June 10, 2023

Saturday, June 10, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

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Here is the Trump Classified Documents Indictment.

Click on the link above 👆 to read the indictment.

The 49-page indictment contains 37 counts and seven separate charges against Trump.

Below 👇is Jack Smith’s 2 minute 41 second statement on the indictment. Touch to watch.

Here are the 37 charges against Trump and what they mean.

A court on Friday unsealed the federal indictment against Donald Trump and an aide over classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago home and the men’s alleged efforts to keep the government from finding the materials. Here’s what we know about the charges against the former president, brought by special counsel Jack Smith.


How many charges does Trump face?


Trump is accused of violating seven federal laws but faces 37 separate charges. That is because each classified document he is accused of holding on to illegally is charged in a separate count, and his alleged efforts to hide classified information from federal investigators is charged in several ways. His longtime aide Walt Nauta faces six charges, all but five of which are also lodged against Trump.

A court on Friday unsealed the federal indictment against Donald Trump and an aide over classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago home and the men’s alleged efforts to keep the government from finding the materials. Here’s what we know about the charges against the former president, brought by special counsel Jack Smith.


How many charges does Trump face?


Trump is accused of violating seven federal laws but faces 37 separate charges. That is because each classified document he is accused of holding on to illegally is charged in a separate count, and his alleged efforts to hide classified information from federal investigators is charged in several ways. His longtime aide Walt Nauta faces six charges, all but five of which are also lodged against Trump.

What are the charges against Trump?


Espionage Act/unauthorized retention of national defense information: Trump is charged with 31 counts of violating a part of the Espionage Act that bars willful retention of national defense information by someone not authorized to have it. Such information is defined as “any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”

Technically, that information does not have to be classified, but in practice the law is almost exclusively used to prosecute retention of classified material. In Trump’s case, prosecutors say that all but one of the 31 documents he is charged with illegally retaining were marked as classified at the “secret” or “top secret” level. The unmarked document concerned “military contingency planning,” according to the indictment.


A conviction does not require any evidence of a desire to disseminate the classified information; having it in an unauthorized location is enough. But the crime requires a “willful” mishandling of material “the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.” Charges are generally not brought without some aggravating factor making clear the retention was not accidental — such as evidence of intent to share the information, signs of disloyalty to the U.S. government, or simply the volume of documents taken.


Unlike other government employees, the president does not go through a security clearance process that includes a pledge to follow classification rules. But Trump received requests from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and subpoenas from the Justice Department indicating that the documents in question were classified and needed to be returned to the U.S. government. Prosecutors say he instead sought to hide them from federal investigators. And while the president can declassify most information, there is a process for doing so.

According to the indictment, Trump twice showed classified information to others, once while saying that the document was still classified and lamenting that he no longer had the power to declassify it.


Conspiracy to obstruct justice: Trump is charged with one count of conspiring with Nauta to hide the classified material from federal investigators, by lying to the FBI about what was found at Mar-a-Lago and moving boxes of documents out of a storage room before agents searched the home. Trump specifically is accused of suggesting that one of his attorneys lie to the FBI and help hide or destroy documents, which investigators had demanded with a subpoena.

Tampering with grand jury evidence: Trump and Nauta face two counts of trying to keep evidence out of grand jurors’ hands: one count of withholding the classified documents and one of corruptly concealing them.

As part of those charges, Trump is accused of trying to persuade one of his attorneys to help conceal the documents, while Nauta is accused of hiding the evidence by moving the boxes of classified documents.


Concealing evidence in a federal investigation: For the same alleged conduct of hiding the classified information still at Mar-a-Lago, Trump and Nauta separately face one count of concealing evidence with the intent to obstruct an FBI investigation.


False statements: Both Trump and Nauta together face one count of scheming to making false statements for allegedly hiding from the FBI and the grand jury that the former president still had classified documents in his possession.

Trump faces a separate count for causing his attorney to falsely claim in June 2022 that all classified documents in the former president’s possession had been handed over in response to a subpoena, according to the indictment.

Nauta alone is accused of lying to the FBI by falsely claiming that he had nothing to do with moving any boxes.


What possible penalties does Trump face?


The maximum punishment for each count of unlawful retention of national defense information is 10 years in prison. Conspiracy to obstruct justice, tampering with grand jury evidence, and concealing evidence in a federal investigation all carry punishments of up to 20 years. Each false statement charge is punishable by up to five years in prison.


If Trump was convicted on all charges, the sentences could run consecutively, amounting to hundreds of years in prison. But federal defendants are rarely given the maximum possible punishment. He does not face any mandatory minimum sentences.
Sentences in unlawful retention cases vary widely, depending in part on how sensitive the material is, how much of it there is, how long the person held on to it and his or her cooperation with investigators.

A Defense Department employee in Manila who took home a small amount of secret-level information to work on a classified thesis project served only three months behind bars. Kenneth Wayne Ford Jr., who was found guilty at trial of bringing home national defense information after leaving the National Security Agency and lying about the case, received a six-year sentence. A former NSA contractor who over two decades amassed a huge trove of highly sensitive material, including hacking tools and details of overseas operations, was sentenced to nine years in prison. A Navy sailor who took pictures of classified areas of a nuclear-powered submarine and then destroyed the evidence was sentenced to a year in prison for retention and obstruction; Trump later pardoned him.


Retired Gen. David H. Petraeus was given probation after pleading guilty to sharing classified information with his biographer. At the time, the crime of mishandling classified information — as opposed to national defense information — was a misdemeanor with a maximum punishment of a year behind bars. It became a felony during Trump’s presidency. (The Washington Post).

As you may know, Republicans have rallied around Trump. Senator Romney is the exception.

One more thing. Here is Mary L. Trump. On the Precipice of Worse.

The email lady,” as Jeff Tiedrich refers to Hillary Clinton, was right about everything. And here we are: Donald Trump has been indicted again, for the second time in less than two months. This time the charges (seven counts—at least for now—will be read in Federal Court in Miami next Tuesday) are more serious, relating as they do to the fact that Donald stole classified and highly sensitive documents that belong to the United States government—that is, to the people.

I didn’t use the word “allegedly” before “stole” because we know he took the documents from the White House after he no longer had legitimate access to them; we know that he refused to return them even thought the National Archive asked him repeatedly and deferentially; we know that he lied about having returned everything; and we know that if anybody else in this country had done something similar—or even significantly less egregious—that person would have been arrested, handcuffed, and imprisoned a very long time ago. And that person would very likely be spending the rest of their life in prison.

We know so much.

It is gratifying (I’m not sure if that’s the right word) that there is finally some movement towards treating his casual disregard for our national security—and for us—with the level of seriousness required.

There are many reasons I don’t like to talk or write about Donald. Of course, I have to—not because he’s my uncle but because in 2016 he was tragically elevated to a position of power he had no right to inhabit and in four short years he came very close to breaking this country irreparably. And we still can’t ignore him because the party that failed to stop him in 2016 continues to support, enable, and cover for him with the result that, barring unforeseen circumstances, he will be the Republican nominee for president in 2024. It is gobsmacking, it is breath-taking, and it is all of a piece with what I have witnessed of Donald and his bizarre trajectory throughout the course of my life.

As somebody who cares about the future of this country and the people living in it, I cannot ignore the fact that Donald Trump is a significant and malign force in American politics. And I hate it. I hate it in the ways that anybody who cares about democracy or equality or the well-being of their fellow citizens hate it. But I hate it, too, because he is my uncle. He is a man I have known my whole life. I watched him rise to ridiculous levels of wealth and fame, propelled in part by his father, despite his obvious lack of skills or intelligence. I watched as he, along with my grandfather, destroyed my dad.

And then, because America is so broken, so mired in its history of racism and misogyny and hatred of the Other; because America is so incapable of looking at itself in the mirror, I had to watch him, in his position as leader of the free world (what a fucking travesty), as he tried to destroy the Western alliance in order to appease brutal dictators simply because they knew how to flatter his pathetic ego. I had to watch as implemented the Muslim ban, threw trans service members out of the military in which he never bothered to serve, and kidnapped children only to put them in concentration camps.

I had to watch as he implemented policies—or failed to implement policies—that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans knowing all along that he did it willfully and maliciously for his own political gain. I had to watch as he destroyed the economy and brought American democracy to the brink with his Big Lie and incitement of an insurrection against his own country.

There is nothing he won’t do to get away with his crimes. He will turn his followers against the rest of us, he will threaten to destroy the Republican Party if it doesn’t do his bidding (and it will do his bidding). If none of that works, he will burn it all down.

It will get worse before it gets better. It will be frightening, it will be frustrating, and it will be dangerous. But it will get better eventually. If we stick together and refuse to give up hope, it will get better. (Substack).

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