WASHINGTON: U.S. prosecutors unsealed a 37-count indictment against Donald Trump on Friday, accusing the former president of risking some of the country’s most sensitive security secrets after leaving the White House in 2021.
Trump mishandled classified documents that included information about the secretive U.S. nuclear program and potential domestic vulnerabilities in the event of an attack, the federal indictment said.
Trump also discussed with his lawyers the possibility of lying to government officials seeking to recover the documents; stored some documents in boxes around a toilet, and moved others around his Mar-a-Lago resort home in Florida to prevent them from being found, the charges said.
“Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?” Trump said to one of his attorneys, according to the 49-page indictment.
Unauthorized disclosure of classified documents posed a risk to U.S. national security, foreign relations, and intelligence gathering, according to the prosecutors.
The Justice Department made the criminal charges public on a tumultuous day in which two of Trump’s lawyers, John Rowley and Jim Trusty, quit the case for reasons that were not immediately clear. A former aide, Walt Nauta, faces charges of being Trump’s co-conspirator.
Trump is due to make a first appearance in the case in a Miami court on Tuesday.
Since Trump would serve any sentences concurrently if convicted, the maximum prison time he would face is 20 years for obstruction of justice, a charge carrying the highest penalty.
Trump has proclaimed his innocence. After the charges were unsealed, he attacked U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the prosecution, on social media.
“He is a Trump Hater – a deranged ‘psycho’ that shouldn’t be involved in any case having to do with ‘Justice,'” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The indictment of a former U.S. president on federal charges is unprecedented in American history and emerges at a time when Trump is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination next year.
Trump and his allies have portrayed the case as political retaliation by the current Democratic President Joe Biden, but Biden has kept his distance.
The White House said Biden had no advance knowledge of the indictment.
