Former President Donald Trump’s attorneys will have to defeat more than three dozen charges to assure Mr. Trump stays out of prison in a historic federal case that threatens to hobble his bid for a second White House term.
Special counsel Jack Smith, who announced 37 charges against Mr. Trump related to his handling of classified documents, said his office will seek a speedy trial in the Southern District of Florida, where Mr. Trump will surrender and be formally charged on Tuesday.
The timing of the trial could put Mr. Trump, the first former president ever to face federal charges, in a courtroom at the height of the 2024 presidential campaign. He is currently the leading Republican candidate to face off against President Biden.
If Mr. Trump is convicted of any charge, former federal prosecutor Neama Rhamani said, “he could get some jail time,” although the judge could sentence him to probation.
Just one conviction would threaten to put Mr. Trump in federal prison for 10 to 20 years.
Mr. Trump is refuting federal prosecutors’ charges that he deliberately and carelessly retained batches of classified documents and enlisted a key aide to move them around his Mar-a-Lago estate. The aide, Walt Nauta, also was indicted.
Mr. Trump has proclaimed his innocence and said he is the victim of a political prosecution.
“The ridiculous and baseless indictment of me by the Biden administration’s weaponized Department of Injustice will go down as among the most horrific abuses of power in the history of our country. This vicious persecution is a travesty of justice,” he told an audience on Saturday at the Georgia Republican Party convention, his first public appearance since the indictment was unsealed Friday.
Mr. Trump said earlier in a video statement that he would defeat the charges “very quickly,” but legal experts said a trial isn’t likely to start until next year and perhaps not until the summer before the presidential election.
If Mr. Trump is the Republican Party’s nominee, the trial could sideline him in a South Florida courtroom at a critical time in the general election campaign.
“This type of case is not going to take days; it’s going to be weeks,” Mr. Rhamani said.
Other court cases also could bench Mr. Trump from the campaign trail.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted the former president in April on 34 counts involving alleged hush-money payments to two adult performers and a doorman before the 2016 election.
That trial is scheduled for March 25, three weeks after the Super Tuesday primary contest.
Mr. Trump’s legal entanglements are likely to worsen this summer when a Georgia grand jury concludes its investigation into whether Mr. Trump interfered in the state’s 2020 presidential election.
If Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis files criminal charges, Mr. Trump could face more time in a courtroom as he pursues another presidential term.
In his video message after the latest indictment, Mr. Trump stopped short of acknowledging the impact the criminal charges are having on his reelection bid, but he said, “It would be wonderful if we could devote our full time to making America great again.”
The indictment unsealed Friday accuses Mr. Trump of conspiring with Mr. Nauta to mislead investigators about whether they had turned over the documents at the request of the Justice Department. At one point, Mr. Trump suggested to his attorneys that they tell investigators he no longer had any classified documents.
“That’s pretty bad stuff,” Mr. Rhamani said. “That shows that he knew that he was breaking the law.”
The material Mr. Trump took to Mar-a-Lago when he left the White House in January 2021 included nuclear secrets and papers on foreign weapons systems, said the indictment, which also accused the former president of waving around top-secret military plans to people without proper security clearance.
The indictment accuses Mr. Trump of conspiring with Mr. Nauta to move boxes with sensitive documents around the estate, part of which operates as a social club for outside guests. Photos included in the indictment show boxes of classified material piled on a stage in Mar-a-Lago and spilled onto the floor in another room.
Mr. Rhamani called the evidence presented in the indictment “pretty compelling stuff” and said the inclusion of photos is unusual.
“This indictment was meant for public consumption,” he said. “There’s a reason the special counsel encouraged people to read it.”
Mr. Trump’s supporters continue to side with the former president and accuse the Justice Department of politically targeting him. Pollsters predict much of Mr. Trump’s loyal base won’t budge from their support.
If the case is delayed past the presidential election, then the court of public opinion may decide the case. If Mr. Trump is elected president again, Mr. Rhamani said, “the case goes away.”
Many Republican voters believe the federal government has unfairly targeted Mr. Trump, and the latest indictment may only fuel more of that sentiment.
James Bopp Jr., a lawyer who specializes in campaign finance law, said the indictment shows a double standard between the way the Justice Department is handling the case against Mr. Trump compared with its probe into whether Mr. Biden has mishandled classified documents.
“The Justice Department is not applying the law equally,” he said.
Mr. Bopp noted that Mar-a-Lago was a secure facility protected by the Secret Service and Mr. Biden was discovered to have stored classified documents in a closet at an office building and in the garage at his home in Wilmington, Delaware.
Another key difference, Mr. Bopp said, was that Mr. Trump had the presidential authority to declassify documents and the materials found in Mr. Biden’s possession dated back to his time in the Senate and when he was vice president during the Obama administration. Mr. Biden would not have had the authority to declassify documents in those positions.
“Biden basically stole documents from a secured facility and had no right to declassify them. He had no right to the documents and no right to declassify them. On the face of it, what Biden has done is way worse than even the furthest reaches of what Trump has done,” he said.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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