Former US President Donald Trump will appear in federal court in Miami this Tuesday for a landmark hearing after being formally charged with 37 crimes related to the misappropriation of classified documents.
Trump, who is also a candidate for the 2024 White House, last week became the first former president of the United States to be criminally charged by federal prosecutors with misappropriating confidential documents and obstructing the efforts of the Department of Justice to retrieve these records.
The hearing is scheduled for 3 p.m. (local time, 8 p.m. in Lisbon) in a federal court in Miami, Florida, the state where Trump lives and has a strong base.
Upon arrival at court, Trump will have to go through a protocol that will include fingerprinting and a photograph.
While federal defendants normally appear in court in handcuffs, this was not the case for Trump when he attended a hearing in Manhattan last April in a case of alleged bribery of a pornographic actress.
At Tuesday’s hearing, the Republican nominee is expected to plead not guilty after hearing the 37 federal crimes he faces charges.
The magistrate primarily responsible for overseeing this criminal process should be Jonathan Goodman, not Aileen Cannon, a judge appointed by Trump himself when he was president, contrary to information put forward by various US media outlets. has been brought.
Unlike the New York state case, which some legal analysts viewed as relatively trivial, the allegations now being made by the Justice Department relate to conduct that may have endangered national security, leading to would result in a significant prison sentence.
The magnate has encouraged his supporters to demonstrate outside the Miami courthouse.
Trump also assured that under “no circumstances” he will drop out of the 2024 presidential race and lead the polls for the Republican primary.
If convicted before the presidential election, Trump can legally continue as a candidate.
Politically, a conviction is unlikely to discourage his supporters, who have so far generally followed his accusations of a “witch hunt” and “political ploy”.
In this case, the outcome of the election would be decisive: victory would protect Trump from jail, rather than defeat.
After the court hearing, Trump will travel to New Jersey where he will hold a private fundraiser.
In January 2021, after losing the presidential election to Joe Biden, Trump left the White House to settle into his luxurious residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, taking with him dozens of boxes, containing about 200 documents. that end up piled up in a ballroom, bathrooms or pantries, according to the indictment released Friday.
Pressured to return the documents by the National Archives, the agency required by law to preserve all presidential records, Trump returned 15 boxes a year later.
In June 2022, United States Federal Police (FBI) agents went to the tycoon’s home to retrieve 38 additional confidential documents. Convinced that something was still missing, the federal agents returned in August of the same year, this time armed with a search warrant.
The FBI left Florida with about thirty boxes containing 11,000 documents, including US nuclear secrets and a plan for a military strike against a foreign power.
Source: DN
