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      Fact Check: Trump’s Misleading Defenses in Classified Documents Case

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      The former president drew misleading comparisons to others, misconstrued the classification process and leveled inaccurate attacks at officials.Hours after pleading not guilty in a federal court in Miami to charges related to his handling of classified documents, former President Donald J. Trump defended his conduct on Tuesday with a string of familiar falsehoods.Appearing at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., Mr. Trump drew misleading comparisons to other political figures, misconstrued the classification process and leveled inaccurate attacks at officials.Here’s a fact check of claims Mr. Trump made related to the inquiry.What Mr. Trump Said“Threatening me with 400 years in prison for possessing my own presidential papers, which just about every other president has done, is one of the most outrageous and vicious legal theories ever put forward in an American court of law.”False. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 governs the preservation and retention of official records of former presidents, and gives the National Archives and Records Administration complete ownership and control of presidential records. The law makes a distinction between official records and personal documents, and has applied to every president since Ronald Reagan.The agency has said that “it assumed physical and legal custody of the presidential records from the administrations of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, when those presidents left office.”Separately, after Mr. Trump repeatedly and misleadingly compared his handling of records to that of his immediate predecessor, the National Archives said in a statement that former President Barack Obama turned over his documents, classified and unclassified, as required by law. The agency has also said it is not aware of any missing boxes of presidential records from the Obama administration.What Mr. Trump Said“The decision to segregate personal materials from presidential records is made by the president during the president’s term and in the president’s sole discretion.”False. The Presidential Records Act defines what constitutes personal materials — such as diaries or political campaign documents — from official records. It does not give the president “sole discretion” in determining what is and is not a personal record. Under the law, a departing president is required to separate personal documents from official records before leaving office.F.B.I. agents searched Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in August, more than a year after the general counsel of the National Archives requested the recovery of the materials and after months of repeated inquiries from officials at the agency and at the Justice Department.What Mr. Trump Said“I was supposed to negotiate with NARA, which is exactly what I was doing until Mar-a-Lago was raided by gun-toting F.B.I. agents.”False. The Presidential Records Act does not establish a process of negotiation between the president and the archives. The court-approved search of Mr. Trump’s Florida residence unfolded after he repeatedly resisted the government’s requests that he return the material, even after being subpoenaed.What Mr. Trump Said“Biden sent 1,850 boxes to the University of Delaware, making the search very, very difficult for anybody. And he refuses to give them up and he refuses to let people even look at them, and then they say how he’s behaving so nicely.”This is misleading. Joseph R. Biden Jr. donated 1,850 boxes of documents to the University of Delaware in 2012 from his tenure as a senator representing the state from 1973 to 2009. Unlike presidential documents, which must be released to the archives once a president leaves office, documents from members of Congress are not covered by the Presidential Records Act. It is not uncommon for senators and representatives to give such items to colleges, research institutions or historical facilities.The University of Delaware agreed not to give the public access to Mr. Biden’s documents from his time as senator until two years after he retired from public life. But the F.B.I. did search the collection in February as part of a separate special counsel investigation into Mr. Biden’s handling of government documents and in cooperation with his legal team. The New York Times reported at the time that the material was still being analyzed but did not appear to contain any classified documents.What Mr. Trump Said“When caught, Hillary then deleted and acid-washed. Nobody does that because of the expense, but it’s pretty conclusive. Thirty-three thousand emails in defiance of a congressional subpoena already launched. The subpoena was there and she decided to delete, acid-wash and then smash and destroy her cellphones with a hammer. And then they say I participated in obstruction.”This is misleading. There are several key differences between Mr. Trump’s case and Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state — which Mr. Trump also described inaccurately.Crucially, several official investigations have concluded that Mrs. Clinton did not systematically or deliberately mishandle classified material, and a 2018 inspector general report supported the F.B.I.’s decision not to charge Mrs. Clinton.In contrast, Mr. Trump is accused of mishandling classified documents and obstructing the government’s repeated efforts to recover them and making false statements to officials. The indictment unsealed last week featured photographs of documents stored in sometimes haphazard ways, including boxes stacked in a shower and others piled on the stage of a ballroom that guests frequented.According to the F.B.I.’s inquiry into the matter, Mrs. Clinton’s lawyers provided about 30,000 work-related emails to the State Department in 2014 and instructed an employee to remove all personal emails older than 60 days. In 2015, after The Times reported Mrs. Clinton’s use of a personal email account, a Republican-led House committee investigating the 2012 attacks on American outposts in Benghazi, Libya, sent a subpoena requesting all emails she had in that account related to Libya.That same month, an employee working for the company that managed Mrs. Clinton’s server realized he did not actually delete the personal emails as instructed in 2014. He then used a free software program called BleachBit — not actual acid or chemical compounds — to delete about 30,000 personal emails.The F.B.I. found thousands of additional work-related emails that Mrs. Clinton did not turn over to the State Department, but the director of the bureau at the time, James B. Comey, said it found “no evidence that any of the additional work-related emails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them.”Mrs. Clinton would almost certainly disagree with Mr. Trump’s assertion that the F.B.I. and the Justice Department “protected” her, and has said that Mr. Comey’s actions as well as Russian interference cost her the 2016 election.What Mr. Trump Said“He totally exonerated Mike Pence. I’m happy about that. Mike did nothing wrong, but he happened to have classified documents in his house. But they exonerated him. And Biden is a different story.”This is misleading. Classified documents were found at former Vice President Mike Pence’s home in Indiana in January and President Biden’s former office at a Washington think tank in November and his Delaware residence in January. The Justice Department declined to pursue charges against Mr. Pence, and the investigation into Mr. Biden’s handling of materials is continuing.But those cases differ in several significant ways from Mr. Trump’s, particularly in the volume of documents found and in Mr. Pence’s and Mr. Biden’s response.About a dozen documents with classified markings were found at Mr. Pence’s home. The F.B.I. searched his home in February with his agreement and found one additional classified document. It is unclear how many classified documents were found in Mr. Biden’s possession, but his lawyers have said “a small number” were discovered at his former office and about a half-dozen at his Delaware home.In contrast, Mr. Trump stored “hundreds” of classified documents, according to the Justice Department’s indictment, which said some records included information about the country’s nuclear programs as well as “potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack.” In total, the government has retrieved more than 300 files with classified markings from his Florida home and private club.Representatives for Mr. Pence and Mr. Biden have said that they inadvertently kept those documents and quickly alerted the National Archives once they were discovered. Both men also cooperated with government officials in turning over the documents and appeared to have voluntarily complied with searches of their properties.In contrast, Mr. Trump repeatedly defied requests to return materials for months and, according to the indictment, played an active role in concealing classified documents from investigators. The archives alerted Mr. Trump in May 2021 that presidential documents were missing. Officials retrieved 15 boxes from Mar-a-Lago in January 2022 but suspected that other records remained missing. Seven months later, F.B.I. agents searched the Florida property and recovered additional documents.What Mr. Trump Said“Unlike me, who had absolute declassification authority as president, Joe Biden as vice president had no authority to declassify and no right to possess the documents. He had no right.”This is misleading. Vice presidents do have the power to declassify certain material, though the scope of their declassification powers has not been explicitly tested in courts.Mr. Trump has previously insisted that he had the power to declassify material without needing to inform anyone. There are formal procedures for declassifying information, but whether presidents must abide by them is an unsettled legal issue, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service and the American Bar Association. A federal appeals court ruled in 2020 that “declassification, even by the president, must follow established procedures.” But the Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on the matter.It is worth noting, though, that Mr. Trump followed these procedures for certain documents, like issuing a memorandum on the day before leaving office declassifying information related to the F.B.I. investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia.Separately, legal experts have noted that the classification of information related to nuclear weapons or “restricted data” is governed by a separate legal framework entirely, the Atomic Energy Act. That law does not explicitly give the president the authority to declassify nuclear secrets unilaterally and establishes a strict process for declassification that involves several agencies. It is unclear whether documents stored at Mar-a-Lago included “restricted data.”Chris Cameron More

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      Donald Trump’s Quest to Break America’s Democracy

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      What if Mitch McConnell, at the close of his scalding speech on the Senate floor blaming Donald Trump for the riot that occurred at the Capitol on Jan. 6, had promised to use his every last breath to ensure that Trump was convicted on impeachment charges and could never, ever become president again?What if Melania Trump, after the porn star Stormy Daniels said Trump had unprotected sex with her less than four months after Melania gave birth to their son, had thrown all of Trump’s clothes, golf clubs, MAGA hats and hair spray onto the White House lawn with this note, “Never come back, you despicable creep!”What if the influential evangelical leader Robert Jeffress, after Trump was caught on tape explaining that as a TV star he felt entitled to “grab” women in the most intimate places — or after Trump was found liable by a Manhattan jury of having done pretty much just that to E. Jean Carroll — declared that he would lead a campaign to ensure that anyone but Trump was elected in 2024 because Trump was a moral deviant whom Jeffress would not let babysit his two daughters, let alone the country?Where would statements and actions like those have left Kevin McCarthy, his knuckleheads in the House G.O.P. caucus, and other Republicans who now are defending Trump against the Justice Department indictment? Would they be so eager to proclaim Trump’s innocence? Would they be raging against Tuesday’s hearing in Miami? Would they be claiming, falsely, that President Biden was indicting Trump, when they know full well that the president doesn’t have the power to indict anyone?I doubt it. But I know that all of these questions are rhetorical. None of those people have the character to rise to these ethical challenges and take on Trump and what he has done to break our political system. Trump is like a drug dealer who thrives in a broken neighborhood, getting everyone hooked on his warped values. That is why he is doing everything he can to break our national neighborhood in two fundamental ways.For starters, Trump has consistently tried to denigrate people who have demonstrated character and courage, by labeling them losers and weaklings. This comes easy to Trump because he is a man utterly without character — devoid of any sense of ethics or loyalty to any value system or person other than himself. And for him, politics is a blood sport in which you bludgeon the other guys and gals — whether they are in your party or not — with smears and nicknames and lies until they get out of your way.Trump debuted this strategy early on with John McCain — a veteran, a man who never broke in five-plus years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, a man of real character. Do you remember what Trump said about McCain at a family leadership summit in Ames, Iowa, on July 18, 2015?When McCain ran for president, “I supported him,” Trump told the audience. “He lost. He let us down. But he lost. So I never liked him much after that, because I don’t like losers.” When the audience laughed, the moderator, the pollster Frank Luntz, interjected, “But he’s a war hero!”Trump — who wangled a dubious medical deferment to avoid the Vietnam War draft — then responded: “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured.” Later that day, Trump retweeted a web post headlined, “Donald Trump: John McCain Is ‘A Loser.’”So part of the way Trump tries to break our system is to redefine the qualities of a leader — at least in the G.O.P. A leader is not someone like Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney, people prepared to risk their careers to defend the truth, serve the country and uphold the Constitution. No, a leader is someone like him, someone who is ready to win at any cost — to the country, to the Constitution and to the example we set for our children and our allies.And when that is your definition of leadership, of winning, people of character like McCain, Cheney and Romney are in your way. You need to strip everyone around you of character, and make everything about securing power and money. That is why so many people who entered Trump’s orbit since 2015 have walked away muddied. And that’s why I knew that all the questions I asked earlier were rhetorical.The second way that Trump is trying to break our system was on display on Tuesday in Miami, where he followed his appearance as a federal criminal defendant with a political meet-and-greet at a Cuban restaurant. There, once again, Trump tried to discredit the rules of the game that would restrain him and his limitless appetite for power for power’s sake.How does he do that? First, he gets everyone around him — and, eventually, the vast majority of those in his party — to stop insisting that Trump abide by ethical norms. His family members and party colleagues have grown adept at running away from reporters’ microphones after every Trump outrage.But precisely because key political allies, church leaders and close family members will not call out Trump for his moral and legal transgressions — which would make his 2024 re-election bid unthinkable and hasten his departure from the political scene — we have to rely solely on the courts to defend the rules of the game.And when that happens, it puts tremendous stress on our judicial system and our democracy itself, because the decision to prosecute or not is always a judgment call. And when those judgment calls have to be rendered at times by judges or prosecutors appointed by Democrats — which is how our system works — it gives Trump and his flock the perfect opening to denounce the whole process as a “witch hunt.”And when such behavior happens over and over across a broad front — because Trump won’t stop at red lights anywhere and just keeps daring us to ignore his transgressions or indict him so he can cry bias — we end up eroding the two most important pillars of our democratic system: the belief in the independence of our judiciary that ensures no one is above the law, and the belief in our ability to transfer power peacefully and legitimately.Just consider one scene in Trump’s indictment. It’s after a federal grand jury subpoenaed him in May 2022, to produce all classified material in his possession. Notes written by his own lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, quote Trump as saying: “I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t. … What happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them? Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”“Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”Better for whom? Only one man. And that’s why I repeat: Trump has not put us here by accident. He actually wants to break our system, because he and people like him only thrive in a broken system.So he keeps pushing and pushing our system to its breaking point — where rules are for suckers, norms are for fools, basic truths are malleable and men and women of high character are banished.This is exactly what would-be dictators try to do: Flood the zone with lies so the people trust only them and the truth is only what they say it is.It is impossible to exaggerate what a dangerous moment this is for our country.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      The Trump Documents Case Puts the Justice System on Trial

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      The former president’s efforts to defend against multiple felony counts by discrediting law enforcement pose a grave challenge to democracy.Former President Donald J. Trump has a lot at stake in the federal criminal case lodged against him. He could, in theory, go to prison for years. But if he winds up in the dock in front of a jury, it is no exaggeration to suggest that American justice will be on trial as well.History’s first federal indictment against a former president poses one of the gravest challenges to democracy the country has ever faced. It represents either a validation of the rule-of-law principle that even the most powerful face accountability for their actions or the moment when a vast swath of the public becomes convinced that the system has been irredeemably corrupted by partisanship.Mr. Trump, his allies and even some of his Republican rivals have embarked on a strategy to encourage the latter view, arguing that law enforcement has been hijacked by President Biden and the Democrats to take out his strongest opponent for re-election next year. Few if any of them bothered to wait to read the indictment before backing Mr. Trump’s all-caps assertion that it was merely part of the “GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME.” It is now an article of faith, a default tactic or both.Jack Smith, the special counsel, and his prosecutors knew that defense was coming and have labored to avoid any hint of political motivation with a by-the-book approach, securing the assent of judges and grand jurors along the way. Moreover, their indictment laid out a damning series of facts based on security camera video, text messages and testimony from within Mr. Trump’s own team; even some who have defended him in the past say it will be harder to brush aside the evidence in a courtroom than in the court of public opinion.In the public arena, though, it may be a one-sided fight. Mr. Trump and his allies can scream as loudly as they can that the system is unfair, but prosecutors are bound by rules limiting how much they can say in response. To the extent that Democrats defend prosecutors, it may only buttress the point Mr. Trump is trying to make to the audience he is trying to reach.“I think the verdict on democracy ultimately comes down to Republican leaders and Republican voters,” said David Jolly, a former Republican congressman from Florida who left the party during the Trump presidency. “Their current weaponization narrative is dangerous and destabilizing, but seems to reflect the party’s early consensus. If they don’t pivot soon to due process and faith in the system, I think we could have very dark days ahead. I do worry.”Mr. Trump has attacked the Justice Department and Jack Smith, the special counsel in the case, calling him a lunatic.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesPolls suggest that Mr. Trump has made headway in persuading at least his own supporters that any and all allegations against him are just political. After the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, brought state charges against him related to hush money paid to an adult film actress, the former president’s support among Republicans rose, rather than fell.While 60 percent of all adults surveyed by CNN afterward approved of the charges, 76 percent agreed that politics played a role in the prosecution. As for the effect on America’s system, 31 percent said the indictment strengthened democracy, while 31 percent said it weakened it.All of which indicates that the system’s credibility is on the line in a way it has not been before. Many have criticized American justice over the years for systemic racism, excessive punishment, mistreatment of women subjected to assault or other issues, but they did not command the bullhorn of the presidency. When past presidents like Richard M. Nixon or Bill Clinton got in trouble, they defended themselves aggressively, but did not call the whole system into question.“In 1972 to 1974, the Republicans participated as good-faith members of the process,” said Garrett Graff, the author of “Watergate: A New History,” published last year. “They saw their roles as legislators first and Republicans second. They definitely were skeptical” initially of the allegations against Nixon, “but they followed the facts where they led.”Even Nixon’s sharp-tongued vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, was careful about disparaging the justice system broadly. “Agnew, of course, was Nixon’s attack dog, but mainly against the press, not the F.B.I. or the special prosecutor,” Mr. Graff said.Mr. Trump, on the other hand, is holding nothing back as he assails “the ‘Thugs’ from the Department of Injustice” and calls Mr. Smith a “deranged lunatic.” Republicans like Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona have called for dismantling the F.B.I. “We have now reached a war phase,” he wrote on Twitter on Friday. “Eye for an eye.” Elon Musk said the authorities were showing “far higher interest in pursuing Trump compared to other people in politics.”Several of Mr. Trump’s competitors for the Republican presidential nomination joined in. Former Vice President Mike Pence compared the indictment to leaders of “third-world nations” who “use a criminal justice system in their country against their predecessors.” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said “the weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society.”The former president’s defenders generally do not address the substance of the 37 counts against him, but instead make a case of selective prosecution that resonates powerfully among many Republicans: What about Mr. Biden? What about Hunter Biden? What about Hillary Clinton?They point to the origin of the Russia investigation against Mr. Trump, citing the recent report by the special counsel John H. Durham that harshly criticized the F.B.I. for its handling of the case even though it did not come up with any new blockbuster revelations of politically motivated misconduct nor result in the conviction of any major figure.They point to Republican congressional inquiries that they say hint at wrongdoing by the Bidens even without confirmation. They point to the continuing federal criminal investigation of the president’s son Hunter, suggesting it has been impeded. And they point to the fact that the president himself is also under investigation over retaining classified documents yet not charged.The differences between the cases, however, are stark, making apples-to-apples comparisons complicated. In the documents investigation, for instance, Mr. Biden’s advisers by all accounts so far returned the papers to the authorities promptly after discovering them. Mr. Pence did the same after a voluntary search found that the former vice president had kept classified documents, and he was recently cleared by the Justice Department because there was no evidence of willful violations of the law.Mr. Trump, by contrast, refused to hand over all the documents he had taken from the White House — even after being subpoenaed for them. According to the indictment, he orchestrated an expansive scheme to hide papers and feed lies to authorities seeking them. On two occasions, the indictment charged, Mr. Trump showed secret documents to people without security clearance and indicated that he knew he was not supposed to.As for seeking to weaponize the Justice Department, there was ample evidence that Mr. Trump sought to do just that while in office. He openly and aggressively pushed his attorneys general to prosecute his perceived enemies and drop cases against his friends and allies, making no pretense that he was seeking equal and independent justice. His friends-and-family approach to his pardon power extended clemency to associates and those who had access to him through them.He chipped away at so many norms during his four years in office that it is no wonder that institutions have faced credibility problems. Indeed, he has made clear that he does not respect the boundaries that constrained other presidents. Since leaving office, he has called for “termination” of the Constitution so that he could be returned to power without waiting for another election and vowed that he would devote a second term to “retribution” against his foes while pardoning supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to stop the transfer of power.There is no known evidence, on the other hand, that Mr. Biden has played any role in the investigations against Mr. Trump. Unlike the voluble Mr. Trump, he has made a point of not even publicly commenting on individual prosecutions, saying he respects the autonomy of the Justice Department.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has been sensitive to the matter of perception and sought to insulate the inquiries by appointing Mr. Smith, a career prosecutor who is not registered with either political party, as a special counsel with a guarantee of independence absent manifest wrongdoing on his part.But that was never going to convince Mr. Trump or his most fervent supporters of the fairness of the process. At bottom, the former president and front-runner for his party’s nomination to be the next president is being charged by a prosecutor appointed by an appointee of the man he hopes to beat. It is a recipe for distrust, especially when stoked by a defendant who has mastered the politics of grievance and victimhood.Will that result in lasting damage to democracy? Even some who support charging Mr. Trump fear that it may. Still, some who have studied politically fraught investigations counseled patience. There will be fireworks. Many will doubt the credibility of the system. But in the end, they said, the system will survive just as it has for more than two centuries.“It’s messy and uncomfortable for the generation living through it, but the system is durable enough to win out,” said Ken Gormley, the president of Duquesne University and the author of books on Watergate and the Clinton investigations. “As painful as the next year is likely to be as the criminal justice system grinds forward toward a fair verdict in the Mar-a-Lago documents case — whatever that outcome may be — we are fortunate that our predecessors have spent 234 years shoring up the bulwark.” More

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      Qué significa la acusación contra Donald Trump por los documentos

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      En su momento, el expresidente criticó a Hillary Clinton por su manejo de información sensible. Ahora, el mismo problema amenaza sus posibilidades de retomar la presidencia.Hubo un tiempo, no hace mucho en realidad, en el que Donald Trump afirmó que se preocupaba por la inviolabilidad de la información clasificada. Eso, por supuesto, sucedió cuando su adversaria fue acusada de ponerla en peligro y eso representó un arma política útil para Trump.A lo largo de 2016, fustigó a Hillary Clinton por utilizar un servidor de correo electrónico privado en vez de uno gubernamental seguro. “Voy a hacer cumplir todas las leyes relativas a la protección de información clasificada”, declaró. “Nadie estará por encima de la ley”. El manejo negligente que Clinton hizo de la información sensible, sentenció, “la descalifica para la presidencia”.Siete años después, Trump se enfrenta a cargos penales por poner en peligro la seguridad nacional por haberse llevado documentos clasificados cuando dejó la Casa Blanca y negarse a devolverlos todos, incluso después de que se le exigió hacerlo. A pesar del adagio de “recoge lo que siembras” de la política estadounidense, es bastante sorprendente que el asunto que ayudó a impulsar a Trump a la Casa Blanca sea lo que amenace con arruinar sus posibilidades de regresar a ella.La acusación presentada por un gran jurado federal a petición del fiscal especial Jack Smith cierra el círculo de la historia de Trump. “Enciérrenla”, coreaban las multitudes en los mítines de campaña de Trump, quien alentaba a sus seguidores para que gritaran eso. Ahora, él podría ser el encerrado de ser sentenciado por alguno de los siete cargos, entre ellos conspiración para la obstrucción de justicia y retención intencional de documentos.Esta acusación es la segunda presentada contra el expresidente en los últimos meses, pero en muchos aspectos eclipsa a la primera tanto en gravedad jurídica como en peligro político. La primera acusación, anunciada en marzo por el fiscal del distrito de Manhattan, acusó a Trump de falsificar registros empresariales para encubrir el pago de dinero a una actriz de cine para adultos —la cual había alegado que habían mantenido una relación sexual— a cambio de su silencio. La segunda la presentó un fiscal federal en representación de toda la nación, la primera en la historia de Estados Unidos contra un expresidente, y se refiere a los secretos de la nación.Mientras que los partidarios de Trump han tratado de desestimar la primera como el trabajo de un demócrata electo local sobre cuestiones que, aunque indecorosas, en última instancia parecen relativamente mezquinas y ocurrieron antes de que asumiera la presidencia, las más recientes acusaciones se derivan directamente de su responsabilidad como comandante en jefe de la nación para salvaguardar los datos que podrían ser útiles a los enemigos de Estados Unidos.Es posible que a los votantes republicanos no les importe que su líder le dé dinero a una estrella porno para que guarde silencio, pero ¿también serán indiferentes ante el delito de impedir que las autoridades intenten recuperar material clasificado?Tal vez. Sin duda, Trump así lo espera. La acusación de Manhattan solo pareció aumentar sus índices de popularidad más que perjudicarlo. Es por eso que, de inmediato, afirmó que la acusación más reciente forma parte de la conspiración más extravagante de la historia de Estados Unidos. Pareciera que, según él, la componenda implica a una amplia gama de fiscales locales y federales, grandes jurados, jueces, demandantes, reguladores y testigos que han mentido durante años para tenderle una trampa, mientras que él es el único que dice la verdad, sin importar cuáles sean los cargos.“Nunca creí posible que algo así pudiera ocurrirle a un expresidente de Estados Unidos, que recibió muchos más votos que cualquier presidente en funciones en la historia de nuestro país y que actualmente lidera, por mucho, a todos los candidatos, tanto demócratas como republicanos, en las encuestas de las elecciones presidenciales de 2024”, escribió en sus redes sociales, haciendo múltiples afirmaciones engañosas en una sola frase. “¡SOY UN HOMBRE INOCENTE!”.Hasta ahora, sus seguidores de base han seguido apoyándolo e incluso algunos de los que se postulan en su contra para obtener la candidatura republicana del próximo año han criticado las investigaciones en su contra. Pero recientemente fue declarado responsable de abuso sexual en un juicio civil, su empresa ha sido declarada culpable de 17 cargos de fraude fiscal y otros delitos y todavía enfrenta otras dos posibles acusaciones formales derivadas de su esfuerzo por revertir su derrota electoral de 2020, lo que desencadenó el ataque al Capitolio el 6 de enero de 2021.La pregunta, al menos políticamente, es si la acumulación de todas esas acusaciones terminará influyendo algún día en los votantes republicanos que lo respaldan, en especial si se concreta una tercera y tal vez cuarta acusación formal. Al menos algunos de sus rivales por la candidatura del partido esperan que el factor fatiga termine mermando su apoyo.En cuanto a Clinton, si sintió cierta alegría por la desgracia ajena la noche del jueves no lo expresó. Sin embargo, tanto ella como sus aliados siempre han creído que el hecho de que James Comey, el entonces director del FBI, reabriera la investigación de su correo electrónico unos días antes de la elección de 2016 le costó la victoria que tantas encuestas habían pronosticado.Trump intentará poner esto en contra de sus perseguidores, con el argumento de que el hecho de que haya sido acusado mientras que Clinton no lo fue, es prueba de que está siendo perseguido injustamente.No importa que los hechos de los casos sean distintos, que Trump pareciera haber hecho todo lo posible para frustrar intencionadamente a las autoridades que trataban de recuperar los documentos secretos durante meses mientras que los investigadores concluyeron que Clinton no tuvo intención de violar la ley. Será un argumento político útil para Trump insistir en que es víctima de una doble moral.Por qué, tras lo sucedido en la campaña de 2016, no reconoció el potencial peligro político de manejar mal información clasificada y tuvo más cuidado al respecto es otra cuestión. Pero pasó gran parte de su presidencia haciendo caso omiso de las preocupaciones sobre la seguridad de la información y las normas sobre la conservación de documentos gubernamentales.Divulgó información ultraconfidencial a funcionarios rusos que lo visitaron en el Despacho Oval. Publicó en internet imágenes sensibles de Irán obtenidas por satélite. Siguió utilizando un teléfono móvil inseguro incluso después de que le dijeron que el dispositivo era monitoreado por agencias de inteligencia rusas y chinas. Rompió documentos oficiales y los tiró al suelo una vez que terminó con ellos, a pesar de que las leyes exigen que se guarden y cataloguen, mientras sus ayudantes iban tras él, recogiendo los fragmentos y pegándolos de nuevo con cinta adhesiva.Incluso cuando se enfrentó a las consecuencias de sus actos, nunca se mostró preocupado. Al fin y al cabo, era el presidente y podía hacer lo que quisiera. Incluso durante la investigación sobre los documentos clasificados que se llevó a Mar-a-Lago, se ha defendido afirmando que tenía el poder de desclasificar cualquier cosa que quisiera con solo pensarlo.Pero ya no es presidente. Ahora no solo se enfrentará a los votantes de las elecciones primarias que decidirán si ha sido inhabilitado para la presidencia, sino a un fiscal que asegura que hará cumplir las leyes relativas a la protección de información clasificada.Será fichado como un criminal acusado y, a menos que ocurra algo imprevisto, en última instancia será juzgado por un jurado de sus iguales.Qué diferencia con su situación de hace siete años.Peter Baker es el corresponsal principal de la Casa Blanca y ha cubierto las gestiones de los últimos cinco presidentes para el Times y The Washington Post. También es autor de siete libros, el más reciente de ellos se titula The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, el cual escribió junto a Susan Glasser. More

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      FBI Investigating Spy Ring’s Political Contributions

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      Prosecutors are scrutinizing a series of campaign contributions made by right-wing operatives who were part of a political spying operation based in Wyoming.Federal prosecutors are investigating possible campaign finance violations in connection with an undercover operation based in Wyoming that aimed to infiltrate progressive groups, political campaigns and the offices of elected representatives before the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the matter and documents related to the case.As part of the operation, revealed in 2021 by The New York Times, participants used large campaign donations and cover stories to gain access to their targets and gather dirt to sabotage the reputations of people and organizations considered threats to the agenda of President Donald J. Trump.In recent days, prosecutors have issued subpoenas for at least two of the people The Times identified as being part of the operation, including Richard Seddon, a former British spy, and Susan Gore, a Wyoming heiress to the Gore-Tex fortune, the people said. The subpoenas were reported earlier by CNN.According to one of the subpoenas reviewed by The Times, prosecutors and F.B.I. agents in Washington are seeking a trove of information related to the political spying operation, including documents related to Mr. Seddon’s firm, Branch Six Consulting International, along with at least two other entities registered in his name.Prosecutors also sought communications, documents or financial records tied to Erik Prince, the international security consultant, as well as former operatives who worked for the conservative group Project Veritas and its founder. Mr. Prince and Mr. Seddon are longtime associates.The operatives working for Mr. Seddon made several large political donations — including $20,000 to the Democratic National Committee, which gained them entree to a Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas in 2020. They also made donations to the election campaigns of Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona; Colorado’s secretary of state, Jena Griswold; as well as to the Wyoming Democratic Party.Drew Godinich, a spokesman for Ms. Griswold, said she returned that donation.Mr. Seddon used money from Ms. Gore to fund the operation. Ms. Gore has said publicly that she was not aware her money was being used for sabotage operations. Robert Driscoll, a lawyer for Mr. Seddon, declined to comment. Nicholas Gravante, a Manhattan lawyer for Ms. Gore who represents many high-profile clients, also declined to comment.It is not clear if the operatives who made the donations — Beau Maier and Sofia LaRocca — did it at someone’s behest and were reimbursed. Both were named in the subpoena reviewed by The Times. It is also unclear whether the couple had been subpoenaed or were cooperating with federal authorities.The F.B.I. declined to comment.Mr. Seddon closely managed the two operatives, who filed weekly intelligence reports to him about their activities and targets, according to a person with direct knowledge of the operation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the secret details.Under federal law, it is illegal to make campaign donations at the behest of another person and be reimbursed for them. So-called straw donations have been central to several federal investigations.According to interviews and documents obtained by The Times, the operation began in 2018, when Mr. Seddon persuaded several former employees of Project Veritas — the conservative group that conducts undercover sting operations — to move to Wyoming and participate in his new venture.Mr. Seddon, who at the time was working for Ms. Gore, wanted to set up espionage operations in which undercover agents would infiltrate progressive groups and the offices of elected officials, and potentially recruit others to help collect information.It is unclear how much information Mr. Seddon’s operatives gathered, or what else the operation achieved. But its use of professional intelligence-gathering techniques to try to manipulate the politics of several states showed a greater sophistication than more traditional political “dirty tricks” operations.It also showed a level of paranoia in some ultraconservative Republican circles that the electoral map in the United States might be changing to their disadvantage. Specifically, there was a concern that even a bedrock Republican state like Wyoming could gradually turn toward the Democrats, as nearby Colorado and Arizona had.Republicans have sought to install allies in various positions at the state level to gain an advantage on the electoral map. Secretaries of state, for example, play a crucial role in certifying election results every two years, and some became targets of Mr. Trump and his allies in their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.One target of the spying ring was Karlee Provenza, a police reform advocate who won a seat in the Wyoming Legislature representing one of a few Democratic districts in the state. Ms. Provenza said she was heartened that federal authorities had not ignored the episode, while Wyoming officials have not acted.“I am glad to see that the Justice Department is investigating efforts to try to dismantle democracy in Wyoming,” she said. “The actions of Susan Gore and the people she supports have been unchecked since this spying operation was revealed.”In 2017, Mr. Seddon was recruited to join Project Veritas by Mr. Prince, the former head of Blackwater Worldwide and brother of Betsy DeVos, who was Mr. Trump’s education secretary at the time. According to people with knowledge of Mr. Prince’s role, he believed Mr. Seddon could turn Project Veritas into a more professional intelligence-gathering operation.Soon afterward, Mr. Seddon was engineering an effort to discredit perceived enemies of Mr. Trump inside the U.S. government, including a planned sting operation in 2018 against Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster. He also helped set up operations to secretly record F.B.I. employees and other government officials. More

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      Biden Sticks to ‘Say Nothing’ Strategy on the Trump Indictment

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      President Biden and his advisers have concluded that commenting on the indictment would only feed into Republican accusations of a politically motivated prosecution.President Biden and his top aides in the West Wing, along with members of his administration and re-election campaign at all levels, are executing a carefully crafted strategy in response to the federal indictment of former President Donald J. Trump: Say nothing.Mr. Biden has always insisted that he would never interfere with the independence of the Justice Department. But he and his aides also believe that commenting on the case will only feed into the accusations, from Mr. Trump and members of the Republican Party, of a politically motivated prosecution.It is a stance that will test a voluble president with a penchant for saying what is on his mind, even when it is not politically advantageous. With his predecessor and 2024 rival charged with conspiracy, obstruction of justice and mishandling classified documents, Mr. Biden and his aides are eager to keep themselves far away from the Trump political and legal spectacle as it migrates south to Miami.For Mr. Biden, keeping his distance also keeps the focus squarely on Mr. Trump. Mr. Biden ran for office in 2020 with a pledge of restoring a sense of pre-Trump normalcy to the White House; the White House is betting that avoiding substantive public comments on the investigations into Mr. Trump will remind voters of that contrast.“President Biden and his campaign won’t be distracted by Trump’s chaos,” said Cristóbal Alex, a veteran of Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign and White House. “The focus is on the American people and what the Biden administration accomplished in the first term.”Even a stray comment by the president during one of his scrums with reporters, could be seized on by Mr. Trump and his allies as evidence that Mr. Biden is exerting undue influence in the case against his predecessor.“This is a president who respects the rule of law, and he has said that since Day 1,” Olivia Dalton, the deputy White House press secretary, told reporters on Friday. “That’s precisely why we’re not commenting here.”Ms. Dalton went on to say “no comment” a half-dozen more times in the next 10 minutes. Mr. Biden explained his own silence to reporters on Thursday, just hours before the charges against Mr. Trump were unveiled.“Because you notice I have never once — not one single time — suggested to the Justice Department what they should do or not do, relative to bringing a charge or not bringing a charge,” Mr. Biden said. “I’m honest.”Asked again to weigh in on Friday, as he traveled to a community college in North Carolina, Mr. Biden was blunt: “I have no comment.”Mr. Biden’s determined self-censorship comes with a cost. It prevents the president from defending the government’s legal system against Mr. Trump’s relentless, yearslong attacks, which are now amplified and echoed by his Republican allies and some of his competitors for the party’s presidential nomination. In a social media post on Friday, Mr. Trump lashed out at “the ‘Thugs’ from the Department of Injustice.” It will fall to others to rebut those attacks. White House and Biden campaign aides on Friday declined to respond to the former president’s claims of being treated unfairly.Mr. Biden is himself is the subject of a special counsel’s investigation into handling of classified documents found at his home and an office he used before becoming president.The president’s attorneys have long stressed that the case differs from the one involving Mr. Trump. Mr. Biden and his aides have said they cooperated with Justice Department officials from the beginning of the inquiry. The indictment of Mr. Trump, which was unsealed on Friday, says that the former president conspired to conceal the documents and prevent their return to the National Archives.A person familiar with the investigation into Mr. Biden’s handling of documents said there is no indication that Robert Hur, the special counsel in that case, is nearing any decision.Mr. Biden’s allies urged a sense of calm among Democrats and said the president’s campaign should continue to focus on promoting his accomplishments in office and warn voters about Republican efforts to restrict abortion rights — which has polled as the party’s best issue since the Supreme Court, with three Trump appointees, ended the constitutional right to an abortion last year.“We just need to stay focused on our message and not get caught up in the Trump circus,” said Representative Jennifer McClellan of Virginia, a Democrat who is a member of the Biden campaign’s national advisory board.On Friday, Mr. Biden put his strategy of avoidance into practice.At the same hour the special counsel unsealed the indictment against Mr. Trump, drawing the eyes of the nation to the multiple charges against him, Mr. Biden was in North Carolina, touring a work force training program at a community college.Later — not long after the special counsel in Mr. Trump’s case spoke to the nation about the indictment — Mr. Biden spoke at Fort Liberty about the need to help the spouses of military service members to find employment.The contrast could not have been clearer. And, at least for the moment, Mr. Biden remained good to his word. Asked on Friday afternoon whether he had talked to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland about the Trump case, Mr. Biden said he had not.“I have not spoken to him at all and I’m not going to speak with him,” the president said, adding for good measure: “And I have no comment on that.” More

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      Trump’s Indictment: Given What We Know, Not Charging Him Would Be the Greater Scandal

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      Donald Trump has been indicted. Again. And this time, it appears richly deserved, even if one includes special considerations related to the unique recent history of public officials mishandling classified documents.Before we dive into the details of the case, it’s important to restate the general principles that should govern any prosecution decision. The first principle, as I’ve argued, is that no person is above the law. That’s, of course, easy to say in the abstract, but perhaps a better way to frame it is that Trump’s status as a former president means that he should be treated no better and — crucially — no worse than ordinary American citizens.“No better” means that Trump should face charges if, for example, I would face charges under similar facts. It really is that straightforward.“No worse” means don’t stretch the law to indict the man. That may have been the case in March, when the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, indicted Trump on charges related to hush-money payments made to the pornographic actress Stormy Daniels. As I explained at some length, there are real questions as to the legal sufficiency of Bragg’s complaint, including whether federal law pre-empts his state charges. It does not appear to be an easy case to make.But in the case of the new indictment by the special counsel, Jack Smith, “no worse” comes with an additional twist. Trump’s case is not the first high-profile instance of a senior public official mishandling classified information. Hillary Clinton comes to mind, and while the Department of Justice might be able to prosecute Trump under facts similar to those in Clinton’s case, it should not. I can think of few things that would damage the legitimacy of the American criminal justice system more than for the department to impose a double standard on Republican and Democratic presidential contenders.So in addition to evaluating the relevant law, the Justice Department should apply the same standard to Trump as it did to Clinton, the standard articulated by the F.B.I. director at the time, James Comey, in his public statement announcing that the bureau would not recommend prosecution.As Comey said of Clinton’s storing classified information on a private server, “There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.”But Comey declined to recommend prosecution because he said he couldn’t find evidence that the Justice Department had prosecuted any case under similar facts: “All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct or indications of disloyalty to the United States or efforts to obstruct justice.”That’s the Comey test: no prosecution absent evidence of one or more of the factors above. I disagreed with the decision at the time and still disagree. I’m a former Judge Advocate General’s Corps officer, an Army lawyer who helped investigate classified information breaches when I served in Iraq, and I feel confident that I would have faced military charges under similar facts.But once the Comey test was articulated, it should be evenly applied. And thus the critical question for the political legitimacy — and not just legal sufficiency — of the indictment is whether there is evidence of intentionality or obstruction in the Trump case that was absent in Clinton’s. (This is the same question that should be asked of the mishandling of classified documents by Joe Biden and Mike Pence.)As of Thursday night, we had not yet seen the indictment, so there is a chance my assessment will change. But a review of the publicly available evidence indicates that Trump’s conduct likely does meet the Comey test. There is evidence of intentionality and obstruction.Justice Department court filings related to the Mar-a-Lago search warrant make a series of damning claims against Trump. According to the department, in 2021 the National Archives and Records Administration corresponded with Trump’s team, hoping to obtain the “transfer of what it perceived were missing records from his administration.” In January 2022, Trump provided the archives with 15 boxes of records. When it reviewed the documents, it found 184 with classification markings and 25 marked “top secret,” including some with extraordinary “H.C.S.” and “S.I.” markings. “H.C.S.” indicates classified information “derived from clandestine human sources; “S.I.” indicates information “derived from the monitoring of foreign communications signals by other than the intended recipients.” In other words, these documents were quite sensitive.The inclusion of this information among the files in question caused the National Archives to contact the Justice Department, which promptly began efforts to determine if Trump retained any additional classified information. As the department told a federal court, the “F.B.I. developed evidence” that “dozens of additional boxes” remained at Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago and they were “also likely to contain classified information.”The Justice Department then obtained a grand jury subpoena demanding “any and all” records in Trump’s possession that contained classification markings. What happened next is what makes this case quite serious for Trump. On June 3, 2022, the Trump legal team provided a small batch of files to department officials and included a sworn certification letter indicating that Trump’s custodian of records had conducted a “diligent search” to locate any documents responsive to the subpoena and that the custodian had produced all such documents.According to the Justice Department, this certification was not accurate. While the Trump team produced 38 additional documents bearing classification markings (including 17 marked “top secret”) in its subpoena response, the department believed that there were still more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Its filing states that “the F.B.I. uncovered multiple sources of evidence” indicating that the response to the grand jury subpoena was “incomplete.” Even worse, “the government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed” from their storage area and “that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”This is the evidence that precipitated the grant of a search warrant, and on Aug. 8 the F.B.I. searched Mar-a-Lago. It claims that search uncovered more than 100 additional classified records, “including information classified at the highest levels.”These claims alone — if proved at trial — already provide evidence of intentionality and obstruction. Close observers of the case will note that I have not included an analysis of numerous news reports indicating that Trump engaged in even more egregious conduct, including ones that he was caught on a recording discussing a highly sensitive document detailing military plans for confronting Iran.Before we see the indictment, we know only the broad brushstrokes of the possible claims. But those brushstrokes paint a picture of intentionality and obstruction, including allegations of efforts to conceal and remove documents and the false certification of a complete response to the grand jury subpoena.Times news reports indicate that Trump is facing charges that include retaining national defense information, obstruction of justice, false statements, contempt of court and conspiracy. Each of those charges is substantiated even by the partial information we currently possess. The available evidence indicates that Trump’s conduct meets both the legal test for prosecution and the more lenient Comey test applied to Clinton.To say that the Trump indictment is credible is not the same thing as saying that he is guilty. We possess only partial information, and he has not yet mounted his legal defense. But for now, the evidence seems sufficient to support an indictment. Indeed, given what we know now, not charging Trump would be the greater scandal. It would place presidents outside the rule of federal law and declare to the American public that its presidents enjoy something akin to a royal privilege. But this is a republic, not a monarchy, and it is right to make Donald Trump answer for the crimes he is accused of.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      How Jack Smith Can Succeed in His Case Against Trump

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      It has been expected for months, but the reality of it is no less staggering: The special counsel Jack Smith has brought seven federal charges against Donald Trump. It is the first time in our nation’s history that a former president has been indicted on federal charges, and among Mr. Trump’s many legal problems, it has the greatest likelihood of a pre-election conviction.The prosecution follows a long investigation into Mr. Trump’s possession of hundreds of classified documents and other presidential records at his private club in Florida and elsewhere after he left office. It poses unique challenges, and not only because the defendant is a former president who is running for re-election in an already tense political environment.Prosecutors will have to reckon with the challenge of publicly trying a case that involves some of our nation’s most highly classified secrets.Furthermore, this case will inevitably have to be coordinated for scheduling purposes with the case against Mr. Trump by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, as well as potential future charges in Fulton County, Ga., and perhaps by Mr. Smith related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.Still, from what we know of the charges and publicly available evidence, Mr. Smith appears to have the upper hand with a compelling case. But the potential for conviction and actually winning a jury verdict are two very different things — particularly against the notoriously combative and slippery former president. To secure a conviction, Mr. Smith will have to overcome four significant hurdles.Keep things simpleOver two years (and counting), the case unfolded in twists and turns that have dipped into and out of a dizzying whirl of topics: the administration of presidential documents, delicate aspects of national security, classification and declassification of documents, special counsel regulations, the spectacle of a search warrant being executed by F.B.I. agents on the luxury resort of a former president and the legally dubious appointment of a special master by a rogue Florida district court judge.But for all that chaos and confusion, Mr. Smith’s job is straightforward. He must cut through it all and make clear to the jury that this case is about two simple things: First, a former president took documents containing some of our nation’s most sensitive secrets, which he was no more entitled to remove than the portraits of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin hanging on the walls of the Oval Office. Second, when he was caught, he persistently made up excuses, lied and tried to cover up his behavior, which he continues to do.Mr. Trump took about 13,000 government documents, among them over 300 documents with classified markings, with some of our nation’s most sensitive secrets, reportedly containing secrets about Iran’s missile program, foreign nuclear issues, China and the leadership of France.By doing so, Mr. Trump put our national security at risk. When we consider these documents, we see not only paper but also the U.S. and allied human assets who gather our secrets and do so to keep America and the world safe. By putting this sensitive information in highly insecure circumstances, Mr. Trump put our nation, our allies and all of us as individuals in jeopardy.The indictment reportedly includes seven charges, related to willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements and conspiracy to obstruct justice.The evidence a jury hears at trial must be organized around a simple theory of the case and streamlined into the form of readily understandable and convincing proof. Fortunately for Mr. Smith, everything we know about the case provides ample support for an easily digestible one-two narrative punch of Mr. Trump taking documents that didn’t belong to him and then lying about it to cover up his misdeeds.The Trump defenseOne usual challenge that may not be much of a hurdle is Mr. Trump’s defenses. His claim that he can declassify documents “even by thinking about it” is inimical to applicable law. And his claim that the Presidential Records Act gives him a right to attempt to keep these documents flies in the face of the statute.The justifications Mr. Trump has so far advanced are so thin and so inconsistent that we expect Mr. Smith will get an order from the judge that they are frivolous and may not be argued to the jury unless Mr. Trump introduces competent evidence to support them. (He most likely can’t.)These cases are so hard to defend that the usual approach is to plead guilty. That’s what other prominent defendants, such as the former Central Intelligence Agency directors John Deutch and David Petraeus, agreed to when caught with mishandling classified documents. (Mr. Deutch was pardoned before the charges were filed.) But Mr. Trump’s case is unique because of his characteristic refusal to ever admit wrongdoing. It’s nearly impossible to imagine him standing up in a courtroom in a plea deal and saying that he is guilty.By charging the case in the Southern District of Florida, the special counsel has wisely pre-empted one other potential defense: improper venue. The rule is that a case must be brought where the “essential conduct” took place, and here there was an argument for Washington, D.C., as an alternative, one with possibly friendlier juries for Mr. Smith. But there is potentially much at stake on the proper selection of venue: This term, the Supreme Court is deciding a case that looks at whether the price of selecting the wrong venue could be dismissal of the charges and prevention of prosecuting the offense again.The clock is tickingMr. Smith’s third hurdle is time. He will have to battle the clock. On the one hand, he has to ensure that Mr. Trump, like any defendant, has sufficient time to file motions challenging the charges and evidence and time to prepare for trial. The robust materials the government is required to provide to a defendant in discovery must be turned over promptly so the government does not extend the clock.Special attention is required by Mr. Smith here because the case involves classified evidence. That means the court will probably have to deal with motions under the Classified Information Procedures Act. These rules create avenues for the government to prosecute the case and protect classified information without having a defendant graymail the government with the risk of public disclosure.But because this case is in Florida, where the act is rarely used, rather than in the District of Columbia, where it is invoked more commonly, prosecutors will have to contend with a judge who may not have experience with these intricate issues. There is also the strong likelihood the government will be forced to seek other protective orders as well, as we saw New York Supreme Court Justice Juan M. Merchan impose in the Manhattan case, to prevent Mr. Trump from using material obtained in discovery to intimidate or retaliate against witnesses or otherwise misuse discovery materials.American voters are entitled to a determination of Mr. Trump’s guilt at a trial. Ideally, that will happen before the presidential nominating process, but at a minimum, it must take place before the general election. That can be done while ensuring that the defendant has his day in court, with full due process rights to seek to be cleared of charges against him — or not, given the strength of the evidence against him.Persuade the American publicMr. Smith can educate the public in court filings that the charges are merited. He should follow the lead of the special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who held a news conference to explain his case directly to the American public during Watergate. In October 1973, as tensions were coming to a boil, with Mr. Cox having issued a grand jury subpoena for the incriminating Oval Office tapes of President Richard Nixon, the special prosecutor rejected a compromise offer from the White House to have a senator listen to the tapes and verify White House-drafted summaries. Mr. Cox chose to make a detailed presentation to the press and explain to the American people why he was seeking a ruling from the Supreme Court that he was entitled to the White House tapes and would not settle for a cherry-picked summary.Mr. Smith can make a public statement explaining, without straying from the four corners of the indictment, why the charges against Mr. Trump are consistent with — indeed, required by — previous Justice Department cases in which many defendants were charged in similar or even less egregious factual scenarios.It is impossible to overstate how essential it will be for Mr. Smith to overcome these hurdles and persuade the trial jury and the American people that whether they like the former president or not, whether they voted for him in the past or intend to vote for him again, he committed serious criminal acts. The consequence of doing that would be nothing short of affirmation of the rule of law in this country. The alternative is too grim to contemplate.Norman Eisen was special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for the first impeachment and trial of Donald Trump and is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Andrew Weissmann, a senior prosecutor in Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation, is a professor at N.Y.U. School of Law. Joyce Vance, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law and the author of the newsletter Civil Discourse, was the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More