Trump endangered national secrets, prosecutors say in landmark indictment

Federal prosecutors laid a case full of evidence in an indictment released Friday that former President Donald J. Trump compromised national security secrets by mishandling classified documents he took from the White House and then plotting to defraud the administration of them. prevent the material from being recovered .

The 49-page, 38-count indictment said documents available to Mr. Trump included some about sensitive nuclear programs and others detailing the country’s potential vulnerability to military attack.

In some cases, prosecutors said, he showed them to people without security clearances and stashed them haphazardly at Mar-a-Lago, even stacking a stack of boxes in a bathroom at his private Florida club and residence.

The indictment contained evidence that vividly illustrated what prosecutors said Mr. Trump was willing to hide from investigators.

In one of the most problematic pieces of evidence for the former president, the indictment recounted how at some point during the administration’s attempt to recover the documents, Mr. which implied, “Why don’t you take them back to your hotel room, and if there’s something bad in there, pick it out.”

Jack Smith, the special counsel bringing the case before the Justice Department, in a short statement in Washington, dismissed the investigation as a defense of national security. He urged Americans to read the indictment to understand the “scope and seriousness” of the allegations, which he said were necessary to preserve “fundamental” democratic principles.

“We have one set of laws in this country and it applies to everyone,” he said. The investigation had been conducted with the utmost integrity, he added, pledging, in an implicit nod to the election calendar — Mr. Trump remains the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — to seek a speedy trial.

Mr. Trump and his allies continued their efforts to portray the prosecution as politically motivated and unwarranted, with House Republicans rallying behind him and claiming that President Biden had armed the Justice Department against his would-be rival by 2024.

Mr Biden maintained his calculated silence on the prosecution, ruling that it is best not to provide ammunition to Republicans who try to convince voters that he was behind the decision to indict Mr Trump.

The legal and political ramifications of a former president’s first-ever prosecution can be devastating, and he could face many years in prison if convicted.

Mr. Trump was charged with 37 criminal counts related to seven different violations of federal law alone or with one of his personal assistants, Walt Nauta, who was also named in the indictment.

The former president was charged with 31 counts of deliberately withholding national defense information under the Espionage Act and one count of making false statements stemming from his interactions with federal investigators and one of his own attorneys.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Nauta were jointly charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding government records, corruptly concealing records, concealing a document in a federal investigation, and plotting to conceal their efforts. Mr. Nauta was charged with a separate count of making false statements to detectives.

According to an official report related to the indictment, prosecutors informed Mr. Trump on May 19 that he was a target of the investigation and informed Mr. Nauta on May 24.

The indictment provided the clearest representation yet of the files Mr. Trump took with him when he left the White House, his lax approach to storing material he knew was highly sensitive, and the extraordinary steps he took to help investigators avoid and even deceive. its own legal team.

It said he had been illegally keeping records related to “United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.”

Prosecutors gave no motive for Mr Trump’s actions, but described incidents where he appeared to show off the material.

Prosecutors presented evidence that in July 2021 Mr Trump shared a highly sensitive “plan of attack” against Iran with visitors to his golf club in Bedminster, NJ – and was taped describing the material as “highly confidential” and “secret, while he admitted it was not released.

In another incident in September 2021, the indictment said, he shared a top-secret military map with a member of his political action committee who lacked security clearance.

The file contains many photos of what appear to be bank chests, some of which contain highly sensitive national documents, moved by Mr. Nauta and other aides under orders from Mr. Trump. Some of the boxes appear to be sagging – and on December 7, 2021, Mr. Nauta discovered that one of the boxes had tipped over and spilled its contents onto the floor.

The files found on the carpet contained the designation “SECRET/REL TO USA, FVEY” – meaning they were intended to be seen by officials from the US, UK, New Zealand, Australia and Canada with high security clearances.

Prosecutors said Mr Trump caused his lawyers to falsely authenticate a statement to the Justice Department last June that his legal team had “diligently searched” Mar-a-Lago and found only a few files that had not been returned to the government. Months later, FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago with a warrant and found hundreds of pages of additional documents with secret markings.

In an earlier motion, prosecutors said the charges were initially filed in secrecy to protect witnesses and their lawyers “from harassment and harassment.” The motion also said that Mr. Trump’s case was initially sealed “in connection with the grand jury and other matters,” which are still pending in Federal District Court in Washington.

In an example of how the documents were handled after Trump left the White House, the indictment said that in April 2021, Mar-a-Lago employees had to move dozens of boxes of documents from a ballroom space they were converting. Office space. “There’s another small space in the shower where his other stuff is,” one assistant texted the other.

Shortly thereafter, the indictment said, the boxes were dragged into a small bathroom next to a Mar-a-Lago banquet hall and piled up almost to the small chandelier next to the toilet.

Mr. Trump is expected to appear in Federal District Court in Miami on Tuesday afternoon. He seemed to have a lucky first break: The Florida federal judge assigned to the case, Aileen M. Cannon, is a Trump appointee who made overwhelmingly favorable rulings for Mr. Trump at an earlier stage of the documents investigation, but was overruled by an appeals court.

But he also suffered another setback: Two of the lawyers representing him, James Trusty and John Rowley, resigned from his defense team, throwing the team into turmoil as he faces the most serious legal threat of his career.

The Justice Department’s unsealing of the charges came a day after Mr Trump confirmed on his social media platform that he was being charged in the case, the result of just one of the investigations that has put him in serious legal jeopardy, even when he tries to retake the White House.

Mr. Smith continues to examine Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss and how those efforts culminated in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Mr. Smith did not address that investigation in his brief public remarks at Friday.

A prosecutor in Fulton County, Georgia, is conducting a comprehensive investigation into Mr Trump’s attempts to reverse his election loss in that vital swing state in 2020 and is expected to release any charges this summer.

And Mr. Trump has been charged in New York in connection with a hush money case.

The document search dates back to the end of Mr Trump’s term in January 2021, when the documents — many of which were reportedly located at the White House residence — were packed in boxes along with clothing, gifts, photos and other materials, and shipped by the General Services Administration to his private Florida club and residence, Mar-a-Lago.

When the National Archives discovered that he failed to return certain documents after he left office, Mr. Trump was initially hesitant to return any material, despite persistent warnings from some of his lawyers that he could face dire consequences if he fails to do so. of the archives ignored.

Mr. Trump finally sent the Archives 15 boxes of materials in January of last year. When officials at the records office examined the records, they found classified materials circulated between them and alerted the Justice Department.

That discovery led to the extensive investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling and retention of the classified documents.

William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess, Jonathan Swan And Adam Goldman reporting contributed.