Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - It was Thursday night when news came that former U.S. President Donald Trump was set to be federally indicted by the Justice Department. The former President, and current Presidential candidate confirmed the news in a Truth Social post on Thursday, saying the impending indictment was "election interference".
Then on Friday, details of the unsealed indictment revealed Trump is facing 37 felony charges related to the mishandling of classified documents. The indictment alleges the former President described a Pentagon "plan of attack" and shared a classified map related to a military operation.
The 49-page charging document paints a damning portrait of Trump's treatment of sensitive information, accusing him of willfully ignoring Justice Department demands to return documents he had taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, and even directing aides to help him hide the records sought by the government.
This is the second time this year Trump has been indicted, as he willingly turned himself into authorities in New York City back in early April following an indictment at the hands of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. There he was charged on 34 felony counts for conspiring to illegally influence the 2016 Presidential election through a series of hush money payments.
During a visit to Buffalo earlier on Friday before the indictment was unsealed, both Congressmen Brian Higgins (D-NY-26) and Nick Langworthy (R-NY-23) responded to the latest indictment of Trump.
Higgins is very aware of the serious nature of the charges the former President faces with this federal indictment.
"These charges are very, very serious. They will be laid out in a formal indictment, the President has been made aware of this, and will surrender himself on Tuesday in Miami. So let's see what these charges are," said Higgins on Friday. "But a political response, that's what's going to occur here and throughout the nation. What you have to look at is the substance of these very, very serious charges. We are a nation of laws, and nobody is above the law, including, and especially the President of the United States. And there are more investigations going on, at both the local and federal level."
Higgins feels the charges go beyond just possessing documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. He says there are more questions that need to be answered relating to this, such as the intent of keeping these documents and what was done with them?
"I don't think the Justice Department is going to compromise its integrity by being selective about who they indict. This is a result of a lengthy and detailed investigation from which the President of the United States will be indicted," Higgins said. "This is very, very serious, and again, the majority of the people in this country respect the rule of law, respect the principle that nobody's above the law. Let's see where the facts take us.
"I think this is unfortunate that a President of the United States is indicted on very serious federal charges after a lengthy investigation, but it shouldn't stop there just because it's [37] felony indictments. It needs to continue until this comes to a logical conclusion. This is just another iteration of the lawlessness of the previous administration."
While Langworthy was unaware of what the indictment read at the time, he feels this is historic for all the wrong reasons.
"We have a leading candidate for President, a former President, indicted by the Department of Justice for alleged crimes that look like they've also been committed by the sitting President, by other former Presidents, former Vice Presidents. Really, this smacks of Banana Republic stuff here, where your chief rivals are being indicted," said Langworthy on Friday. "The sitting President of the United States presides over the federal government, the Justice Department, the FBI, and they have indicted his chief rival.
"There's a lot of people this morning that are calling our office, certainly reading a lot of commentary across the social media sphere. I mean, people are angry. People think that this is the government trying to silence their voice and put their hand on the scales of the next Presidential election. I tend to agree with them."
Langworthy believes the American people have a right to know the Justice Department is not going to try to determine the outcome of the next Presidential election. Like Higgins, he strives for the law to be applied evenly across the board. However, he feels that's not happening right now.
"An indictment of the President's chief political opponent in the middle of a Presidential election for things that they took a powder and didn't charge Hillary Clinton with anything - there's clearly plenty they could have indicted our former First Lady on when she was running for President, they did not do that - and there's so much thick billowing smoke around the Biden family, at this point, based on their shady, filthy business deals that you know, underneath, there's a raging inferno," Langworthy said.
As Trump is set to face his second indictment, Langworthy feels there's more that needs to be looked at going forward with the current President, Joe Biden. He brings up some implications of bribery surrounding the Biden family where whistleblowers and informants have given information to the House Committee on Oversight of President Biden receiving $5 million, and his son Hunter receiving another $5 million based on their interactions with Ukrainian companies.
There's a reason the FBI didn't want us to have this document. They denied its existence 10 days ago. They said, 'Nothing to see here.' What do you know. We threatened contempt, the committee now all has the opportunity to go view this document. There's more documents just like this," Langworthy said. "Give us the facts. We deserve the facts, we deserve the honesty, and the American people deserve to know is their President compromised by the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party? He compromised in our dealings with Ukraine. Ukraine is gonna come for another big pile of money. The President of the United States took $5 million from Ukrainian interests. His son took $5 million, his son's living like a billionaire off of the influence that he has. He's obviously got a very checkered past on a personal basis, I'm not getting into all that. That's out there, I don't care about that. What I care about is he selling access to our government out the back door. And that's what this certainly looks like."
