CNN
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Former President Donald Trump has been indicted on seven counts in the special counsel’s investigation into classified documents, a surprise move that marks the first time a former president has faced federal charges.
Trump faces a charge under the Espionage Act, his lawyer Jim Trusty told CNN Thursday, as well as charges of obstruction of justice, destruction or falsification of records, conspiracy and making false statements.
The special counsel has been investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents that were taken to his Mar-a-Lago, Florida resort after he left the White House in 2021, as well as possible obstruction of the investigation and government efforts to recover the material.
The former president wrote to Truth Social that he had been informed by the Department of Justice that he was indicted and that he was “summoned to appear in Federal Court in Miami on Tuesday at 3:00 p.m.”
“The corrupt Biden administration has informed my lawyers that I have been indicted, apparently for the Boxes deception,” Trump wrote.
Trusty told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that Trump’s lawyers received a Justice Department email subpoena listing the charges on Thursday, but have not yet seen the indictment.
He called the Espionage Act charge “ridiculous”.
In a sign of how forcefully the special counsel kept abreast of the indictment, the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Marshals received no advance notice and were surprised by Trump’s social media announcement. social security, law enforcement officials said Thursday.
Law enforcement is now preparing for an expected court appearance next week in Miami, and the Justice Department is moving additional resources there, officials said.
The special counsel and the Justice Department did not make a public statement Thursday, and a spokesman declined to comment.
The federal indictment is the second time Trump has been criminally charged this year. In April, the Manhattan district attorney indicted Trump on 34 counts of business falsification.
But the special counsel’s indictment marks a new and more dangerous legal phase for a former president, who is running for president again in 2024 while facing criminal charges in two jurisdictions, and with two additional investigations into his conduct still ongoing.
The charges against Trump come just seven months after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel after Trump announced he was running for president, in order to keep the Justice Department investigation independent of Biden.
Trump will now face federal charges from the special counsel as he tries to unseat President Joe Biden in next year’s presidential election.
The White House declined to comment Thursday evening.
Trump has criticized the special counsel’s investigation and other investigations into his conduct, claiming they are all efforts to stop him politically. The former president has insisted that no criminal charges will stop his 2024 campaign.
Trump released a four-minute video late Thursday repeating many of his past claims, including that the Justice Department is being weaponized and that the investigations into him are “election interference.”
“I’m an innocent man. I did nothing wrong,” Trump said in the video.
Trump has long avoided legal culpability in his personal, professional and political life. He has settled a number of private civil lawsuits over the years and paid out of disputes involving the Trump Organization. As president, he was impeached twice by the Democratic-led House, but avoided conviction by the Senate.
But after he left office, the Justice Department’s criminal investigations into the withholding of classified information at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election cast dark clouds over Trump . Smith’s investigation into Jan. 6 and efforts to overturn the election are still ongoing.
And in addition to the Manhattan District Attorney’s April indictment, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to announce in August whether charges are pending in her investigation into the attempts to revoke the 2020 elections in Georgia.
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Trump’s congressional allies quickly rallied to his defense on social media, just as they did when Trump was impeached in New York in April.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tweeted that it was “a dark day for the United States of America.”
“It is inconceivable that a president would indict the leading candidate who opposes him. Joe Biden kept classified documents for decades,” the California Republican said.
“The radical far left will stop at nothing to interfere with the 2024 election to prop up Joe Biden’s disastrous presidency and desperate campaign,” said House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R- of New York, in a statement.
“Sad day for America. God bless President Trump,” he tweeted House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio.
Trump aides and advisers are emboldened by the indictment and are “ready to fight,” a person who spoke to Trump told CNN on Thursday.
But while Trump and some of his aides may feel emboldened now, others close to the former president have expressed concern and reservations about the indictment.
While it may have given Trump a boost in the polls and fundraising that could help the former president in the Republican primaries, several top advisers are aware of the risk associated with a federal indictment and believe it will hurt Trump in the long run.
Trump’s federal indictment will once again turn the 2024 GOP primary about the former president, even in a week when several candidates entered the race. Before Thursday’s indictment, several Republican rivals of Trump said the DOJ should not indict the former president, including Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, at a CNN town hall Wednesday.
However, for at least one of the Republicans running in the anti-Trump lane, Thursday’s indictment was a reason why Trump should drop out of the race.
“While Donald Trump is entitled to the presumption of innocence, the ongoing criminal proceedings will be a major distraction. This reaffirms the need for Donald Trump to respect the office and end his campaign,” said Republican presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson .
Several Democrats who investigated Trump during his presidency said Thursday’s indictment showed that no one was above the rule of law.
“Trump’s apparent indictment on multiple charges stemming from his retention of classified material is another assertion of the rule of law. For four years, he acted as if he were above the law. But he should be treated as any other lawbreaker. And today he was,” wrote Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who led Trump’s first impeachment in the House in 2019.
The Justice Department’s investigation into Trump’s actions related to documents from his time in office erupted publicly in August when FBI agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago and seized thousands of documents, including about 100 marked as classified. The FBI also subpoenaed the Trump Organization for surveillance video from the compound.
Prosecutors had said in court documents that they were pursuing possible criminal mishandling of national security information and obstruction of justice. The DOJ previously alleged that classified documents were “likely hidden and removed” from a warehouse at Mar-a-Lago as part of an effort to “obstruct” the FBI’s investigation into possible wrongdoing Trump’s handling of classified materials.
After Trump returned 15 boxes of materials to the National Archives in January, the Justice Department subpoenaed Trump in May, seeking classified documents that were still at Mar-a-Lago.
According to a lawsuit he later filed, Trump ordered his staff to search for any remaining classified material to comply with the subpoena. After federal investigators recovered the documents from the compound in June, his lawyers later told investigators that they had searched the storage area and accounted for all the classified documents.
Prosecutors said in August that some documents were likely removed from a warehouse before Trump’s lawyers examined the area as they tried to comply with the subpoena.
In recent months, prosecutors heard from dozens of witnesses, including Trump aides and employees of Mar-a-Lago and the Trump Organization. Most of the witnesses appeared before a grand jury in Washington, DC, but in recent weeks several witnesses testified before a grand jury in South Florida.
Prosecutors obtained an audio tape of Trump discussing a classified Pentagon document during a 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey. In the recording, which was first reported by CNN, Trump acknowledged that the document was still classified, undercutting his argument that everything he brought with him to Mar-a-Lago had been declassified.
This story has been updated with additional news.
