Former President Donald Trump is facing indictment for his handling of classified documents as an ex-president. The indictment, filed by special counsel Jack Smith in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Florida, alleges that Trump moved hundreds of classified documents to Mar-a-Lago when he left the White House. These documents included sensitive information about defense and weapons capabilities, nuclear programs, and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack. Trump stored these documents recklessly in various places around the Mar-a-Lago Club, including his bedroom, a bathroom, and a ballroom, rather than in a secured space that had been approved to handle classified documents.
Despite months of demands from the National Archives and Records Administration to return the documents, Trump only provided a portion of what was in his possession. After a grand-jury subpoena demanded all classified documents, Trump’s lawyers turned over 38 more documents marked classified. However, when the FBI carried out a controversial search warrant later that summer and seized more boxes, they found 102 additional documents with classified markings. The indictment also offers evidence that Trump misled investigators about his possession of the documents and took actions to conceal them.
The most damning evidence against Trump is the transcript of a conversation during which he showed one of the documents to a reporter. Speaking of a theoretical attack plan, Trump produced a document and said, “It is like, highly confidential.” He also said, “See as president I could have declassified it” but admitted, “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.” The audio of this conversation contradicts some of the defenses made by Trump and his team, including the idea that there was a “standing order” that whatever documents he brought to Mar-a-Lago to work on were automatically declassified. It’s clear from the conversation that he not only knew he was in possession of secret documents that were never declassified, but knowingly shared them with people who lacked the security clearance to see them.
The indictment also alleges that Trump not only deceived investigators and the grand jury but his own lawyers, knowing and intending that they would obstruct the investigation. If the allegations in the indictment are true, Trump tried to nudge his lawyers into concealing or destroying incriminating evidence. Unable to bend them in that direction, he and an aide hid boxes of documents from them, causing them falsely to tell the grand jury, under oath, that the classified documents they delivered to the FBI in June 2022 were the only ones remaining in his possession.
While some conservatives may view the charges against Trump in the context of the Justice Department’s handling of Hillary Clinton’s case or President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, it doesn’t change the fact that the country wouldn’t be in this uncharted territory if Trump hadn’t taken documents he had no right to and simply complied when asked to give them back.
