Trump pleads not guilty to 37 charges in Mar-a-Lago classified documents case
Former U.S. President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty Tuesday in a federal court in Miami. “not guilty” of the federal charges brought against him in the case of secret documents found in his Florida home and asked to stand trial by jury.
Trump, the first president and former president in U.S. history to face a federal indictment, has appeared before federal judge Jonathan Goodman in connection with the 37 counts charged against him by a Grand Jury. for handling classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his South Florida mansion, after he left the White House.
The former president’s lawyers pointed out in the courtroom that there was no need for the 37 charges contained in the indictment to be read, since they already knew them. “We certainly plead not guilty,” Todd Blanche, Trump’s lawyer, said in the courtroom during a hearing.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office noted that Trump was not required to surrender his passport.since he can travel in the United States and even abroad. Along with Trump, his aide Walt Nauta, who is charged as a co-conspirator, was also indicted.
Trump accessed the courthouse through a subway tunnel shortly before 2 p.m. local time (18.00 GMT) after leaving his hotel in the city of Doral and, shortly after, was fingerprinted. and was brought before the court.
Biden “has not been involved. The president has always been very, very clear. The Justice Department is independent,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said in response to a reporter’s question at a press conference.
The former president attributes the indictment led by special prosecutor Jack Smith to a “great witch hunt” launched by the current U.S. president, Democrat Joe Biden, and which responds to a campaign of “electoral interference”, as he reiterated today on his social network Truth.
Of the 37 charges to which Trump must answer, 31 correspond to the statutory offense as deliberate withholding of national defense information, according to the indictment.
The others are for conspiracy to obstruct justice, “corrupt” concealment of a document or record, concealment of a document in a federal investigation, scheme to conceal, and false statement and representation.
