Prominent Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham has warned of riots if ex-US President Donald Trump were charged with handling government documents.
“If they try to sue President Trump for mishandling classified information (…) there will literally be riots in the streets,” Graham said in an interview with Fox television on Sunday evening (local time). news. “I worry about our country.”
According to the White House, it is not involved in the evaluation of the secret documents that former US President Donald Trump took with him to his private estate after the end of his term in office.
National Security Council communications director John Kirby said Monday, “The White House is not involved in damage assessments.” This is done by the intelligence community. At the same time, Kirby emphasized that the investigation by the intelligence apparatus was an “appropriate” course of action.
US intelligence coordinator Avril Haines said in a letter to senior members of Congress that she would investigate whether the storage of classified information at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida posed any national security risks.
On August 8, the FBI federal police searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in the state of Florida and confiscated, among other things, several confidential and sometimes top-secret documents.
The background is the Republican’s handling of official documents from his term as President. Because Trump kept papers, some of which require strict protection because of their sensitive content, on his private property, he may have broken the law. This is now being investigated.
Lindsey Graham, who was considered a close confidant of the President during Trump’s tenure, complained that stricter standards were applied to his party colleagues than to others. Among other things, the senator referred to the affair surrounding emails from former Democratic US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and spoke of a “double standard”.
