Former United States President Donald Trump has been summoned to appear in federal court in Miami next week after it was revealed that he has been charged with keeping classified government documents and obstructing the judicial process. Will these charges land Trump in jail?
As reported by The Independent on Friday (9/6/2023), a federal grand jury in the US charged the former president on Thursday (8/6) local time with allegations stemming from the alleged storage of documents containing classified national defense information, which is illegal.
These charges further add to the legal pressure faced by Trump, who is attempting to run as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in the upcoming election. In April, Trump was charged with falsifying business records related to hush money payments to a porn star before the 2016 election.
Regarding the latest charges against him, Trump first revealed it through a series of posts on his social media platform, Truth Social. He asserted his innocence and stated that he would prove it in court.
“The corrupt (President Joe) Biden administration has informed my lawyers that I have been charged, apparently because of the Boxes Hoax,” Trump wrote in his statement, using a term he often employs to refer to long-running investigations.
In his subsequent posts, Trump revealed that he has been summoned to appear at the federal courthouse in Miami, Florida, on Tuesday (13/6) next week, around 3:00 PM local time.
At that time, according to The Independent, Trump is expected to be arrested, booked, or legally processed before facing the judge handling his case. This means that Trump will likely be arrested for the second time in less than three months.
So, will Trump be sent to prison? Find out more on the next page.
However, The Independent states that there is little chance of Trump being imprisoned after being criminally charged.
The ongoing legal process is expected to be similar to what happened in early April when Trump appeared in a Manhattan court in New York to face criminal charges related to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into hush money payments before the 2016 election.
The latest charges against Trump are still undisclosed to the public, and Trump himself has not seen the charging documents.
However, according to The Independent’s report, the new charges include seven separate counts, including one count of conspiracy to obstruct the judicial process, one count of making false statements, and at least one count of unlawfully retaining national defense information.
The investigation into this case began early last year when the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) discovered over 100 classified documents while inventorying 15 boxes seized from Trump’s luxury resort, Mar-a-Lago, in Florida. Approximately 13,000 documents were seized by federal agents from the luxury resort.
During the investigation, prosecutors and investigators were concerned that Trump was not truthful about whether he had returned all the classified documents he had in his possession to the government, as required by the Presidential Records Act.
The act, passed in the post-Watergate era, states that all presidential administration documents belong to the government and must be handed over to NARA when a US President ends their term.
