A 37-count criminal indictment against Donald Trump for willfully retaining classified government records and conspiring to stop their return to U.S. officials was unsealed Friday.
The charging document, which amongst other things alleges Trump kept records containing national defense information from federal officials, was made public a day after the previous president was indicted by a grand jury in U.S. District Court in Miami.
Amongst other allegations, the indictment says that Trump showed classified documents to other people in the summertime of 2021, after leaving office.
Follow our live coverage of Donald Trump’s indictment within the classified documents case.
One among those documents was a “plan of attack” that he told a publisher and author at his Bedminster, Recent Jersey, golf club was prepared by the Pentagon.
“As president I could have declassified it,” Trump told them, in keeping with an audio recording of that July 2021 comment which is quoted within the indictment. “Now I can not, you recognize, but this remains to be a secret.”
A month or so later at Bedminster, Trump showed a representative of a political motion committed “a classified map related to a military operation” and told the opposite man “he mustn’t be showing it to the representative and that the representative mustn’t get to shut,” the indictment alleges.
Also charged within the indictment was Trump’s valet, Walter Nauta, who faces several of the identical charges as his boss, with whom he allegedly conspired to maintain classified records and conceal them from a federal grand jury.
The indictment said that Trump was personally involved in packing up boxes of documents as he prepared to vacate the White House to his home at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
The FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago last August discovered a whole bunch of classified documents, which he had didn’t turn over to U.S. officials despite a 12 months or so of efforts to recuperate them.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump is seen in Midtown on April 03, 2023 in Recent York City. Trump is scheduled to be arraigned tomorrow at a Manhattan courthouse following his indictment by a grand jury.
Gotham | Gc Images | Getty Images
The indictment says, “On December 7, 2021, NAUTA found several of TRUMP’s boxes fallen and their contents spilled onto the ground of the Storage Room [at Mar-a-Lago] including a document marked “SECRET//REL TO USA, FVEY,” which denoted that the knowledge within the document was releasable only to the Five Eyes intelligence alliance consisting of Australia, Canada, Recent Zealand, the UK, and the US.”
Trump, who’s looking for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and Nauta are as a consequence of be arraigned in Miami on Tuesday, the day before Trump’s 77th birthday.
He and Nauta each face a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison if convicted of essentially the most serious charges, that are conspiracy to obstruct justice and counts related to withholding and concealing the federal government records.
Special counsel Jack Smith is as a consequence of make an announcement on the case on the Department of Justice on Friday at 3 p.m. ET. Smith is constant to oversee a separate criminal investigation of Trump for his efforts to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden within the 2020 election.
Thirty-one of the counts accuse Trump of willful retention of national defense information. He can be charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice; withholding a document or record; corruptly concealing a document or record; concealing a document in a federal investigation; scheme to hide; and false statements and representations.
Trump was put under criminal investigation within the spring of 2022, after the FBI was notified that classified documents were present in the 15 boxes of presidency records he gave to the National Records and Archives Administration after months of effort by NARA to recuperate documents the agency believed were missing.
By law, presidents must give NARA all government records once they leave office.
The indictment notes, “As he departed the White House, TRUMP caused scores of boxes, lots of which contained classified documents, to be transported to The Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he maintained his residence.”
“TRUMP was not authorized to own or retain those classified documents,” the indictment says.
DOJ presents photos of classified documents found at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago residence.
Source: DOJ
Trump later suggested to any attorney that he mislead the FBI and a grand jury by saying that he didn’t have the documents they were looking for, and directed Nauto to maneuver boxes of documents to hide them from Trump’s own lawyer, the FBI and the grand jury, the indictment alleges.
Trump is also accused within the indictment of suggesting to his lawyer that the attorney hide or destroy documents, that he gave the FBI and the grand jury only a number of the documents he had kept while claiming he was fully cooperating.
And Trump caused a certification to be submitted to the FBI and grand jury, falsely representing that every one documents had been produced when he knew that was not true, in keeping with the indictment.
The indictment estimates that Trump’s trial would take between 21 and 60 days.
The DOJ’s indictment includes photos of classified documents found at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago residence.
Source: DOJ
Earlier Friday, two of Trump’s lawyers resigned from representing him within the classified documents case, and within the criminal investigation involving the 2020 election.
Trump was indicted by a Recent York state grand jury in late March on charges of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 hush money payment his then-lawyer Michael Cohen gave porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in that case, which is about to go to trial next March in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Read the indictment against Donald Trump
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