“BLUFF” “FRAUD” These are the key words from Donald Trump’s posts on his platform Truth Social this past weekend. On Tuesday afternoon, he will appear in court in Miami to have the indictment read out to him. The indictment concerns the classified documents that were taken from his addresses last year. With that, he is the first American president ever to be at the center of a criminal case. A supporter in a Trump mask was among those who gathered in Tropical Park, Florida at the weekend to voice their opinion on the indictment. Photo: Gerald Herbert / AP Trump already has a civil judgment and another indictment against him. But in criminal cases there is more at stake. If he is found guilty of the most serious point, which is linked to the Espionage Act, he could receive between 5 and 20 years in prison. news has spoken to Eirik Løkke in Civita and Jan Arild Snoen in Minerva about the historic court case the USA has conducted. Why is this case more serious than the last one? The indictment contains charges of seven offenses against the former president, linked to the illegal storage and withholding of classified documents. It also contains a debt against one of Trump’s employees, Walt Nauta. The prosecution believes that together they tried to prevent the work of the FBI and a grand jury in getting the documents from Trump’s properties to a safe place. Among other things, Trump is said to have stored classified documents in a shower at Mar-a-Lago, according to the indictment. Photo: Thomson Reuters (Do not use this version of the picture) This is said to have happened when Nauta, on behalf of Trump, moved 64 boxes of documents from a storage room in Mar-a-Lago that Trump’s lawyer was to search through. – The serious thing in this case is that Trump has deliberately withheld documents, let alone handing them back, and lied several times in the process about this, says Snoen. – There is something that separates this case from others who have brought with them documents they should not have brought with them. The indictment document that presents the debts against Trump and Nauta is 49 pages long. Photo: JIM BOURG / Reuters This applies to both current President Joe Biden and Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence. The difference, says Snoen, is that they immediately started the process of returning them when this was discovered. – The case goes directly to Trump’s abuse of power, Snoen continues. – Trump’s opinion is that this is his private paper, which he should be able to keep. It is clearly not. What kind of information had gone astray? The indictment against Trump tells us more about the documents that were found at his addresses than we have previously known. Eirik Løkke is a US expert and consultant at Civita. Photo: Tobias Prosch Simonsen / news Among other things, it is said that he has access to information about “the US’s nuclear weapons programme, the US and its allies’ potential vulnerabilities to military attacks”. The documents must also contain “plans for possible responses to an attack from abroad”. If the information goes astray, the document states that “it could pose a risk to national security”, “the US military” and “personnel sources”. – The indictment is extremely serious, because Trump is being prosecuted for breaching the Espionage Act. The law explicitly prohibits persons from storing documents in an illegal manner, and former presidents are not an exception, says Løkke. – There are women and men who risk their lives every day to get that information, and then you have to treat it properly. It has not been done. Why is there so much talk about a sound recording? In an audio recording cited by the indictment, Trump is said to have mentioned some of the classified information in a meeting with an author, a publisher and two of his employees. The meeting between them is said to have taken place at the golf club that Trump owns in Bedminster, New Jersey, in July 2021. None of the people he spoke with should, according to American law, have access to classified information. Nevertheless, they must have seen and depicted an “attack plan” Trump said he had received from the Ministry of Defense and a military top. Trump and Nauta (right) during a tournament at the former president’s private golf club in May 2023. Photo: JONATHAN ERNST / Reuters In his explanation, Trump is said to have used the words “highly confidential” and “secret” in his description. – As president, I could have declassified it, he is said to have said, and added: – Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret. He has since claimed that he “declassified” the documents “in his head” before he stopped being president, i.e. made it so that they were no longer classified. If the information in the indictment is correct, then this is at odds with Trump’s public comments on the matter. Trump’s motorcade left the golf club in Bedminster on Saturday, the day after the indictment became known. Photo: Jeenah Moon / AP – It illustrates that Trump himself knows that he cannot declassify documents just by thinking about it, says Løkke. – In addition, it shows that the documents were not declassified, because then he would not have talked about them in this way. What will be the political consequences for Trump? Should it happen that Trump ends up in prison, this will not necessarily stop his election campaign, says Snoen. Jan Arild Snoen is a journalist and columnist in Minerva. Photo: Philippe Bédos Ulvin – He has said that he will continue anyway. It creates major practical problems, but if that were to happen, the election would turn into a referendum on just this issue. – Then his hard-boiled supporters will be fully mobilized. Those who are a little more uncertain may be affected by this case, i.e. negatively for Trump. Snoen believes this will strengthen Trump in the nomination battle within the Republican Party, but weaken him in the election campaign itself. – If he wins the nomination, it is, in my opinion, a net negative, because there is a not insignificant proportion of Republican voters who say they think he is guilty of this. – We can then expect some of them to drop out, either by voting for Biden or sitting at home. “This is an attack on Donald J. Trump,” read the poster of a supporter outside Mar-a-Lago on Sunday. Photo: SCOTT OLSON / AFP What does this mean for democracy in the USA? If Trump wins both the nomination and the presidential election, Løkke believes this case will be “a major stress test for the American institutions and democracy”. – In the USA, two different public spaces have arisen. Trump’s followers see this as a political indictment. They do not trust the judiciary. – It is particularly serious that many of the leading republican politicians contributed to undermining the rule of law and democracy. Some of them advocate political power. Snoen agrees that the case is unfortunate for the democratic process in the country. Løkke believes that the case against Trump is both “unique” and “dangerous for democracy” in the USA. Photo: Alex Brandon / AP – A significant part of the American people will not recognize this legal process and any verdict as valid. – It will increase this distrust of the authorities, both if he is convicted and if he is not. There is still no way out of this court case, he believes. – I have sympathy for some republicans who say it is a politically motivated matter. But this is a politically necessary matter to defend the American rule of law.
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– Goes directly on Trump’s abuse of power – Direct
