Almost four years after the January 6, 2021 assault launched by his supporters against the Capitol, Donald Trump undoubtedly definitively escapes his criminal responsibilities. The president-elect recorded, on Monday, November 25, a decisive victory in his tussle with his country's justice system, which had subjected him to a wave of indictments in 2023 in four different cases.
Noting the return of Donald Trump to the White House, special prosecutor Jack Smith requested the dropping of the charges against him in the two federal investigations for which he is responsible – that on January 6 and that on the illegal detention and the hiding of hundreds of classified documents by the former president at his Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago.
In his letter to Judge Tanya Chutkan – who subsequently validated his request – Jack Smith highlighted the “unprecedented circumstances” : or an ordinary citizen indicted in a well-advanced federal investigation, who is then elected president. The special prosecutor, constrained by presidential immunity, insists that dropping the charges in no way undermines the credibility of the investigations, “the seriousness of the crimes” at the heart of the charges. Theoretically, at the end of Donald Trump's term in 2028, the prosecution could be reactivated. But this seems unlikely, especially since the question of limitation would give rise to a new battle before the courts.
Bias
In August 2023, a grand jury found that the charges were sufficient to justify the indictment of Donald Trump, due to his role in attempting to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power. Defeated by Joe Biden in the November 2020 election, Donald Trump organized a campaign of lies about imaginary fraud, then exerted pressure on senior officials at the Department of Justice as well as in several disputed states (Georgia, Arizona, etc.). He had finally, with advisers, tried to promote alternative lists of electors, trying in vain to convince Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of the results in Congress. The calls to mobilize his supporters on January 6, 2021, who ended up attacking the police around the Capitol and forcing entry to the building, were the final stage of this conspiracy.
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Of all, the file of classified documents, which Donald Trump had taken en masse when he left the White House, was undoubtedly the most substantiated, the most incontestable, the most solid in terms of evidence and the law. The search by the federal police (FBI) at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, the video surveillance images, the communications between the protagonists: everything indicated the desire to remove the classified documents, stored in violation of mandatory safety standards.
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