Justice Department Charges Trump in Documents Case
The indictment, handed up by a grand jury in Miami, is the first time a former U.S. president has faced federal charges.
The indictment followed criminal charges against former President Donald J. Trump in a hush-money case brought by local prosecutors in New York.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
By Alan Feuer, Maggie Haberman, William K. Rashbaum and Ben Protess
June 9, 2023, 3:00 a.m. ET
The Justice Department on Thursday took the legally and politically momentous step of lodging federal criminal charges against former President Donald J. Trump, accusing him of mishandling classified documents he kept upon leaving office and then obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them.
Mr. Trump confirmed on his social media platform that he had been indicted. The charges against him include willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements and a conspiracy to obstruct justice, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The Justice Department made no comment on the indictment Thursday and did not immediately make the document public.
The indictment, handed up by a grand jury in Federal District Court in Miami, is the first time a former president has faced federal charges. It puts the nation in an extraordinary position, given Mr. Trump’s status not only as a onetime commander in chief but also as the current front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination to face President Biden, whose administration will now be seeking to convict his potential rival of multiple felonies.
Mr. Trump is expected to surrender to the authorities on Tuesday, according to a person close to him and his own post on his social media platform, Truth Social.
“The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been indicted,” Mr. Trump wrote, in one of several posts around 7 p.m. after he was notified of the charges.
The former president added that he was scheduled to be arraigned in federal court in Miami at 3 p.m. on Tuesday. In a video he released later on Truth Social, Mr. Trump declared: “I’m an innocent man. I’m an innocent person.”
Documents, some labeled Secret and some labeled Top Secret, spread on a patterned carpet
F.B.I. agents enforcing a subpoena seized about 100 classified documents from Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Florida residence, last August. Credit...U.S. Department of Justice
Documents, some labeled Secret and some labeled Top Secret, spread on a patterned carpet
A lawyer for Mr. Trump, Jim Trusty, told CNN on Thursday night that the former president’s legal team had not been shown the indictment itself but that the court summons gave some details on the charges. He mentioned alleged Espionage Act violations, false-statement charges and “several obstruction-based” charges, including offenses under Section 1512, which criminalizes witness tampering or other means of obstructing an official effort.
Mr. Trusty said he believed there was also a conspiracy charge. But he added: “This is not biblically accurate, because I’m not looking at a charging document. I’m looking at a summary sheet.” He also said the Trump legal team had not been told of anyone else being indicted.
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