insisted he does not view this case as a witch hunt.
