Former President Donald Trump has announced whether or not he will withdraw from the 2024 election if he is convicted in connection with a Department of Justice lawsuit into whether or not he mishandled confidential documents.
The 45th president and current GOP frontrunner was asked in an interview with Politico if he would withdraw from the race if he were to be convicted in the case. Trump has said he doesn’t expect to be convicted and has no intention of entering into a plea bargain with prosecutors.
Trump told the outlet he’d never leave; if he had to leave, it would have been prior to the original race in 2016, which in theory, was not doable.
Trump has been accused in the indictment announced on Friday of intentionally rejecting demands from the Justice Department that he surrender confidential documents, engaging aides to hide the data, and telling his lawyers he wished to disobey a subpoena for the materials housed at his property. According to the indictment, he allegedly kept documents in his Mar-a-Lago resort’s ballroom and restroom.
When Trump left office in January 2021, he reportedly took hundreds of classified documents with him, which are the focus of the indictment’s 49 pages.
The indictment states that one of Mar-a-Lago’s opulent ballrooms temporarily stored some of the boxes Trump took between January 1, 2021, and March 15, 2021.
According to prepared statements made in Washington, DC, special counsel Jack Smith, whose brought allegations against Trump were accepted by a grand jury, emphasized the importance of the law that safeguards national defense information. Smith stated that the entire country is in danger if such laws are broken.
Smith added that one set of laws in this country applies to everyone but said that Trump and others must be given the benefit of the doubt until proven guilty in a court of law.
Trump’s first appearance in federal court will be on Tuesday in Miami. Along with Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, he was accused of lying to investigators about transporting boxes from a storage facility to the President’s home for scrutiny. On Saturday, Nauta accompanied Trump on his campaign trail stop at a Georgia Waffle House, where the former President signed autographs, posed for pictures, and reassured his supporters that “We did absolutely nothing wrong.”
During a campaign stop, Trump told reporters that the absurd and unfounded prosecution brought by the Biden administration’s militarized Department of Injustice would be remembered as one of the worst abuses of power in American history.
In an interview given on June 9, Alan Dershowitz, a legal analyst and emeritus professor of law at Harvard, stated that the federal government’s case against Trump does not meet what he calls the Richard Nixon standard, which entails apparent obstruction of justice, destroying evidence, and paying bribes.
Dershowitz said this case was too close to bring charges against the presidential candidate.
According to Trump, he declassified all information and documents before leaving office. Declassification authority rests with the President. His attorneys have not mentioned that contention in any case documents.
Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, appealed to the Department of Justice to reveal more details about the extraordinary case against a former president on Saturday and has openly backed Trump since the indictment was released.
Pence told Republicans at a conference in North Carolina that they should wait to pass judgment on the former President until they hear his side of the story.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis responded to the indictment on Friday by saying there should be a uniform standard of justice nationwide. The weaponization of federal agencies was something he strongly opposed.