Attorney General Merrick Garland may potentially file two rounds of criminal charges against former President Donald Trump on separate issues, according to The New York Times.
According to the NY Times, evidence discovered in the Justice Department’s (DOJ) investigation into the former president’s 2020 election results reversal efforts and his involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot could give Garland an opportunity to criminally charge Trump, the outlet reported.
Garland may also bring separate charges against Trump in connection with classified documents seized in the FBI’s Aug. 8 raid at Mar-A-Lago.
Section 2071 of the U.S. Code’s Title 18 prevents those who “willfully and unlawfully” remove filed U.S. government records from holding any U.S. office.
Presidents can only take official documents “of a purely private or nonpublic character” from the White House under the Presidential Records Act, according to Reuters.
Garland said Aug. 11 he “personally authorized” the Mar-A-Lago raid, despite a senior Biden administration official reportedly telling Newsweek he had not been informed about it beforehand.
On Sunday, Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham told his former congressional colleague Trey Gowdy, now the host of Fox News’s Sunday Night in America, “If there’s a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information, after the Clinton debacle, there’ll be riots in the streets.”
“There is a double standard when it comes to Trump,” he said, comparing the Mar-a-Lago raid to the lack of action against either Hunter Biden or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“And if they try to prosecute President Trump for mishandling classified information after Hillary Clinton set up a server in her basement, there literally will be riots in the street,” Graham said again.
Mary McCord, a former top official at the Department of Justice, slammed Graham on Monday for his comments.
In the news: Poll Shows Trump Favored By Republicans Post Mar-A-Lago Raid
“I think it’s incredibly irresponsible for an elected official to basically make veiled threats of violence, just if law enforcement and the Department of Justice and a grand jury does their job,” McCord said on CNN’s “New Day.”
“‘People are angry, they may be violent,’ and then what Trump knows and what Lindsey Graham also knows, is that people listen to that and people actually mobilize and do things. Jan. 6 was the result of this same kind of tactic by President Trump and his allies,” McCord said.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Free Press.
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