Federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging Donald Trump with 37 criminal counts on Friday, accusing the former US president of repeatedly lying and obfuscating to illegally retain some of the government’s most sensitive national security secrets.
Most of the charges directly accuse Trump of improperly holding on to highly-classified documents — many of which were so sensitive that they were marked for “special handling” or barred from disclosure to non-Americans — in the face of legal demands from federal authorities.
But the indictment also detailed the elaborate subterfuge Trump undertook to deceive investigators attempting to recover dozens of files, including moving boxes into rooms all over his Mar-a-Lago estate where even his own lawyers would not discover them. That effort led to charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice, which carry a maximum prison sentence of 20 years each.
The indictment, brought by the Department of Justice’s special counsel Jack Smith, marks the first time in US history a former president has faced federal criminal charges.
“We have one set of laws in this country and they apply to everyone,” Smith said on Friday, just after the indictment was unsealed. He encouraged the public to read the indictment in full “to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged”.
The court filing includes a list of 31 documents that Trump allegedly hid, including one on “the nuclear capabilities of a foreign country” and another on “foreign country support of terrorist acts”.
But much of the indictment focuses on Trump’s concealment efforts after leaving office in January 2021, which included storing boxes in a Mar-a-Lago shower and suggesting his own lawyer “pluck” out particularly sensitive documents from files handed back to government investigators.
Prosecutors also produced a transcript of an audio tape in which Trump describes a US “plan of attack” on a foreign country to visiting researchers, admitting that “as president I could have declassified it” but “now I can’t”. He added: “This is still a secret,” suggesting he was aware he was improperly sharing classified intelligence.
The indictment also charged Waltine Nauta, a former White House valet who worked as an assistant to Trump, as an alleged co-conspirator. Nauta is accused of moving boxes of documents around the Mar-a-Lago estate at the former president’s request. The pair have been summoned to appear in a federal courthouse in Miami, Florida, on Tuesday.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump called Smith “deranged” and said he had “supplied [the records] openly”. He has also said the charges are politically motivated. Nauta could not immediately be reached for comment.
The indictment was unsealed shortly after two top lawyers defending Trump abruptly dropped out of his legal team. The departure of Jim Trusty and John Rowley throws his defence into uncertainty just as several new rivals are challenging him for the Republican presidential nomination.
Although Trump remains the frontrunner for his party’s nod in 2024, the new charges are his second criminal indictment in as many months, and a third is expected from local prosecutors in Georgia this summer. A growing number of Republicans believe the weight of legal challenges could make him vulnerable to the expanding field of presidential challengers.
Republicans on Capitol Hill have jumped to his defence, however, and Trump is counting on primary voters to balk at the charges as evidence of a politically motivated persecution promoted by Democrats and the administration of Joe Biden. Senior Republicans including Kevin McCarthy, the US House Speaker, and Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor and Trump’s main 2024 rival, have attacked the justice department for the indictment.
Trump said his two lawyers would be replaced by Todd Blanche, who is already part of his legal team, and a “firm to be named later”.
In a statement released on Friday, Trusty and Rowley said: “It has been an honour to have spent the last year defending him, and we know he will be vindicated.”
The ex-president on Friday repeated he was “allowed to” take the documents under the Presidential Records Act. But the act says official presidential records are owned by the US, not the president, and must be kept in a federal depository.
In addition to the classified documents case, Smith is also managing an investigation into Trump’s alleged interference in the transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Biden.
Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney in the state of Georgia, is also spearheading an investigation into the 2020 polls. Paired with Smith’s inquiry on the matter, these are the biggest legal threats facing Trump, according to legal experts.
The indictment in the documents case comes after Trump earlier this year pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a case brought by the Manhattan district attorney, the first time a current or former US president was criminally charged. Those charges were made under New York state law.
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