Former president Donald Trump said on June 8 that his attorneys that he has been indicted by special counsel Jack Smith in connection to the investigation into the handling of classified documents.
“The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. He went on to the parallel investigation in President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents.
Trump said that he has been summon to appear at the federal courthouse in Miami at 3 p.m. on Tuesday.
“I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States, who received far more votes than any sitting President in the History of our Country, and is currently leading, by far, all Candidates, both Democrat and Republican, in Polls of the 2024 Presidential Election. I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!” Trump wrote.
The action one day after Trump’s lawyers spent about two hours inside the Department of Justice (DOJ) on June 5, apparently addressing their concerns about the way the case has been handled.
His attorneys had requested yesterday’s meeting in a May 23 letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, “to discuss the ongoing injustice” of the special counsel’s investigations of Trump.
Trump’s March 30 indictment on state business records charges in New York already put him in the history books. That case made him the first former U.S. president to be indicted for a felony; he has pleaded not guilty to all 34 charges arising from an attorney’s “hush-money” payment to an adult film actress.
While Trump’s critics maintain that he deserves to be held accountable, he and his supporters contend that he is the victim of politicized persecution. His attackers are trying to play spoiler, they say, blocking Trump’s raging-bull quest to upend Washington’s bureaucracy.
But indicting Trump federally for documents allegations in the midst of an election campaign seems to cross a point-of-no-return for America, some legal observers say. For the first time in U.S. history, the administration of an incumbent president, Joe Biden, is using the machinery of the American justice system to wound his strongest challenger from the opposing party.
By Janice Hisle