Former President Donald Trump has been charged with making false statements, concealing documents, and conspiring to obstruct justice, a newly unsealed indictment shows. Trump aide Waltine Nauta has also been charged.
Trump announced he’d been indicted on June 8. He says he is innocent.
Trump violated federal law by causing “scores of boxes, many of which contained classified documents, to be transported” to his Mar-a-Lago resort after Joe Biden became president on Jan. 20, 2021, according to the indictment, which was signed by special counsel Jack Smith.
The resort was not an authorized location to hold the documents but Trump stored them there anyways in various places, including in a bathroom and his bedroom, the indictment states. Some were located in a ballroom at the resort, which is located in Palm Beach, Florida.
In May 2021, Trump took some of the boxes to another property, the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, authorities allege.
Trump is accused of showing the classified documents to other people on two separate occasions in 2021 at the golf club.
He showed what he described as a “plan of attack” to a writer, a publisher, and two staff members in July 2021, the indictment states. Trump said he could have declassified the plan while he was president but that he couldn’t since he was no longer in office. “This is secret information,” he was quoted as saying.
In August or September 2021, Trump allegedly showed a classified map to a representative from the Save America PAC.
Trump has said he declassified the documents before leaving office.
FBI agents opened an investigation into Trump retaining classified documents on March 30, 2022. Trump tried obstructing that investigation, including suggesting to one of his attorneys that the lawyer tell the FBI that Trump did not have classified documents and by directing Nauta to move boxes of documents to conceal them, according to the indictment.
“Well what if we, what happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?” Trump was quoted as saying on May 23, 2022, by one of his attorneys.
Trump said he was firing attorneys John Rowley and Jim Trusty shortly before the indictment was unsealed.
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