Donald Trump stormed Friday evening against the appointment, earlier in the day by the American Minister of Justice, of an expert war crimes prosecutor to independently investigate the ex-president, three days after his declaration of presidential candidacy of 2024. During a televised address, Minister Merrick Garland entrusted this extremely “sensitive” mission to Jack Smith, prosecutor based in The Hague of the Special Court for Kosovo.
A “terrible abuse of power” for Donald Trump
The former Republican president, who immediately denounced to Fox journalists a “political” and “unfair” decision, rose again in the evening. “This terrible abuse of power is the latest in a long series of witch hunts that began a long time ago,” he said in a speech from his Florida residence, assuring that the special prosecutor was “not going to investigate impartially”.
It is, however, to guard against such suspicions that Merrick Garland, taking note of the Republican’s decision to run for a new term and the intention of Democratic President Joe Biden to do the same, judged “in the interest of the public ” to instruct this prosecutor to resume two investigations carried out for months by the American justice system. The first relates to the Republican billionaire’s efforts to change the results of the 2020 presidential election, the second to his management of the White House archives.
responsible for making a recommendation
After having gathered all the elements, the special prosecutor “will exercise his professional judgment independently to decide whether there should be an indictment”, in one or the other of these files, specified Merrick Garland. However, the special prosecutor will only be responsible for making a recommendation and it will be up to the minister to decide. If he were to ultimately indict Donald Trump on this basis, his decision will be harder to attack. The initiation of legal proceedings would not prevent the real estate mogul from competing, but would cast a shadow over his candidacy.
Denying any instrumentalization of the judiciary, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre for her part assured that President Biden had not been informed in advance of his minister’s decision. In a statement, Attorney Smith promised to act “quickly”, “independently” and “thoroughly”.
The first investigation entrusted to him focuses on Donald Trump’s efforts to contest his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, until the assault led by his supporters against the Capitol on January 6, 2021. This sprawling investigation has already led to the indictment of nearly 900 people who directly participated in the violence. But prosecutors have never ruled out looking at other actors. “Everyone who is criminally responsible for efforts to nullify the election will have to answer for their actions,” Merrick Garland has repeatedly said.
White House Archives Investigation
The second investigation relates to the archives of the White House. Leaving the presidency, Donald Trump took entire boxes of documents. However, a law of 1978 obliges any American president to transmit all of his emails, letters and other working documents to the National Archives. In January, he returned 15 boxes. After examination, the federal police estimated that he probably kept others in his luxurious residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
FBI agents conducted a spectacular search there on August 8 on the basis of a warrant for “retention of classified documents” and “obstructing a federal investigation”, and seized around thirty other boxes.
In the past, Donald Trump has already been the subject of an investigation supervised by a special prosecutor: Robert Mueller was charged in 2017 with establishing whether there had been collusion between his campaign team and Russia during the presidential election of 2016. After two years of investigation, he had judged not to have enough evidence of a plot between Moscow and the Trump team, but had noted a series of disturbing pressures exerted by the tenant of the White House on his investigation. The Minister of Justice at the time, Republican Bill Barr, however, did not consider it necessary to prosecute him.
During his tenure, Donald Trump was also the target of two impeachment trials: one related to pressure on Ukraine to give him embarrassing material for Joe Biden; the other on his role in the attack on the Capitol. He was acquitted in both cases thanks to the Republican majority in the Senate.