Former President Donald Trump has been indicted on seven federal criminal charges in reference to a whole bunch of classified government documents he retained at his Florida home after leaving the White House.
Trump himself disclosed the indictment in a series of posts on his Truth Social social media site on Thursday evening. He also said he has been summoned to seem in court in Miami on Tuesday.
NBC News soon after confirmed the indictment, which is the second time in recent months that Trump has been criminally charged. He stays under criminal investigation by the Department of Justice and a Georgia state prosecutor for his efforts to reverse his loss to President Joe Biden within the 2020 election.
Follow our live coverage of Donald Trump’s indictment within the classified documents case.
The specifics of the most recent charges against Trump usually are not public, because the indictment is sealed for now.
Trump’s attorney, James Trusty, in an interview with CNN, said the costs include false statements, conspiracy to obstruct and willfully retaining documents in violation of the Espionage Act. Those charges carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison if Trump is convicted, though the actual sentence would likely be lower due to federal sentencing guidelines.
Trump, who’s in search of the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is the one U.S. president, former or otherwise, ever to be criminally charged. A Trump political motion committee immediately began fundraising off news in regards to the latest indictment.
He was first indicted by a Recent York state grand jury in March on charges of falsifying business records in reference to a hush money payment to a porn star in 2016.
In a video statement Thursday, Trump called the brand new charges “election interference at the best level.”
Former U.S. President Donald Trump talks on his phone between shots, as he participates within the Pro-Am tournament ahead of the LIV Golf Invitational on the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, U.S. May 25, 2023.Â
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
On Truth Social, Trump wrote, “I never thought it possible that such a thing could occur to a former President of the US.”
“I AM AN INNOCENT MAN! That is indeed a DARK DAY for the US of America,” he wrote.
A U.S. Secret Service official told NBC News that Secret Service brass will meet with Trump staff on Friday and start security and logistics planning for his appearance in Miami court on Tuesday.
Trump has been the main focus of a federal criminal investigation since last yr over his stonewalling of requests to return government records, including classified documents, after ending his term as president. By law, such records have to be returned when a president leaves office.
Last August, FBI agents raided Trump’s home at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, looking for records they believed could be there.
Agents found a whole bunch of documents marked classified, together with many more government records that he had been obligated to return.
A Secret Service agent and a security guard officer guard the Mar-a-Lago home of former U.S. President Donald Trump, in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S. March 31, 2023.Â
Ricardo Arduengo | Reuters
A spokesman for special counsel Jack Smith, who has been leading the investigation for the Department of Justice, declined to comment to NBC News on Thursday.
Trump, who most recently has been living at his residence in Bedminster, Recent Jersey, in his social media posts wrote, “The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I even have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax.”
He griped that Biden had not been charged despite the indisputable fact that quite a lot of government documents, a few of which were classified, had been found at locations where Biden lived or worked as a non-public citizen.
Biden is the topic of an inquiry by one other special counsel for those documents. But legal analysts have said his situation is different from that of Trump due to Trump’s failure to return government records despite repeated requests that he accomplish that by U.S. officials.
A White House spokesman declined to comment to NBC News. He referred that question to the Department of Justice, “which conducts its criminal investigations independently.”Â
Until this week, it was publicly known only that a grand jury in federal court in Washington, D.C., was hearing testimony and reviewing evidence related to the documents investigation of Trump, while a separate grand jury in the identical courthouse investigated his try and overturn the 2020 election results.
But earlier this week it was revealed that one other grand jury in U.S. District Court in Miami also had been collecting evidence within the documents probe. That disclosure raised the prospect that Trump could be criminally charged in Florida, not in Washington.
Trump has long maintained a house in Florida, which in recent election cycles has been won by him and by Republican candidates for governor and senator.
The state’s current governor, Ron DeSantis, is running against Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
Trump’s lawyers met with DOJ officials, including Smith, in Washington on Monday, reportedly to argue that Trump mustn’t be indicted.
On Wednesday, a top Trump aide, Taylor Budowich, testified to the grand jury in Miami. Later that very same day, NBC News and other media outlets reported that Trump had been formally notified that he was a goal of the criminal probe, a step typically taken shortly before an individual is indicted.
