Miles J. Herszenhorn
A federal grand jury indicted former President Donald Trump Thursday on charges related to his handling of hundreds of classified documents that were seized from his Florida estate. The indictment is the first time in history a former U.S. president has faced federal charges.
Trump was indicted on seven counts, according to a person who has been briefed on the case. The charges related to the classified documents recovered at Mar-a-Lago come just over two months after Trump’s first indictment in New York by a grand jury on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Here is what we know about Trump’s second indictment as a former president:
What is in the documents?
More than 300 classified documents — found in several boxes at Trump’s Florida resort — were recovered in June 2022 under subpoena and during a search by the FBI in August 2022, more than a year after Trump departed office.
The indictment comes nearly five months after Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith was enlisted to investigate Trump’s potential mishandling of classified documents.
While we don’t know the specific contents of the documents, the classified materials seized from Mar-a-Lago had labels suggesting that they contained some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets and related to matters of national defense.
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 informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted,” Trump wrote in a statement. “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!”
Trump also criticized President Joe Biden in the recovery of classified documents at Biden’s homes, which is the subject of a separate investigation by the Justice Department.
In a video posted on Truth Social, Trump claimed without evidence that the indictment was related to his status as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
“It’s election interference at the highest level,” Trump said. “There’s never been anything like what’s happened.”
What did the Justice Department say?
While Trump and his attorneys have spoken out about the Thursday indictment related to his handling of classified documents, the Department of Justice has remained silent.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment Thursday evening to USA TODAY on Trump’s announcement about his indictment.
When will Trump appear in court?
Trump announced on Truth Social that he was ordered to appear in federal court in Miami at 3 p.m. on Tuesday.
Jim Trusty, an attorney representing Trump in the classified documents case, said during an interview on CNN that Trump’s appearance in court on Tuesday “should be a fairly routine hearing.”
“We have to have some conversations with DOJ to see if they’ll be remotely reasonable about things like conditions of release and setting a timetable,” Trusty said, adding that there will be no arrest when Trump appears in court.
