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      The Observer view on Donald Trump’s indictment: it will also put Joe Biden on trial | Observer editorial

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      It is a measure of the topsy-turvy world of US politics that last week’s first-ever federal indictment of a former president, Donald Trump, on criminal charges may help him win the Republican party’s nomination in the 2024 race for the White House.True to form, Trump’s initial reaction to the US justice department’s charges was to play the victim and proclaim his innocence on social media. The multimillionaire’s next move was to appeal for cash donations from his adoring, ever-credulous Make America Great Again fanbase.The subdued and awkward reaction to the charges of Trump’s rivals for the nomination suggests they understand this political reality. Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, is closest to Trump in the polls – yet he trails by about 30 points. He declined to defend the former president. But he did not criticise him either, merely repeating a familiar complaint about supposed “weaponisation of federal law enforcement” by Joe Biden’s administration. DeSantis evidently believes kicking Trump at this point would alienate many party voters.Other Republican hopefuls, such as Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, and Mike Pence, the ultra-loyal vice-president who turned on Trump after the failed Capitol Hill coup, may be more inclined to confront their old boss. And it’s early days. Perhaps they will benefit from Trump’s travails. But at present, their poll ratings, and those of others such as Senator Tim Scott, are in single figures. Amazingly, Trump remains his party’s clear favourite – although the impact of the case on his popularity among US voters in general could be much more negative.It’s plain the federal indictments, like previous felony charges filed in New York state over alleged hush money payments to a porn star, will be used by Trump to reinforce his claims of political persecution. Judging by his recent CNN “town hall” appearance, the former president lacks new policies or initiatives. Instead, predictably enough, his pitch to voters is all about him and his obsessive belief that Biden and the Democrats are determined by any means, fair or foul, to deny him victory again.All such huffing and puffing aside, it remains entirely possible that Trump’s proliferating legal problems will end his political career – and land him in jail. Justice department special counsel Jack Smith has accused him on 37 counts of criminal wrongdoing, including jeopardising national security by his retention of classified documents, false testimony and obstruction of justice. Boxes of secret papers relating to nuclear programmes, Iran, and allies’ defence plans were found in Trump’s bathroom, Smith revealed. America must now contemplate the extraordinary prospect of a melodramatic, televised court battle starring Trump the defendant overlapping with the 2024 battle for the White House, starring Trump the Republican candidate. Egged on by Fox News and hard-right cheerleaders, he will seek to make maximum capital out of such a spectacle, regardless of the gravity of the charges. He will try to turn serious legal proceedings into a campaign rally.Biden already faces numerous obstacles to his hopes of a second term, including concerns about his advanced age, relatively low approval ratings, and a vulnerable post-pandemic economy. He, too, is under investigation for his handling of classified documents. Now the president will also have to fend off claims he is conducting a politicised legal vendetta and abusing his power to eliminate his chief rival.The criminal indictment of Trump is welcome, fully justified by the facts, and long overdue. But the coming courtroom showdown will also put Biden – and a divided America – on trial. More

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      James Comey: ‘I’d like to take readers inside the White House’

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      After a long career as a state attorney in New York, James Comey became director of the FBI in 2013. He was due to serve 10 years, but was dismissed by President Trump in 2017, having ordered an investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Comey has subsequently published two bestselling accounts of his time in office. His first novel, Central Park West, a crime thriller set in the New York district attorney’s office where Comey once worked, will be published this month.Have you always been a fan of crime fiction?I found it too hard when I was dealing with crime or terrorism in my day job to read about those things. The FBI job was really a 24-hour thing and I didn’t want to fill any spare moments reading fiction about my work.Do investigators and writers share an eye for detail?I think that good journalists and good lawyers think and communicate in stories. Even as a kid, I was always someone who would try to remember details so I could go home and tell my family the story at our dinner table.There must have been an element of nostalgia in locating this novel in the New York law courts where you once worked?I enjoyed travelling back in my mind to those places. I could picture myself in courtroom 318, where a lot of the action in the book takes place. But here’s the thing that made it both slightly strange and wonderful for me: when I was writing this, my oldest daughter was the chief of the violence and organised crime unit in Manhattan, and she was also literally standing in courtroom 318, prosecuting Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator. That made it easy to make Nora, the protagonist in my book, a woman, and to picture her in those places.The book also draws on your experience of prosecuting New York crime families.My life changed when I watched the bail hearing for the mafia boss “Fat Tony” Salerno and his co-defendant Vincent “the fish” Cafaro [in 1989]. As I watched the young prosecutors in court, I was struck by how they stood up straight. They didn’t interrupt answers. When they didn’t know something, they said they didn’t know it. It was like being struck by proverbial lightning sitting there in that old federal courtroom. I always hated bullies. I’d been bullied as a kid. And I thought: here’s a way of [taking on] some of the biggest bullies in the world. I went home and called my girlfriend, now my wife, and said: I figured out what I want to do.You wrote in your memoir, A Higher Loyalty, of your immediate sense that President Trump shared characteristics with some of those mafia mob bosses you had prosecuted. In particular in the demand for loyalty above truth…Yes, I saw it so early that I resisted that sense to begin with. But something I was seeing was reminding me of scenes from my prosecutorial life. Those impressions can be misleading. But this one was dead on.The extraordinary thing was how quickly his extreme behaviour was normalised?I think it was. For the great bulk of people, there was an inability to get their mind around how bad this person is, because he was occupying an office that we endow with all kinds of dignity and importance. I remember cases I was involved with as a prosecutor, where fraud victims came to the fraudster’s sentencing to speak for him, because they simply could not acknowledge they had been defrauded. It was too painful. Supporters of Donald Trump, they see the images of January 6, which shout to them: “You fool! Look what you did!” Some people can face that. But most people turn from that pain and retreat deeper into the lie.Do you see yourself writing fiction about that period as well?I do. My wife is my ideas person. Her view is that it’s too close to write about now. I have in mind doing a trilogy [of novels] based in New York. And I’d like to write a trilogy based in Virginia, where I was a prosecutor for many years. And then I’d like to take readers inside the White House and the FBI and the justice department of the CIA. I’ve spent a lot of time in those places.You have insisted many times that you will never run for political office. Are there other ambitions still in public life, or is that chapter over?I would never, as you said, run for office. It’s just not something that suits me. And I think I’ve disqualified myself from other [legal] roles, because I intentionally became a political partisan after I got fired, because I thought the existential danger to democracy was so great from Donald Trump. So I’m going to try to write novels until I’m old and foolish, and also try to be, as some of my coffee mugs already claim, the world’s greatest grandfather.It sounds like your wife is the big reader of fiction in your household. But are there novels that have been guiding lights for you in taking on this new career?The first sustained reading of fiction I did, in thinking about this, was Le Carré. Partly because I knew he had struggled with the question: how do I write about my work? The criticism of his early books was that he hewed too closely to the truth of his job: desks and files and so on. At some point, his letters reveal, he realised he needed to get the Berlin Wall and some barbed wire in there. I’m no Le Carré, but I’ve tried to do something similar in Central Park West. I don’t think my friends [from the FBI] are going to find significant unrealistic details. But I’ve tried to see if I can keep it real and entertaining at the same time… More

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      Trump indictment is stress test for US democracy as Republicans rally round

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      Former US president Donald Trump’s stunning criminal charges have triggered a fierce counterattack from Republicans, putting America on a collision course between partisan politics and the rule of law ahead of a potentially explosive election.On Friday prosecutors unsealed a devastating 37-count indictment against Trump, accusing him of risking some of the country’s most sensitive security secrets after leaving the White House in 2021. He mishandled classified documents that included information about the secretive US nuclear programme and potential domestic vulnerabilities in the event of an attack, the indictment said.Trump is the first former president in US history to be charged with federal crimes. But he is also the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. This week’s indictment – and other cases against him – raise the prospect that he will spend the next 18 months hurtling between campaign rallies and court appearances. The convergence of the electoral and legal calendars could threaten America’s fragile democracy.Far from disowning a former president who played fast and loose with national security and the lives of Americans overseas, Republicans rallied around him with renewed zeal. They falsely asserted that Joe Biden was seeking to jail his political opponent. They stepped up efforts to turn the tables by accusing Biden of a bribery scandal without providing evidence. And they used incendiary language that evoked political violence.“We have now reached a war phase,” tweeted Andy Biggs, a Republican from Arizona who sits on the House of Representatives’ judiciary committee. “Eye for an eye.”Republican Congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana used what appeared to be military code words when he wrote on Twitter: “Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm. That is all.”The 49-page indictment unsealed by special counsel Jack Smith puts Trump in his gravest legal peril yet. He kept the documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and his golf club in New Jersey. Mar-a-Lago hosted tens of thousands of guests at more than 150 events during the time they were there, the indictment alleges.The indictment includes photos showing boxes of classified documents stacked on a ballroom stage, around a toilet in a club bathroom and in a storage room, where some of the contents, including a secret intelligence document, spilled on the floor.It also alleges that Trump discussed with lawyers the possibility of lying to government officials seeking to recover the documents and moved others around Mar-a-Lago estate to prevent them being found. It states that Trump asked one of his lawyers: “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”US District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, has been initially assigned to oversee the case. Trump is due to make a first appearance in the case in a Miami court on Tuesday, a day before his 77th birthday. Since he 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.The case does not bar Trump from campaigning or taking office if he were to win the election in November 2024. Legal experts say there would be no basis to block his swearing-in even if he were convicted and sent to prison. As president, Trump could potentially try to pardon himself, a legal move that would be controversial and unprecedented.Such possibilities pose the latest, perhaps the ultimate, stress test for American democracy after years in which Trump sought to undermine institutions, foreign powers meddled in elections, misinformation flooded the political discourse and many Republicans embraced anti-democratic lies and conspiracy theories.Trump proclaimed his innocence and attacked Smith on his Truth Social platform with typically crude language: “He is a Trump Hater – a deranged ‘psycho’ that shouldn’t be involved in any case having to do with ‘Justice.’”The Trump campaign, accusing the “Biden Justice Department” of abuse of power and attempted election interference, circulated comments from more than 50 Republican officials and conservative commentators backing the former president.Among them was the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who asserted that Biden had indicted “the leading candidate opposing him” – a baseless claim since the justice department operates independently of the White House. The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, who is challenging Trump for the Republican nomination, nevertheless condemned “the weaponization of federal law enforcement” and drew false equivalence with allegations against Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, and Biden’s son Hunter.Michael Steele, a former chairperson of the Republican National Committee, said “You’ve got his political opponents rallying to his defence. Why would Republican voters reject that? ‘OK, y’all think this is going out after Donald Trump? Then yeah, he is the guy.’ The thinking is to rally around Trump and then complain afterwards why is he still so popular among the base? You helped him stay popular! You gave the voters no reason to move on.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionConventional wisdom suggests that Trump’s deepening legal woes would hurt him in a presidential election against Biden. But Steele still expects it to be close. “You cannot underestimate the vitality of his base to not just turn out but to cause disruption. The Maga [Make America Great Again] base are now running things. They’re on election boards, they are part of the electoral apparatus, they are members of Congress“If this thing for whatever reason gets thrown to the House with Kevin McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Greene leading the charge? Nothing should be taken as oh, yeah, this’ll get a lot easier in the general election for Joe Biden. No the hell it won’t.”To that end, Republicans are working around the clock to weaken Biden. James Comer, chairperson of the House oversight committee, has been pushing allegations that, during Biden’s vice-presidency between 2009 and 2017, he was engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national. Comer is yet to provide evidence for abuses he claims “make Watergate look like jaywalking”.But when Trump announced his own indictment on Thursday night, Republicans were quick to blame “two-tier justice” and insinuate a politically motivated prosecution designed to deflect from Biden’s own supposed crimes. Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee tweeted: “The Biden DOJ buries investigations of President Biden and his family while it charges his political rivals. Making America look like a banana republic is incredibly irresponsible.”Their efforts targeting Biden and Hunter are likely to become even more aggressive as Trump sinks further into the legal mire: he is due to go on trial in New York next March in a state case stemming from a hush-money payment to an adult film star; he is under investigation by Smith over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election; he faces a separate criminal investigation into his bid to subvert democracy in Georgia that year.Kurt Bardella, who was a spokesperson and senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee from 2009 to 2013, commented: “We’ve seen already their willingness to use their congressional authority to try and muddy the waters and smear the Biden family. Despite the fact that there is to this day zero evidence that implicates President Biden in any way, shape or form, that doesn’t stop the Republicans from just going out there and making grandiose statements without any substance or proof.”There are additional forces threatening to tear at the legal, political and social fabric of the nation during an election that Trump has dubbed “the final battle”. YouTube recently announced that it will no longer remove content that promotes false claims about US elections. Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter and the rise of artificial intelligence pose further misinformation risks.Meanwhile, with more than 1,000 people having been charged in relation to the January 6 riot, a recent survey by the University of Chicago found that an estimated 12 million American adults, or 4.4% of the population, believe that violence is justified to restore Trump to the White House. There are more guns in the US than people and, as of late May, there had been more than 260 mass shootings this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive.Bardella, now a Democratic strategist, warned: “We know that Donald Trump’s supporters are capable of fomenting violence when they don’t get their way so I do think that America needs to prepare for the worst possible outcome, which is Donald Trump once again fomenting violence. That right there is the illustration of what happens when someone isn’t held accountable already. They’ll just do it again and again and again.”But Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, struck a more optimistic note. He said: “We’ve heard all this bluster from the Maga people, mainly from Trump in veiled ways or [Senator] Lindsey Graham: if you go after Trump, particularly during the election year, there’ll be this great uprising. Well, they predicted this great uprising when Trump was indicted in New York and I think five people showed up. It was an absolute fizzle. So I’m not really worried about these threats of a great Maga uprising.” More

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      Donald Trump uses his legal woes to plead for money from supporters – again

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      Federally indicted Donald Trump, newly charged with multiple counts over his mishandling of classified documents, is using his legal woes to plead for money – again.The sweeping 37-count felony indictment paints a damaging portrait of Trump’s treatment of sensitive documents, accusing him of defying justice department demands to return papers he had taken to his Florida home of Mar-a-Lago, and even storing some of them in a shower.But the indictment’s existence did not stop the Trump campaign pleading for money on the back of it.In a series of messages on Thursday night and Friday morning, Trump appealed to his supporters by declaring the indictment an attack by “the Deep State” on the “forgotten, hardworking men and women of this country”, and asking them to donate to his campaign.“Please make a contribution to peacefully DEFEND our movement from the never-ending witch hunts – and together, even during these darkest of times, we will prove that our movement is truly UNBREAKABLE,” said in one email Trump sent to supporters on Friday morning.The barrage of requests mirrors Trump’s fundraising strategy following his first indictment at the end of March, when a Manhattan court charged the former US president with falsifying business records over hush-money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in 2016.Trump, who is set to appear in a federal court in Miami on Tuesday, has maintained he is an “innocent man” though he could face prison if convicted.“Joe Biden’s Department of Justice has INDICTED me even though I did NOTHING wrong,” said another Friday morning email.The email ended with links asking supporters for donations of varying amounts, from $25 to $250, pooled by the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, the main fundraising arm of the ex-president’s 2024 campaign.Those links directed supporters to an online donation portal, which displays another message with more pleas for donations.“President Trump will NEVER SURRENDER our mission to save America. And he knows you won’t either!” reads part of the message online.It adds: “(But if you’re struggling – like far too many Americans are right now – please ignore the rest of this message, don’t contribute, and take care of your family and yourself.)”Yet another request immediately followed: “Please make a contribution to SAVE OUR COUNTRY – for 1,500% impact.”The Trump campaign raised $12m in the week following his first indictment, according to the New York Times. About a quarter of those who donated in the two weeks following it had never contributed to his campaign before, according to Politico.Special prosecutor Jack Smith, who led the documents investigation, is also heading a federal investigation into Trump’s role in the January 6 US Capitol attack.Trump is also facing charges in Georgia where prosecutors say they expect to reach a decision on the former president and his allies’ interference with the 2020 election results in the state.In a four-minute video emailed to supporters and posted to Truth Social, Trump repeatedly called the documents investigation a “boxes hoax” and “election interference” as he seeks the 2024 Republican nomination.Trump is the first former American president to be charged with a federal crime by the government he once oversaw.“I AM AN INNOCENT MAN. THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION IS TOTALLY CORRUPT. THIS IS ELECTION INTERFERENCE & A CONTINUATION OF THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME,” Trump said in the post on Thursday night.Trump also appears to be using the indictment to criticize the press.“During an unprecedented moment like this, most politicians would give their first spoken remarks to the Fake News Media. But not me. My loyalty lies with my fiercest defenders like YOU,” Trump wrote supporters.“Our country is going to hell, and they come after Donald Trump, weaponizing the justice department, weaponizing the FBI.”Calling other investigations against him, including two impeachments, as hoaxes.“I’m an innocent man. I did nothing wrong.” More

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      Donald Trump kept boxes with US nuclear program documents and foreign weapons details, indictment says – live

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      From 4h agoThe indictment reads that Trump stored in his boxes “information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack, and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack”.It goes on:
      The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.
      A lawyer for the Republican congressman and serial fabulist, George Santos, has said that the co-signers on a $500,000 bail package connected to Santos’ federal indictment are members of his family.In a letter to a New York judge, attorney Joseph Murray appealed an order this week to reveal the identities of three people who guaranteed Santos’ $500,000 bond on fraud charges.Murray wrote:
      Defendant has essentially publicly revealed that the suretors are family members and not lobbyists, donors or others seeking to exert influence over the defendant.
      At his arraignment in Long Island last month, Santos, 34, pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and making false statements.The New York Times sought the identification of Santos’s bail guarantors, arguing they should be identified as they had a chance to exert political influence over a congressman. Other news outlets joined the Times in its effort.In news not related to Donald Trump but involving one of his supporters, Markus Maly of Virginia received a six-year prison sentence for his role in the January 6 attack on Congress, federal prosecutors announced Friday.A grand jury had previously found Maly, 49, guilty of interfering with police during a civil disorder, resisting or impeding officers using a dangerous weapon as well as entering and remaining in a restricted building while armed, among other charges, prosecutors said.Authorities established that Maly joined a mob of Trump supporters who rioted at the Capitol on the day Congress convened to certify the former president’s defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.He was convicted of spraying a chemical irritant at a line of police officers who were defending the Capitol’s lower west terrace. In addition to serving time in prison, Maly must also spend three years under supervision after his release, prosecutors said.His co-defendants Jeffrey Scott Brown and Peter Schwartz were also found guilty of roles in the case. Schwartz later received a 14-year prison sentence. And Brown was given a prison sentence of four years.Maly raised more than $16,000 in funds for his defense from an online campaign that described him as a January 6 prisoner of war, the Associated Press had reported earlier. Prosecutors sought to take that money back in the form of a fine, arguing that Maly had a public defender and did not owe any legal fees.But neither court records nor prosecutors’ announcement about Maly’s sentence mentioned a fine for him as part of his sentence.Maly is among more than 1,000 people to be charged in connection with the January 6 attack, according to prosecutors. Numerous defendants have been convicted and sentenced to prison.Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, the two top Democrats in the Congress, have released a joint statement calling for the indictment to “play out through the legal process, without any outside political or ideological interference”.The statement reads:
      No one is above the law – including Donald Trump.
      It goes on to say:
      We encourage Mr Trump’s supporters and critics alike to let this case proceed peacefully in court.
      The US secret service is preparing for Donald Trump’s appearance at a federal court in Miami on Tuesday, but the agency “will not seek any special accommodations outside of what would be required to ensure the former Presidents continued safety”, according to spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi.A statement by Guglielmi reads:
      As with any site visited by a protectee, the Secret Service is in constant coordination with the necessary entities to ensure protective requirements are met,
      He added:
      We have the utmost confidence in the professionalism and commitment to security shared by our law enforcement partners in Florida.
      Trump is expected to surrender himself to authorities in Miami on Tuesday at 3pm ET.Donald Trump took classified documents including information on nuclear weapons in the US and secret plans to attack a foreign country, according to a 49-page federal indictment unsealed Friday afternoon.The former US president, alongside a military valet, now faces a sweeping 37-count felony indictment related to the mishandling of classified documents.Here are five of the most shocking revelations in the indictment, according to my colleague Maya Yang.We have a clip of the statement by Jack Smith, the US justice department special counsel who filed charges against Donald Trump.In a short address earlier today, Smith said his team would seek “a speedy trial” after the department unsealed a 37-count indictment against the former president.Donald Trump ally, Republican Arizona representative Andy Biggs responded to Trump’s indictment from the justice department by saying that “we have no reached a war phase.”Biggs, who previously spoke out against Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg over Trump’s indictment in March, went on to add:
      Eye for an eye.
      John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, has reacted to his former boss’s indictment, calling for his immediate withdrawal as a presidential candidate.With Donald Trump being the first US president to be federally indicted, what will come next? Will he go to prison? What are other Republicans, including his presidential contenders such as Florida governor Ron DeSantis, saying?The Guardian’s David Smith reports:It is often tempting to hype every Trump drama out of proportion and then lose sight of when something genuinely monumental has happened. Thursday night’s action by the justice department was genuinely monumental.First, it raises the question: what was Trump doing with government secrets? It was reported last month that prosecutors obtained an audio recording in which Trump talks about holding on to a classified Pentagon document related to a potential attack on Iran.Second, Trump could soon join a notorious club that includes Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac of France and Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak of South Korea. All have been prosecuted and convicted of corruption in the past 15 years.It’s Trump’s latest stress test for American democracy: can the state hold a former president accountable and apply the rule of law? There was a near miss for Richard Nixon, who could have faced federal charges over Watergate but was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.The White House knows it cannot afford to put a foot wrong. Joe Biden tries to avoid commenting on Trump’s myriad legal troubles. The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has also kept them at arm’s length by appointing Jack Smith as special counsel. It is Smith who investigated the Mar-a-Lago documents case.Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, says: “I don’t think he’s an overreaching prosecutor. He’s very rigorous and vigorous and independent and that’s what you want here and that’s what’s needed. I don’t think Merrick Garland had anything to do with it except appointing him.”For the full story, click here:Here are some of the images coming out Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort where he has been accused of possessing classified documents: More

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      Indictment charging Trump with mishandling classified documents unsealed

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      Donald Trump twice disclosed national security information in separate incidents in 2021 and took steps to retain classified documents that he knew he could not keep because they had been subpoenaed by the justice department, according to a sprawling 38-count indictment unsealed Thursday.The charging papers also revealed Trump hoarded materials of the highest sensitivity after he left the White House, including documents on US nuclear programs, potential military vulnerabilities of the US and allies, and plans for US retaliation in the event of an attack.The special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the Mar-a-Lago documents case, said in a brief remarks Friday that his office intended to seek “a speedy trial” against Trump, adding that was “consistent with the public interest”. However, Smith did not say exactly when a trial may be possible.The unsealed indictment named the former president’s valet, Walt Nauta, as a co-defendant, alleging that he entered into a conspiracy with Trump to obstruct justice, withheld documents or records, corruptly concealed documents in a federal investigation, engaged in a scheme to conceal and made false statements.“The purpose of the conspiracy was for Trump to keep classified documents he has taken with him from the White House and to hide and conceal them from a federal grand jury,” the indictment said.Federal prosecutors presented evidence that Trump shared materials concerning a US “plan of attack” against Iran at a July 2021 meeting at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey, where he was recorded urging his guests to read the document while admitting it was “secret” and not declassified.The second incident in the indictment occurred months later in August or September 2021 when Trump shared a top secret military map with a staffer at his political action committee, but he admitted he should not be showing the map because it was classified and the staffer should not get too close.Both meetings appeared to demonstrate that Trump knew not only the contents of the documents were related to national defense information, as described in the statute Trump was charged under, and that he knew he was disseminating their contents to people unauthorized to see them.The manner in which the material was stored – stuffed in boxes piled up in various locations around Mar-a-Lago including the ballroom, a toilet and the storage room – meant that Trump employees without security clearances were also inadvertently exposed to classified information.In December 2021, the valet Nauta found that several boxes had toppled over and their contents – including a document marked “SECRET/REL TO USA, FVEY”. The markings indicate the document was releasable only to the Five Eyes intelligence alliance that includes the UK.Nauta texted another Trump employee: “I opened the door and found this…” and sent two photos of the spill. One of the photos showed classified information. The employee replied: “Oh no oh no” and “I’m sorry potus had my phone,” using the acronym for the former president.Prosecutors also presented detailed evidence that Trump moved to obstruct the criminal investigation by concealing classified documents from an attorney identified as his then-lawyer Evan Corcoran after the justice department issued a subpoena last May demanding their return.The indictment described how days after receiving the subpoena in late May 2022, Corcoran and another lawyer told Trump they needed to search Mar-a-Lago for any documents sought by the subpoena. But, according to the indictment, Trump was resistant.Trump asked Corcoran something to the effect of “What happens if we just don’t respond at all?” and “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”, according to Corcoran’s notes that prosecutors obtained during the investigation.Ordinarily off limits to prosecutors, the notes ended up before the grand jury in Washington hearing evidence in the case after a US appeals court pierced the attorney-client privilege Trump would otherwise have and ordered Corcoran to turn over his notes. The Guardian has previously revealed some of its contents.Corcoran then told Trump that he would return on 2 June 2022 to look in the Mar-a-Lago storage room for documents. In the intervening period, the indictment said, Trump instructed Nauta to remove boxes containing classified documents from where Corcoran intended to search.On 1 June 2022, Trump spoke with Corcoran and asked whether he was still coming to the property. The next morning, Trump spoke with Nauta for 24 seconds. Hours later, Nauta and another Trump employee moved 64 boxes from the storage room to Trump’s residence and returned only 30 boxes.Later that afternoon, after Nauta had put back some of the boxes, Nauta took Corcoran down to the storage room where he found 38 classified documents. After he finished his search, Trump is said to have asked Corcoran: “Did you find anything?… Is it bad? Good?”Corcoran recounted in his notes that Trump also made a “funny motion” when they were discussing whether Corcoran should take the 38 documents back with him to his hotel. As Corcoran described it, Trump seemed to indicate he should “pluck” any documents that were “bad”, without saying it explicitly.Criminal charges in the Mar-a-Lago documents case deepen the legal peril for Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, after he was indicted earlier this year on state charges in New York.Trump is expected to surrender himself to authorities in Miami – about 70 miles from Mar-a-Lago – on Tuesday at 3pm. Still, he remains a dominant force in the Republican party, easily holding off a wide field of challengers for the party’s nomination to go up against Joe Biden in a battle for the White House next year. More

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      Trump’s latest indictment: what do the charges mean and what’s next?

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      Donald Trump has been indicted for illegally retaining classified government documents after leaving office in 2021.What happens next and what do the charges mean for the former president and the 2024 election campaign?What is Trump accused of doing?Trump is being charged with 37 criminal counts, including mishandling classified documents and obstruction of justice, according to an indictment unsealed on Friday afternoon.He had proclaimed his innocence on Thursday evening.According to the indictment, Trump stored classified documents in “a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room” at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.It also added that Trump directed Walt Nauta, his valet and aide, to deliberately move boxes of records to “conceal them from Trump’s attorney, the FBI, and the grand jury”. Nauta also faces a count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, said the indictment.In January 2022, Trump agreed to return 15 boxes of records to the US National Archives and Records Administration, and officials discovered in them more than 700 pages of records marked as classified.In August last year, the FBI conducted a search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, and seized approximately 13,000 more records, about 100 of which were marked as classified, including some marked top secret.What charges does Trump face?The most serious charge is being brought under the Espionage Act, which criminalizes the unauthorized possession of national defense information. It is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.The first world war-era law predates classification of documents but makes it a crime to willfully retain national defense information that could be useful to foreign adversaries.According to the indictment, documents possessed by Trump “included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack, and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack”.Trump is also charged with several counts of obstruction of justice, which criminalizes any “intent to impede, obstruct, or influence” an investigation and is also charged with making false statements to investigators.“The purpose of the conspiracy was for Trump to keep classified documents he has taken with him from the White House and to hide and conceal them from a federal grand jury,” the indictment said.What happens next?Trump said he had been summoned to appear in court on Tuesday afternoon in Miami. It was not immediately clear what the procedure would look like. When he was charged by the Manhattan district attorney in the New York Stormy Daniels case (a state case rather than federal), Trump surrendered to authorities, where he was booked behind closed doors and appeared in the courtroom, sitting with his lawyers at the defense table.In the Mar-a-Lago case, Trump is likely to surrender himself to the FBI, which has a field office in Miami some distance from the federal court. Normally, a defendant would be fingerprinted by prosecutors and have a mugshot taken. It is not known yet if Trump will have his picture taken and whether he will be processed in the FBI office or at the courthouse, before appearing before a judge to formally hear the charges against him read for the first time. He is expected to plead not guilty. After that arraignment, he would probably be released pending his next court appearance.Does an indictment prevent a candidate from campaigning or taking office?None of the charges expected to be unsealed would bar Trump from office if he became the Republican party nominee and then won the presidency at the 2024 election, even if convicted.A trial would take place many months from now, and Trump can freely campaign during this time. The US constitution only requires that presidential candidates be natural-born US citizens who are at least 35 years old and have lived in the country for 14 years.Trump said on Thursday on his Truth Social platform that he is innocent. He would be free to campaign even if he is convicted and sent to prison, and legal experts say there would be no basis to block his swearing-in as president even if he is incarcerated, though this would pose extraordinary logistical and security questions.What would happen if Trump took office while the Mar-a-Lago case is pending?It is unlikely that the prosecution would proceed if Trump won the November 2024 election.The US Department of Justice is part of the executive branch, and presidents are the top federal law enforcement officers in the country. Federal prosecutors generally serve at their pleasure. The justice department has a decades-old policy that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted. The department can deviate from policy in “extraordinary circumstances” with the approval of the US attorney general.Could Joe Biden pardon Trump?Yes.Could Trump, as president, pardon himself?Maybe. Many scholars have said a self-pardon would be unconstitutional because it violates the basic principle that nobody should be the judge in his or her own case. Others have argued that a self-pardon is constitutional because the pardon power is very broadly worded in the constitution. However, Trump could not pardon himself for a conviction in state court. He is currently under indictment in New York state court for allegedly using falsified records to conceal hush-money payments he paid to Stormy Daniels, and Georgia prosecutors are investigating his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in that state.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Trump expected to surrender to Miami authorities on Tuesday after indictment

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      Donald Trump is preparing for his second arraignment in two months after learning he would face seven federal charges in connection to his mishandling of classified documents.The former US president and current 2024 candidate is expected to surrender himself to authorities in Miami on Tuesday at 3pm ET, although the exact charges he will face are still unclear, as the seven-count indictment remains under seal. On Fox News Digital on Thursday night, he said he would plead not guilty.It also emerged that Trump’s valet and aide Walt Nauta was indicted alongside him. Nauta is a former military valet who worked for Trump at the White House before accompanying him to a job at his Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago after Trump left office.In a typically punchy social media post Trump said: “They are trying to destroy his life, like the lives of so many others, hoping that he will say bad things about Trump.”After news of the indictment broke, Trump’s allies rallied to his defense as the US braced for the unprecedented spectacle of a former president forced to defend himself against federal criminal charges.The development comes just two months after Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records in an unrelated case over hush-money payments during the 2016 election.The charges filed by the office of special counsel Jack Smith in federal district court in Miami include the willful retention of national defense information, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, false statements and concealment under title 18 of the US criminal code, according to a person familiar with the matter.Smith, appointed by the attorney general, Merrick Garland, has been investigating for more than a year whether Trump knowingly retained classified information at his Mar-a-Lago resort and attempted to conceal those documents from the justice department after authorities issued a subpoena for their return.Trump himself confirmed the indictment in a Thursday evening post on his social media platform Truth Social, writing: “This is indeed a DARK DAY for the United States of America.”In a video posted to the platform shortly afterwards, Trump denied any culpability and lashed out against his political rivals. “I am an innocent man,” Trump said in the video. “I did nothing wrong.”Meanwhile, two lawyers representing Trump, Jim Trusty and John Rowley, said they had quit working for him. In a joint statement the pair said they had “tendered our resignations as counsel to President Trump, and we will no longer represent him on either the indicted case or the January 6 investigation”.They added: “It has been an honor to have spent the last year defending him, and we know he will be vindicated in his battle against the Biden administration’s partisan weaponization of the American justice system.”Though the exact nature of the charges remained unclear, Trump’s Republican allies on Capitol Hill quickly rallied to his defense, attacking the investigation as a case of political persecution. Many Republicans raced to note that Joe Biden is also under investigation by a special counsel over the alleged mishandling of classified papers, but they neglected to mention that Trump, unlike Biden, received a subpoena for classified documents amid concerns that he had willfully withheld some materials from federal authorities.“Today is indeed a dark day for the United States of America,” Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker, said on Twitter on Thursday evening. “I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”Trump’s most competitive rival for the Republican ticket, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, also denounced the justice department’s actions.“The weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society,” he said on Twitter. “We have for years witnessed an uneven application of the law depending upon political affiliation. Why so zealous in pursuing Trump yet so passive about Hillary or Hunter?”But Democrats viewed the news as confirmation that authorities were again seeking to hold Trump accountable for his illegal conduct.“Trump’s apparent indictment on multiple charges arising from his retention of classified materials is another affirmation of the rule of law,” Congressman Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, said on Twitter. “For four years, he acted like he was above the law. But he should be treated like any other lawbreaker. And today, he has been.”Later on Friday morning, it emerged that a federal judge appointed by Trump, who last year drew scrutiny for a ruling that was seen as deferential to the former president, may oversee proceedings in the case over his possession of classified documents, a source familiar with the summons told the Guardian.The US district judge Aileen Cannon has been listed on the summons sent to Trump’s lawyers, the source said. The Florida-based jurist last year granted a request from Trump’s attorneys to appoint a special master to review the records federal agents seized from Mar-a-Lago that August, sparking uproar and disapproval among some legal experts.The special master review delayed the justice department’s investigation into the materials and how they ended up at Trump’s south Florida property, but in December, Cannon’s decision was overturned by the unanimous decision of a federal appeals court.Meanwhile, on Friday morning CNN revealed a transcript it had obtained of an audio tape in which Trump admits he had not declassified a military document about Iran he had retained. The existence of the tape in which he boasts about retaining the document emerged last month.“As president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t,” Trump says, according to the transcript reported by CNN. The transcript offers further detail about the tape recording the former president talking at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club in July 2021 about his retention of national security papers. Federal prosecutors have the tape.The latest indictment means Trump will face charges in at least two jurisdictions as he seeks to return to the White House next year. Trump continues to lead in polls of the Republican primary field, even after he was indicted in the hush-money case earlier this year.As of now, there is no sign that Republican primary voters are prepared to abandon Trump en masse, despite his many legal liabilities. The country will soon find out if the threat of a federal conviction is enough to rob Trump of his status as the frontrunner in the Republican primary. More