Trump Faces Difficult Odds in Classified Documents Case

(Reuters) – donald trump He faces a formidable task fending off charges that he illegally kept top-secret documents upon leaving the White House in 2021, according to legal experts, who said neither the law nor the facts appear to be on his side.

The former US president, who is a candidate to run again in the 2024 election, was charged in an indictment unsealed in Florida federal court on Friday. The 37 charges against him include Espionage Act violations, obstruction of justice conspiracy and false statements.

National security law experts were impressed by the breadth of evidence in the prosecution, which includes documents, photos, text messages, audio and witness statements. They said this made a strong case for prosecutors’ allegation that Trump illegally took the documents and then tried to cover them up.

“The details are quite shocking in terms of the carelessness with which these documents were handled and the concerted effort to keep them out of the reach of fbisaid Elizabeth Goitein, an expert on national security law at the Brennan Center for Justice.

Trump’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Trump has proclaimed his innocence, calling the case a “witch hunt” orchestrated by political enemies.

“There was no crime, except for what the Department of Justice and the FBI have been doing against me for years,” he wrote in his social truth platform on Friday.

Trump’s greatest danger may lie with the charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice, which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Legal experts said the evidence appears to show that Trump knew he had documents in his possession that were subject to a subpoena but refused to turn them over and encouraged his lawyers to mislead the FBI.

“That is the clearest obstruction case you can imagine,” said Clark Neily, a legal expert at the conservative Cato Institute.

Obstruction of justice is a particularly difficult charge to defend, attorney Mark MacDougall said. “It offends people. Hiding things from a legal legal process. Most people understand why that is a crime,” he said.

Legal experts said Trump’s alleged years-long effort to hide documents was likely a major factor in special counsel Jack Smith’s decision to indict him.

During the investigation, Trump’s lawyers told the FBI that they had turned over all classified documents in their possession, which was false. They deny intentionally misleading investigators.

“This is a situation where the cover-up is worse than the crime,” said Goitein of the Brennan Center. “If he had only been negligent, no charges would have been filed.”

The conspiracy element makes the obstruction charges that much more serious, and all prosecutors need to prove is that Trump worked with someone else to try to hinder the investigation, regardless of whether they were successful.

Neily de Cato said that based on her reading of the indictment, prosecutors likely have plenty of witnesses who have given them similar accounts of Trump’s efforts.

Trump has claimed that he declassified the documents before taking them away. That claim is undermined by a recorded conversation cited in the indictment, which says Trump showed a secret document to several people and said he “could have declassified” it as president, but he didn’t.

But the classification problem will probably end up being irrelevant. Prosecutors charged Trump under the Espionage Act, a World War I-era law that predates classification and criminalizes only the unauthorized withholding of “national defense information.”

National defense information does not need to be classified to be covered by that law, national security law experts said. The information only needs to be useful to the nation’s adversaries and be in the hands of the government.

“Let’s say all the documents were declassified. The Espionage Act doesn’t care,” said Todd Huntley, a Georgetown University law professor.

However, Trump has some potentially successful strategies. His lawyers could challenge witness accounts, place blame on others, or argue that he was following his lawyers’ advice and that he did not intend to break the law.

If it goes to trial, a Florida jury would hear the case, since that’s where the special counsel requested the indictment. In the conservative-leaning state, Trump would only need one juror to oppose his conviction for a mistrial.

His defense team could also file motions that would delay a trial until after the November 2024 election. Legal experts disagree on whether Trump could pardon himself if he wins.

(Reporting by Jack Queen in New York; Additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington, DC; Editing by Amy Stevens and Cynthia Osterman)