The Department of Justice is preparing to ask a Washington, DC grand jury to indict former president Donald Trump for violating the Espionage Act and for obstruction of justice as soon as Thursday.
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US criminal code known as Section 793 [...] prohibits “gathering, transmitting or losing” any “information respecting the national defence”.
The use of Section 793, which does not make reference to classified information, is understood to be a strategic decision by prosecutors that has been made to short-circuit Mr Trump’s ability to claim that he used his authority as president to declassify documents he removed from the White House and kept.[I]t states that anyone who “lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document ...relating to the national defence,” and “willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it” can be punished by as many as 10 years in prison.
It is understood that prosecutors intend to ask grand jurors to vote on the indictment on Thursday, but that vote could be delayed as much as a week until the next meeting of the grand jury to allow for a complete presentation of evidence, or to allow investigators to gather more evidence for presentation if necessary.
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Even if grand jurors vote to return an indictment against the ex-president this week, it is likely that those charges would remain sealed until both the Washington and Florida grand juries complete their work.
Another source familiar with the matter has said Mr Trump’s team was recently informed that he is a “target” of the Justice Department probe.
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[Former Trump Chief of Staff Mark] Meadows has already given evidence before the grand jury and is said to be cooperating with the investigations into his former boss. It is understood that the former North Carolina congressman testified as part of a deal for which he has already received limited immunity in exchange for his testimony.
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It is not yet known whether the testimony or the charges in question relate to the documents probe, or a separate investigation into the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Both investigations are being overseen by a Department of Justice special prosecutor, Jack Smith. According to ABC News, Mr Meadows has given evidence in both the documents matter and the January 6 investigation.
UK Independent
This contradicts some earlier reporting (kind of) from the Washington Post, which reported that a "significant portion" of charges will be voted on by a Grand Jury meeting in FLORIDA, and no one has a straight answer about the two different Grand Juries. MY SPECULATION is that maybe the Florida grand jury is about charging Nauta and his pool buddy who accidentally flooded the room where surveillance footage was stored. But Budowich also testified today in Florida, and he has the same lawyer as Nauta and Kash Patel who is paid by the Save America PAC, so perhaps the FL grand jury is about the Jack Smith probe into the trump PACs.
But MEADOWS has agreed to plead guilty on several lesser charges in exchange for limited immunity, and he has most certainly already given Jack Smith all the information he needs.
Allison Gill
Trump’s lawyers were sent a “target letter” days before they met on Monday with the special counsel Jack Smith leading the Mar-a-Lago documents case and the senior career official in the deputy attorney general’s office and argued that prosecutors should not indict the former president in the matter.
Trump has reportedly said he had not been personally informed by the justice department that he was a target when asked directly by a New York Times reporter, but demurred when asked whether his legal team had been told about the designation.
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On Wednesday, former Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich testified before the Florida grand jury and was asked in part about a statement that Trump drafted in early 2022 that said he had given “everything” back after he returned 15 boxes of materials to the National Archives.
The statement was never issued, Budowich is understood to have confirmed. Several aides to Trump were against releasing the statement because they were not confident that the assertion was accurate.
Guardian
UPDATE 06/08/2023:
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