If a federal indictment of former President Donald Trump was imminent during the afternoon of June 7, he denied being informed about it.
Throughout the day, numerous news reports were circulating that the Department of Justice (DOJ) had alerted Trump or his lawyers that he would be formally charged in connection with the classified documents found at his Florida residence during an FBI raid last August.
In response, Trump posted on his Truth Social network: “No one has told me I’m being indicted, and I shouldn’t be because I’ve done nothing wrong.”
Already facing charges under New York business records laws, Trump faces multiple other state and federal probes, all of which the Republican former president has denounced as persecutions led by his political enemies, mainly Democrats and “RINOS,” short for “Republicans In Name Only.”
Trump, in his Truth Social denial of knowledge about a pending Washington indictment, says that he has assumed for years he has been “a target of the weaponized DOJ & FBI.” He says the agencies are committing “a travesty of justice and election interference at a level never seen before.”
Trump is urging Republicans in Congress to make this their top concern.
The flurry of reports about a looming federal indictment of Trump comes as House Republicans are accusing the FBI of withholding key information about a purported $5 million foreign bribe of Democrat President Joe Biden during his years as vice president. He served in that role under President Barack Obama from 2009-2017.
Trump and his allies allege that Democrats and bureaucrats have long shielded Biden, a career politician, from meaningful scrutiny. Trump, a political outsider prior to his presidential run in 2016, says he has been targeted because entrenched Washington forces fear he will expose them and dismantle their insider network.
Talk of Trump’s possible indictment ramped up after Trump’s lawyers were spotted leaving a two-hour June 5 meeting inside the DOJ. His lawyers had sought a meeting with the DOJ to discuss “the ongoing injustice” that they claim Trump is facing under Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probes.
The DOJ appointed Smith in November 2022 after Trump announced his 2024 presidential run. Since then, Smith has been investigating Trump on two fronts.
One probe of Trump focuses on the former president’s actions as he disputed whether Biden legitimately won the 2020 election.
Smith also is focusing on Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents after he left the White House. Trump says that, as president, he had the power to declassify the records.
Last fall, the American Bar Association (ABA) analyzed Trump’s claim about that. The ABA wrote: “legal guidelines support his [Trump’s] contention that presidents have broad authority to formally declassify most documents that are not statutorily protected, while they are in office.”
In a memo dated Jan. 19, 2021, the day before his presidency ended, Trump wrote that he was declassifying “certain materials related to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” which delved into unproven allegations from political opponents that Trump had ties with Russian officials and spies.
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