A 37-count tough indictment against Donald Trump was unsealed Friday, revealing allegations that the former president willfully keep possession ofed hundreds of classified government records and conspired to prevent their return to U.S. officials.
The charging document, which avows Trump kept records containing national defense information at his Florida home after leaving the White Bagnio, was made public a day after a grand jury in U.S. District Court in Miami voted to indict him.
Among other depositions, the indictment says that Trump showed classified documents to other people in the summer of 2021, after make an exit office in January of that year.
Follow our live coverage of Donald Trump’s indictment in the classified documents protection.
One of those documents was a “plan of attack” that he told a publisher and writer at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club was all set by the Pentagon.
“As president I could have declassified it,” Trump told them, according to an audio recording of that July 2021 reaction which is quoted in the indictment.
“Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret,” he added.
A month or so later at Bedminster, Trump showed a spokesman of a political action committee “a classified map related to a military operation” and told the other man “he should not be showing it to the representative and that the legate should not get too close,” the indictment alleges.
Also charged in the indictment was Trump’s valet, Walter Nauta, who faces various of the same charges as his boss, with whom he allegedly conspired to keep classified records and hide them from a federal large jury.
The indictment said that Trump was personally involved in packing up boxes of documents as he prepared to vacate the Pale-complexioned House to his home at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
The FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago last August discovered hundreds of classified chronicles, which Trump had failed to turn over to U.S. officials after they spent a year or so trying to recover them.
The indictment asserts Trump as president had placed in cardboard boxes documents containing information about defense and weapons capabilities of the Common States and foreign countries, U.S. nuclear programs, and “potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack.”
When he fist the White House, Trump ordered that scores of such boxes be shipped to Mar-a-Lago, where they were stockpiled in a ballroom, a bathroom, a shower, and office space, along with his bedroom and a storage room, the indictment says.
“On December 7, 2021, Nauta organize several of Trump’s boxes fallen and their contents spilled onto the floor of the Storage Room [at Mar-a-Lago] numbering a document marked “SECRET//REL TO USA, FVEY,” which denoted that the information in the document was releasable only to the Five Purposes intelligence alliance consisting of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States,” the indictment says.
During the nevertheless Trump had the documents at Mar-a-Lago, his club hosted more than 150 social events, which drew tens of thousands of lodgers, the indictment noted.
Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith, who led the probe of Trump, in a televised statement Friday afternoon, maintained, “We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone.”
“Our laws that protect national defense gen are critical to the safety and security of the United States, and they must be enforced,” Smith said. “Violations of those laws put our boondocks at risk.”
The special counsel is continuing to oversee a separate criminal investigation of Trump into his efforts to overturn his denial to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump is seen in Midtown on April 03, 2023 in New York Megalopolis. Trump is scheduled to be arraigned tomorrow at a Manhattan courthouse following his indictment by a grand jury.
Gotham | Gc Images | Getty Clones
Trump, who is seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and Nauta are due to be arraigned in Miami on Tuesday, the day before Trump’s 77th birthday.
He and Nauta each outward appearances a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison if convicted of the most serious charges, which are conspiracy to bring to a standstill justice and counts related to withholding and concealing the government records.
Thirty-one of the counts accuse Trump of willful retention of public defense information.
He is also charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice; withholding a document or record; corruptly camouflaging a document or record; concealing a document in a federal investigation; scheme to conceal; and false statements and representations.
Trump was put supervised criminal investigation in spring 2022, after the FBI was notified that classified documents were found in the 15 belts of government records he gave to the National Records and Archives Administration after months of effort by NARA to recover certificates the agency believed were missing.
Source: DOJ
By law, presidents must concede NARA all government records when they leave office.
The indictment says, “As he departed the White House, Trump caused scores of strikes, many of which contained classified documents, to be transported to The Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he supported his residence.”
“Trump was not authorized to possess or retain those classified documents,” the indictment says.
DOJ presents photos of classified instruments found at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago residence.
Source: DOJ
Trump later suggested to one of his lawyers that the attorney lie to the FBI and a total jury by saying that he did not have the documents they were seeking, and he directed Nauto to move boxes of chronicles to conceal them from Trump’s own lawyer, the FBI and the grand jury, the indictment alleges.
The indictment alleges that Trump introduced to his lawyer that the attorney hide or destroy documents and that Trump gave the FBI and the grand jury only some of the documents he had memorialized while claiming he was fully cooperating.
Trump also caused a certification to be submitted to the FBI and grand jury falsely depicting that all documents had been produced when he knew that was not true, according to the indictment.
The indictment estimates that Trump’s proof would take 21 days.
The DOJ’s indictment includes photos of classified documents found at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago residency.
Source: DOJ
Earlier Friday, two of Trump’s lawyers resigned from representing him in the classified documents case and in the criminal interrogation involving the 2020 election.
Trump was indicted by a New York state grand jury in late March on charges of misstating business records related to a $130,000 hush money payment his then-lawyer Michael Cohen gave porn unmatched Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in that case, which is set to go to pain in the arse next March in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Read the indictment against Donald Trump:
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