Donald Trump was warned that saving the documentsthe article of the Times It could help the Justice Department prove its case if Trump is charged with withholding classified materials, as it shows the former president may have known he was doing a criminal act at his Mar-a mansion. -Lago was illegal, but the former president refused to return them because he did not agree with that statement.
The newspaper New York Times reported Tuesday that Trump steadfastly refused to return boxes of documents, including some marked classified and top secret. According to the article, many other aides to the president told him the same thing as the authorities. But on several occasions Trump resisted, telling them “they are not theirs, they are mine.”
According to experts, the article in the Times could help the Justice Department prove its case if Trump is charged with withholding classified materials, since it shows the former president may have known what he was doing was a criminal act.
Trump has been promoting a series of conspiracy theories and flimsy defenses since the search of his property last Monday. He has baselessly accused his predecessor, Barack Obama, of doing the same, and claimed without evidence that FBI agents “planted” incriminating evidence in boxes seized from his Mar-a-Lago, Florida residence. .
His escalating rhetoric against the FBI has led to a substantive increase in threats to officials, including an armed protest outside an FBI building in Phoenix and a gunman who attacked an FBI headquarters in Cincinnatti before being killed in a shootout with the police.
“The FBI is always concerned about violence and threats of violence against law enforcement, including the men and women of the FBI. We work closely with our law enforcement partners to assess and respond to such reprehensible and dangerous threats. As always, we’d like to remind members of the public that if they see anything suspicious, they should report it to law enforcement immediately,” a spokesperson for the agency said.
