Global Courant
WASHINGTON — A federal grand jury has indicted Donald Trump on seven criminal charges related to his mishandling of more than 100 classified documents discovered last year at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, leading the twice-deposed former commander-in-chief to chief the first former president to face federal criminal charges.
Trump said Thursday night that his lawyers have been informed he has been charged in the special counsel’s investigation into his handling of classified documents. Two sources familiar with the case confirmed the charges, with one adding that the former president has received a subpoena to appear in U.S. District Court on June 13.
In a post about his social media platform Truth Social Trump said, “The corrupt Biden administration has informed my lawyers that I have been charged, apparently because of the Boxes Hoax.”
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The allegations mark the second time the former president has been indicted since leaving office, but the news still reverberated across the country, with supporters and critics weighing heavily on the scale of the development. While the first set of indictments related to Trump’s behavior while seeking election in 2016, the new indictments relate to his actions as he left the White House and focused on how he handled some of the most sensitive secrets of the country.
Two sources who knew about the seven charges told NBC News that the charges included false statements and conspiracy to obstruct. All charges are related to withholding documents and obstruction of justice. One source notes that 7 charges does not necessarily mean 7 counts – there may be multiple counts associated with each charge.
The nature of the allegations was first reported by The New York Times.
A spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment.
A well-known source says the indictment has been sealed and therefore the government cannot comment.
A search warrant for his Mar-a-Lago property in August said investigators were looking for evidence of three crimes involving mishandling of sensitive government data, including whether it had been shared with “unauthorized” people. Attorneys at the Justice Department have since had the prospect of a obstruction-related crime in lawsuits.
Minutes after Trump announced he was indicted on Truth Social, he sent out a fundraising appeal citing the criminal charges.
“Special counsel appointed by Biden ANNOUNCED me in yet another witch hunt regarding documents I had the RIGHT to release as president of the United States,” said the fundraising email, asking supporters to “contribute.” to stand peacefully behind him”. .
He later posted a four-minute video to Truth Social saying he was “an innocent man” and called the investigation “a hoax”.
“I am an innocent person,” he said. “I have done nothing wrong. And we will fight this out as we have been fighting for seven years. It would be great if we could devote our full time to making America great again.”
The grand jury’s decision is the culmination of a months-long Justice Department investigation now led by Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has been appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Smith, who was appointed in November 2022 after Trump announced his candidacy for the 2024 Republican nomination, took over existing investigations into Trump’s handling of classified documents found in the Mar-a-Lago home, as well as “significant aspects” of the Justice Department’s investigation into the January 6 attack on the Capitol and efforts to impede the peaceful transfer of power.
Some fellow Republican presidential candidates and Trump allies called the allegations politically motivated.
One of Trump’s presidential rivals, Vivek Ramaswamy, said in a statement: “I never thought we would see the day when the US president replaces the DOJ to arrest his leading rival in the middle of an election.” He reiterated his vow to pardon Trump. if he is elected president.
Representative Troy Nehls, R-Texas, tweeted of the news: “We live in a banana republic.”
The White House declined to comment on the charges.
Trump faces several other investigations. He was indicted separately in early April by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with his alleged role in hush money payments towards the end of his 2016 presidential campaign. He pleaded not guilty in that case . Trump also faces a criminal investigation in Georgia related to the 2020 election.
Former President Donald Trump raises his fists to supporters after a rally campaigning for the GOP presidential nomination, in Manchester, NH on April 27, 2023. Sophie Park/The New York Times/Redux Pictures
After Trump left office in January 2021, the federal government made multiple attempts to obtain files Trump had kept from his time in the White House and gave the former president and his legal team several chances to hand them over.
The government eventually seized more than 11,000 pages of government documents from Mar-a-Lago, including more than 100 classified documents, after the former president’s team testified that they conducted a thorough search at the scene for classified documents.
Trump has denied doing anything wrong and refuted allegations that he mishandled classified documents by claiming he had already released them.
He has also equated his situation with President Joe Biden, who was also found to be in possession of classified Obama administration documents. But the circumstances are very different.
The catalyst for the investigation of the documents came in early 2022 when Trump returned 15 boxes of White House documents from Mar-a-Lago to the National Archives and Records Administration. The Presidential Records Act mandates that all presidential records be properly preserved by each administration and turned over to the National Archives at the end, and the Archives had repeatedly asked Trump’s team to turn over documents it thought that they were missing, according to government court documents.
After receiving the boxes last January, Archives discovered they contained classified material that had been haphazardly mixed and asked the DOJ to review whether Trump’s handling of the documents violated federal law.
Their review found 184 unique documents with classification marks in the boxes, including 25 documents marked “TOP SECRET”, 67 documents marked “confidential” and 92 marked “secret”.
Archives asked Trump’s team to make sure there were no more documents, and a federal grand jury served a subpoena on Trump in May 2022 demanding the return of all classified-marked documents in his possession.
Trump’s lawyers turned over some additional secret-marked documents to the FBI in early June last year, along with a statement from the lawyers that after a “diligent search,” all sensitive documents in Trump’s possession have now been returned.
But the FBI said in an affidavit, according to a heavily redacted version released later, that it had taken note of evidence suggesting Trump had failed to comply with the subpoena and turn everything over to the federal government.
That affidavit was then used to justify the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago by FBI agents who recovered a trove of additional top-secret and other top-secret documents, according to court documents unsealed by a federal judge. During that search, which Trump called a “raid,” federal agents removed 11 sets of classified documents, including some classified as classified and top secret. Items seized by the FBI included a handwritten note, information on the “President of France,” the executive’s pardon for Trump ally Roger Stone, and folders of photographs. There were also papers described as “SCI” documents, which stands for top secret “sensitive compartmentalized information”.
Later that month, the DOJ said it had evidence that classified documents found at the Mar-a-Lago estate were “probably hidden and deleted” before the FBI began looking for them. The department said it had collected evidence “that attempts were likely to have been made to obstruct the government’s investigation,” with government records “probably hidden and deleted” in the months leading up to the search.
For months after the search, Trump and his lawyers have been trying to stop the federal government from conducting its investigation independently. A special master was appointed to review the seized documents, Senior US District Judge Raymond J. Dearie of New York, who doubted that Trump had actually released the documents found. But the Supreme Court finally rejected Trump’s request last October that Dearie review the classified documents.
Much of the investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents took place before a federal grand jury in Washington. Former Trump national security adviser Robert O’Brien was subpoenaed in February and Trump attorney Evan Corcoran testified in March pursuant to a court order. More recently, action shifted to a federal grand jury in Miami, Florida, where Trump aide Taylor Budowich appeared on June 7.
Trump has maintained he did nothing wrong and claimed he had a right to keep the documents.
