Former President Donald Trump has been indicted in Florida for obstruction of justice, false statements, violations of national security laws, and other crimes. The place he is being prosecuted in is very telling, and a sign that prosecutors view the case as a slam dunk and that Trump actually committed the crimes he has been charged with.
Under federal venue rules, Trump could probably have been indicted in Washington, DC, instead. That’s where federal prosecutors bring weak cases against Republicans, because juries in Washington DC contain typically contain 11 Democrats and 0 or 1 Republican. Judges in Washington, DC are overwhelmingly Democratic appointees, and some of them are radicals. Left-wing DC juries have convicted even innocent Bush administration officials of crimes, while letting even guilty Democratic lobbyists off the hook.
By contrast, a jury in Florida will include Republicans, so it won’t railroad Trump. The judge currently assigned to Trump’s case is a Republican, and the South Florida judges the case might be reassigned to are not radicals (even the Democratic judges in the district in Florida where Trump has been indicted mostly received a “blue slip” from Florida’s Republican senators, meaning they had to be mainstream liberals, not radical leftists, to get a “blue slip”).
Among the charges are that Trump allegedly directed aide Waltine Nauta, who is also charged, to move boxes of classified docs to hide them from the FBI, the Grand Jury, and his own attorney. He also allegedly suggested his attorney “hide or destroy “ the documents. That is a straightforward obstruction of justice. He then allegedly made false claims to a grand jury and the FBI about whether he turned over all the records, while withholding many of them.
As a leading Republican lawyer, who helped select a Republican vice presidential candidate, notes,
I would add that the decision to bring the indictment in ‘the Southern District of Florida] instead of trying to forum-shop this to D.D.C. where it would be difficult for a Republican to get a fair jury trial independently suggests a great deal of confidence in the strength of the case: why have a venue fight if you can win anywhere? I’d be more open to the idea that this was a political hit job if it were in D.D.C., or if Trump had actually used the last two years to follow the law and cooperate with DOJ like the cases of other politicians and inadvertent retention and they still charged him. In short, Romney is right, and the evidence against Trump is likely going to pull the rug out from under you if you go out on a limb defending him and attacking Smith and Garland here. Hold your powder dry until you see what the case looks like.
As NPR reports:
The federal indictment of former President Donald Trump in the classified documents probe has been unsealed.
The indictment lays out 37 federal charges against Trump, including obstruction and unlawful retention of defense information for storing dozens of classified documents at his Florida resort and refusing to return them to the FBI and the National Archives.
Also named in the indictment is Walt Nauta, a former presidential aide to Trump who remained in his employ after Trump left office. Nauta faces six charges.
Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith defended his team’s work and emphasized the seriousness of the charges.
“Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States, and they must be enforced,” he said.
Smith also noted that the defendants “must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law,” adding that the special counsel’s office will seek “a speedy trial on this matter consistent with the public interest and the rights of the accused.”
Here is a summary of the counts, which are listed starting on page 28 of the document embedded below:
- Willful retention of national defense information: This charge, covering counts 1-31, only applies to Trump and is for allegedly storing 31 such documents at Mar-a-Lago.
- Conspiracy to obstruct justice: Trump and Nauta, along with others, are charged with conspiring to keep those documents from the grand jury.
- Withholding a document or a record: Trump and Nauta are accused of misleading one of their attorneys by moving boxes of classified documents so the attorney could not find or introduce them to the grand jury.
- Corruptly concealing a document or record: This pertains to Trump and Nauta’s alleged attempts to hide the boxes of classified documents from the attorney.
- Concealing a document in a federal investigation: They are accused of hiding Trump’s continued possession of those documents at Mar-a-Lago from the FBI and causing a false certificate to be submitted to the FBI.
- Scheme to conceal: This is for the allegation that Trump and Nauta hid Trump’s continued possession of those materials from the FBI and the grand jury.
- False statements and representations: This count concerns statements that Trump allegedly caused another one of his attorneys to make to the FBI and grand jury in early June regarding the results of the search at Mar-a-Lago.
- False statements and representations: This final countaccuses Nauta of giving false answers during a voluntary interview with the FBI in late May.
According to the indictment, each one of those charges carries a maximum fine of $250,000, with maximum prison sentences between five and 20 years.
Trump’s legal troubles have damaged his approval rating, to the point where even the extremely unpopular Joe Biden leads Trump in the polls. In the State of Virginia, Joe Biden leads Trump by a massive 16 percent in a recent poll, even though Virginians disapprove of the way Joe Biden is performing his job. By contrast, Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is competitive with Biden in Virginia polls.
