The Most Shocking Allegations From Trump’s Damning Indictment
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The Justice Department unsealed its indictment against Donald Trump on Friday, revealing its allegations against the former president related to the classified documents he stored at Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House. The 49-page indictment — which you can read here in its entirety — is damning, alleging that Trump took documents he knew were classified to Mar-a-Lago, stored them in unsecure locations and showed them to people without clearance to see them, and then, when authorities tried to retrieve them, conspired to lie about what he possessed and even have the material destroyed.
Here are the most shocking allegations from the indictment:
Trump has been charged with 37 counts
Trump, along with aide Walt Nauta, has been indicted on a total of 37 federal felony counts related to the investigation. Thirty-one of those counts relate directly to “willful retention of national defense information.”
Other counts include conspiracy to obstruct justice, corruptly concealing a record or document, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheme to conceal, false statements and representations. .
Trump suggested lying about and even destroying the documents
The indictment alleges that after the FBI opened an investigation into Trump’s document hoarding, the former president suggested that his “attorney hide or destroy documents called for by the grand jury subpoena.”
After Trump was subpoenaed, he reportedly told his lawyers in a discussion of the required search that he didn’t really “want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t, I don’t want you looking through my boxes.”
“We, what happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?” Trump added. “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”
The former president went so far as to suggest that it would be better if there simply “are no documents” at all.
The documents Trump lifted included nuclear secrets, battle plans, and intel on terrorists
As alleged in the indictment, Trump’s boxes of purloined documents “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.”
The indictment includes a list of secret documents that Trump is alleged to have “without authorization, retained at The Mar-a-Lago Club.”
They include a “TOP SECRET … Document dated June 2020 concerning the nuclear capabilities of a foreign country” and a “SECRET.. Undated document concerning nuclear weaponry of the United States.”
A separate “SECRET” document dated from Dec. 2019 concerned “foreign country support of terrorist acts against United States interests”
Trump kept top secret docs in an unsecured ballroom at Mar-a-Lago … and in a bathroom
The indictment alleges that upon leaving office, “Trump caused his boxes, containing hundreds of classified documents, to be transported from the White House to The Mar-a-Lago Club.”
Trump’s disregard for the sensitivity of the documents, as alleged in the indictment, is jaw dropping. He allegedly left his boxes piled in an unsecured event space at his club. From January to mid March of 2021, the indictment states, a number of “TRUMP’s boxes were stored in The Mar a Lago Club’s White and Gold Ballroom, in which events and gatherings took place. TRUMP’s boxes were for a time stacked on the ballroom stage.”
He also kept boxes of documents stacked in a bathroom, right next to the toilet.
Trump showed and discussed classified materials to members of his staff and third parties who lacked security clearance
In July 2021, months after his departure from office, Trump met with “a writer and a publisher in connection with a then-forthcoming book.” Two members of Trump’s staff also attended the meeting. In a recording of the conversation, the existence of which was reported last week by CNN, Trump discussed a classified document he had retained from his time in office.
“It is like, highly confidential,” Trump told those present, “Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this.”
“See as president I could have declassified it … Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.” he added, contradicting claims he made about having declassified the documents he kept.
“Now we have a problem,” a staffer responded.
In a separate incident just weeks later, the indictment alleges, “TRUMP showed a representative of his political action committee” who also did not have the proper clearance, “a classified map related to a military operation.”
Trump allegedly knew that the interaction was improper, admitting to his PAC pal “that he should not be showing” the map, and instructing “that the representative should not get too close.”