A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted former President Donald Trump for handling hundreds of classified documents seized from his estate in Florida.. The indictment is the first time in history that a former US president has faced federal charges.
Trump has been charged with seven counts, according to a person briefed on the case. The charges related to the classified documents recovered at Mar-a-Lago come just over two months after Trump was first indicted in New York by a grand jury on 34 counts of tampering with business documents.
Here’s what we know about Trump’s second indictment as a former president:
What’s in the documents?
More than 300 classified documents – found in several boxes at Trump’s Florida compound – were recovered in June 2022 under subpoena and during an FBI search in August 2022, more than a year after Trump left. .
The indictment comes nearly five months after Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith was enlisted to investigate Trump’s potential mishandling of classified documents.
Although we don’t know the precise contents of the documents, the classified documents seized at Mar-a-Lago bore labels suggesting they contained some of the country’s best-kept secrets related to national defense matters.
What did Trump say?
Trump announced his indictment on Truth Social and immediately protested his innocence in the case, calling it the “Boxes Hoax.”
“The corrupt Biden administration has notified my attorneys that I have been charged,” Trump wrote in a statement. “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!”
Trump also criticized President Joe Biden in the recovery of classified documents from Biden’s home, which is the subject of a separate Justice Department investigation.
In a video posted to Truth Social, Trump claimed without evidence that the indictment was tied to his status as the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
“This is election interference at the highest level,” Trump said. “There was never anything like this that happened.”
What did the Department of Justice say?
As Trump and his attorneys weighed in on Thursday’s indictment regarding his handling of classified documents, the Justice Department remained silent.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment Thursday night to USA TODAY on Trump’s indictment announcement.
When will Trump appear in court?
Trump announced on Truth Social that he was ordered to appear in Miami federal court at 3 p.m. Tuesday.
Jim Trusty, an attorney representing Trump in the classified documents case, said in a CNN interview that Trump’s court appearance on Tuesday “should be a pretty routine hearing.”
“We need to have conversations with the DOJ to see if they’ll be within reasonable distance on things like release conditions and scheduling,” Trusty said, adding there won’t be any discussion. arrest when Trump appears in court.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What we know about Donald Trump’s indictment by a federal grand jury