JOIN USIndictment of Donald Trump lays out evidence for historic charges
Federal prosecutors laid out an evidence-packed case in an indictment unsealed Friday that former President Donald Trump had put national security secrets at risk by mishandling classified documents he took from the White House and then schemed to block the government from reclaiming the material.
The 38-count indictment said the documents held onto by Trump included some involving sensitive nuclear programs and others that detailed the country’s potential vulnerabilities to military attack.
In some cases, prosecutors said, he displayed them to people without security clearances and stored them in a haphazard manner at Mar-a-Lago, even stacking a pile of boxes in a bathroom at his private club and residence in Florida.
Jack Smith, the special counsel who is bringing the case for the Justice Department, cast the investigation as a defense of national security. He urged Americans to read the indictment to understand the “scope and gravity” of the charges, which he said were necessary to preserve “bedrock” democratic principles.
Trump and his allies continued their effort to portray the prosecution as politically motivated and unjustified, with House Republicans rallying behind him and arguing that President Joe Biden had weaponized the Justice Department against his potential rival in 2024.
Biden stuck to his calculated silence about the prosecution, judging it best not to provide ammunition to Republicans who are trying to convince voters that he was behind the decision to charge Trump.
Trump was charged with 37 criminal counts covering seven violations of federal law, alone or in conjunction with one of his personal aides, Walt Nauta, who was also named in the indictment.
The former president was charged with 31 counts of willfully retaining national defense information under the Espionage Act and one count of making false statements stemming from his interactions with federal investigators and one of his own attorneys.
Trump and Nauta were jointly charged with single counts of conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding government documents, corruptly concealing records, concealing a document in a federal investigation and scheming to conceal their efforts. Nauta was charged with a separate count of making false statements to investigators.
Trump is expected to appear in US District Court in Miami on Tuesday. He appeared to get one lucky initial break: The federal judge in Florida assigned to the case, Aileen M Cannon, is a Trump appointee who issued sweepingly favorable rulings for Trump in an earlier stage of the documents investigation.