Donald Trump is indicted again: What is the classified documents case? Will the former US president be arrested?
Donald Trump is indicted again: What is the classified documents case? Will the former US president be arrested?
Donald Trump’s legal troubles continue to grow. He has now been charged over the handling of classified documents after he left the White House. This is the first-ever federal indictment for a former US president.
The 76-year-old is facing seven charges including unauthorised retention of secret documents. The charges, however, are not public yet.
This is Trump’s second indictment after the hush-money case, as he campaigns to make a comeback to the White House in 2024.
Trump, however, has maintained that he is innocent. On his Truth Social app, he called it “a DARK DAY for the United States of America”. “The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax,” he wrote.
In a video post, he said, “I’m innocent and we will prove that very, very soundly and hopefully very quickly.”
What is the case against Trump?
In 2021, officials of the US National Archives and Records Administration released that some important documents and other material were missing from his time in office and reached out to representatives of Trump.
White House documents are considered property of the US government and must be preserved, according to the Presidential Records Act.
A Trump representative told the National Archives in December 2021 that presidential records had been found at Mar-a-Lago, the Florida estate of the Republican leader. In January 2022, the National Archives retrieved 15 boxes of documents from Trump’s house, later telling the US justice department officials that they contained “a lot” of classified material, reports The Associated Press (AP).
That May, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the justice department issued a subpoena for remaining classified documents in Trump’s possession. Investigators, who went to visit the property weeks later to collect the records, were given roughly three dozen documents and a sworn statement from Trump’s lawyers attesting that the requested information had been returned.
But that assertion turned out to be false. With a search warrant, federal officials returned to Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 and seized more than 33 boxes and containers totalling 11,000 documents from a storage room and an office, including 100 classified documents, the report says.
In all, roughly 300 documents with classification markings — including some at the top-secret level — were recovered from Trump since he left office in January 2021.
What do we know about the investigation?
Last year, US Attorney General Merrick Garland picked Jack Smith, a veteran war crimes prosecutor with a background in public corruption probes, to lead investigations into the presence of classified documents at the Florida estate, as well as key aspects of a separate probe involving the 6 January 2021 insurrection and efforts to undo the 2020 election.
Smith’s appointment was a recognition by Garland of the politics involved in an investigation into a former president and current White House candidate. Garland himself was selected by Democratic president Joe Biden, whom Trump is seeking to challenge for the White House in 2024.
Special counsels are appointed in cases in which the US justice department perceives itself as having a conflict or where it’s deemed to be in the public interest to have someone outside the government come in and take responsibility for a matter, reports AP.
On 7 June, Trump’s legal team was notified that he is a target of a federal investigation, which indicates that Smith’s investigation is likely nearing a conclusion.
What are the charges against Trump?
The former president has been indicted on seven counts in the classified documents probe.
According to Trump’s lawyer James Trusty, he has been served a summons document that contains “some language in it that suggests what the seven charges would be”, but they had not seen the actual indictment.
Trusty told CNN that Trump is facing a charge under the Espionage Act. The indictment also includes charges of willful retention of national defence information, obstruction of justice, false statements and conspiracy.
While the term espionage brings to mind spying but the US law covers more than its citizens working on behalf of a foreign government.
According to MSNBC, a part of the act prohibits unauthorised possession of national defence-related documents that are willfully retained and not delivered to the government officer or employee entitled to receive them. It carries a possible 10-year sentence.
Trusty has described the charges as a “crazy stretch” and said the espionage charge was “ludicrous under the facts of this case”.
What happens next?
After a person is indicted, they must appear in court for an arraignment. The indictment papers will then be unsealed and the judge will ask for a plea.
Trump will appear in a Miami court on Tuesday. The US Secret Service agents assigned to the former president will make a plan for his travel and appearance in court.
In court, Trump will be asked to enter a plea of guilty and not guilty. The former president is expected to plead not guilty after which the judge will set bail or other conditions for his release.
Will Trump be arrested?
Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, told the BBC that Trump’s arrest would likely follow a similar pattern to his arrest in April on charges of falsifying business records linked to the alleged hush-money payments made to Stormy Daniels.
When he was charged by the Manhattan district attorney in the New York case, Trump surrendered to authorities, where he was booked behind closed doors and appeared in the courtroom, sitting with his lawyers at the defence table. Back then, he was fingerprinted but he was not handcuffed and his mugshot was not taken.
Does a federal indiction stop him from running for president?
No. Neither the indictment nor a conviction would prevent Trump from running for or winning the presidency in 2024.
And as the New York case showed, criminal charges have historically been a boon to his fundraising. The campaign announced that it had raised over $4 million in the 24 hours after that indictment became public, far smashing its previous record after the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, reports AP.
With inputs from agencies
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