Former US President Donald Trump arrived at a Miami court Tuesday afternoon to hear the 37 charges he faces related to the mishandling of US government secrets.
Security has been tightened around the court where he will be heard from 3:00 p.m. local time (8:00 p.m. in Lisbon), in the city center.
Trump, who is also a candidate for the White House in 2024, last week became the first former president of the United States to be criminally charged by federal justice, for having illegally appropriated confidential documents and for having hindered the efforts of the Department of Justice. to retrieve these records.
While federal defendants typically appear in court in handcuffs, this was not the case for Trump when he attended a Manhattan court hearing last April in a case involving alleged bribery of a pornographic actress.
In today’s hearing, the Republican candidate is expected to plead not guilty after hearing the 37 federal crimes of which he is charged.
The magistrate in charge of initially supervising this criminal process should be Jonathan Goodman, and not Aileen Cannon, a judge appointed by Trump himself when he was president, contrary to information advanced by various US media.
Unlike the New York state case, which some legal analysts have called relatively trivial, the charges now being leveled by the Justice Department involve conduct that may have endangered national security, which could carry a significant prison sentence. .
The tycoon has encouraged his followers to demonstrate in the Miami courthouse.
Trump also assured that under “no circumstances” he will drop out of the 2024 presidential race, leading the polls for the Republican primaries.
If convicted before the presidential election, Trump can legally continue as a candidate.
Politically, a conviction is unlikely to discourage his supporters who, until now, have largely stuck to his accusations of a “witch hunt” and “political strategizing.”
In this case, the outcome of the election would be decisive: a victory would protect Trump from jail, rather than a loss.
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 in his luxurious residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, taking with him dozens of boxes, containing some 200 classified documents, and which end up piling up in a ballroom, restroom or pantry, according to the indictment released Friday.
Pressed to return the documents by the National Archives, the body that has a legal duty to preserve all presidential archives, Trump returned 15 boxes a year later.
In June 2022, US Federal Police (FBI) agents went to the tycoon’s mansion to recover an additional 38 confidential documents. Convinced that something was still missing, federal agents returned in August of the same year, this time armed with a search warrant.
The FBI left Florida with some thirty boxes containing 11,000 documents, including US nuclear secrets and a military attack plan against a foreign power.
Source: TSF
