Former U.S. President Donald Trump faces 37 felony charges related to the alleged mishandling of classified documents after he left the White House, including top secret files on U.S. nuclear and defense programs, according to an indictment made public Friday.
The charging document said that on at least two occasions Trump showed classified documents about U.S. military operations to people who did not have a security clearance. One of those documents was a "plan of attack" against another country that a military official had drawn up, according to the indictment.
Of the 37 counts in the indictment, 31 of them pertain to the willful retention of national defense information. The other counts are related to alleged conspiracy, obstruction and false statements. Altogether, the counts could result in a yearslong prison sentence for Trump if he is found guilty.
The U.S. Justice Department accuses Trump of ignoring demands to return documents he had taken from the White House to his estate in the southern U.S. state of Florida and his golf club in the northeastern state of New Jersey, and of asking aides to help him hide the documents.
Aide faces charges
A Trump aide, Walt Nauta, is also facing charges in the case; he was indicted on six counts for allegedly helping Trump to hide the documents.
Trump told his lawyers that he did not want people looking through the boxes of documents stored at his Florida home, according to the indictment.
"Wouldn't it be better if we just told them we don't have anything here?" Trump said to one of his attorneys, according to the indictment.
The indictment described Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate as an active social club that hosted tens of thousands of guests during the time the documents were housed there.
It said that Trump kept classified documents in multiple rooms of his Florida estate, including the bathroom, ballroom, storeroom, office and bedroom.
U.S. special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the prosecution, said Friday in a brief statement to reporters in Washington, "We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everybody."
"Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States, and they must be enforced. Violations of those laws put our country at risk," he said.
Smith said that Trump, like any defendant, must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and that his office would seek a speedy trial before a jury of Florida residents.
On his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump accused Smith on Friday of being "a Trump Hater."
Historic first
A federal grand jury in Florida indicted Trump on Thursday, making him the first former American president in history to face a federal indictment.
Shortly afterward, Trump confirmed his indictment on Truth Social, saying he had been summoned to appear in court in Miami on Tuesday.
"The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax," Trump wrote, apparently alluding to boxes of classified government documents seized by the FBI from his Florida estate last August.
In a video statement, Trump defiantly asserted that President Joe Biden’s administration has “weaponized” the Justice Department and the FBI to target him.
“I’m an innocent man, I’m an innocent person,” Trump said. “We can't let this continue to go on because it's ripping our country to shreds.”
Biden declined Friday to comment on the indictment.
When asked by reporters in North Carolina if he had spoken to Attorney General Merrick Garland, he replied, “I have not spoken to him at all and I’m not going to speak with him.”
The White House said Biden had no advance knowledge of the indictment and he found out at the same time as everyone else.
Supporters, detractors
Trump’s staunch supporters rallied behind the former president. In a brief statement, Representative Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote, "It's a sad day for America. God bless President Trump."
Two of Trump’s opponents for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, decried what they called the “weaponization” of the Justice Department against the former president.
Another Republican presidential hopeful, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, withheld judgment on the indictment, saying he’d have “more to say when the facts are revealed.”
Democrats voiced support for the indictment. Representative Adam Schiff of California, who served as the manager in Trump’s first impeachment, wrote: “For four years, he acted like he was above the law. But he should be treated like any other lawbreaker. And today, he has been.”
Change in legal team
The indictment was revealed on the same day that Trump announced a change in his legal team. Trump posted Friday on Truth Social that he would be represented by attorney Todd Blanche and “a firm to be named later.”
Two of Trump’s lawyers, John Rowley and Jim Trusty, removed themselves from the case.
"This morning we tendered our resignations as counsel to President Trump," the two lawyers said in a statement. "It has been an honor to have spent the last year defending him, and we know he will be vindicated.”
The indictment is the latest legal trouble for Trump as he hopes to return to office after losing a reelection bid to Biden in 2020.
In April, a Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump on state charges of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to an adult film star during his 2016 run for president. He has pleaded not guilty in that case.
This week's indictment, while a major blow to Trump’s political ambitions, does not bar him from seeking a second term in the White House.
In fact, former federal prosecutor John Malcolm noted, there are no laws that would stop him from running, even if he is convicted.
"There have been people who have run for office from prison cells," Malcolm said.
In 2002, former Representative Jim Traficant ran for his old congressional seat while serving a prison sentence for corruption.
In 2019, Harold Martin III, a former National Security Agency contractor, was sentenced to nine years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of willful retention of national defense information.
Probe's beginning
The Justice Department had been investigating Trump since early last year after the National Archives notified the law enforcement agency that the former president had stashed hundreds of sensitive government documents at his Florida resort and had thwarted government efforts to retrieve them.
Jordan Strauss, a former Justice Department official who is a managing director at Kroll, a risk consulting firm, called Trump’s indictment “a remarkable moment in history and the most significant case the DOJ has ever brought.”
Trump’s indictment comes as another special counsel, Robert Hur, investigates Biden’s handling of classified records dating to his time as vice president.
The documents were found last year at Biden’s former Washington office and his home in Delaware.
Biden’s lawyers have said the documents were handed over to government officials as soon as they were found.
Even if Biden were found to have mishandled sensitive records, he would be unlikely to face criminal charges because of a long-standing Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted, Strauss said.
"I think the most likely outcome of the special counsel's investigation of President Biden is a report that says something like, ‘we would or would not have recommended an indictment were this not the president,’” Strauss said.
Trump complained Friday that Biden has not been charged for his handling of classified documents.
"Biden moved his Boxes all over the place, including to Chinatown and up to his lawyer's office in Boston," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "Why isn't deranged Jack Smith looking at that?"
Former Vice President Mike Pence also drew scrutiny over his retention of classified documents, but the Justice Department informed him last week that it had closed the investigation and would not charge him.
VOA Justice Correspondent Masood Farivar, Chief National Correspondent Steve Herman, National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin and Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
