Matt Tait
A picture from the indictment, showing boxes of classified documents recovered by the FBI from a bathroom at Mar-a-lago.
Donald Trump has been indicted for a second time, but for the first time by the Department of Justice on federal offenses, with charges relating to his mishandling of classified documents, and his subsequent attempts to cover-up that fact from government investigators and the Grand Jury.
The indictment itself is available to read here.
Trump’s valet Waltine (“Walt”) Nauta is also indicted too, presumably with a view to persuading him to cooperate as a witness against Mr. Trump.
Note that this indictment only covers alleged crimes that happened within the jurisdiction of the Southern District of Florida (in other words, at Mar-a-lago). The Office of Special Counsel may bring additional charges in D.C. or in New Jersey (for the Bedminster search) if it believes there are prosecutable crimes committed in those jurisdictions. It can also add or remove additional charges in Florida at a later date too via superseding indictments.
Like all indictments, this indictment includes some mandatory redactions (names of countries and individuals not charged), as well as listing 31 specific classified documents obliquely. We can do a bit of digging to de-anonymize or reasonably guess the contents of some of those.
The Charges
31 counts of Wilful Retention of National Defense Information — 18 USC 793(e)
Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice — 18 USC 1512(k)
Withholding a Document or Record — 18 USC 1512 (b)(2)(A), and abetting
Corrupting concealing a Document or Record — 18 USC 1512[c](1), and abetting
Concealing a Document in a Federal Investigation — 18 USC 1519, and abetting
Scheme to Conceal — 18 USC 1001(a)(1), and abetting
False Statements and Representations — 18 USC 1001(a)(2), and abetting
The first group (wilful retention) relate to the actual holding and retention of specific classified documents. The final group of charges all relate to Trump’s conspiracy to hide them from government investigators and the Grand Jury during the investigation generally.
The Documents (Overview)
The indictment first covers classified documents retrieved by the National Archives (NARA), and which are not the basis of these charges. These are:
15 boxes provided by Trump to NARA in January 2022. These contained 197 classified documents: 98 at SECRET; 30 at TOP SECRET; the remainder at Confidential. Some additionally had Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) and Special Access Program (SAP) markings.
During the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago Club, a further 102 documents, recovered from Trump’s office and a storage room. These included 17 documents at TOP SECRET; 54 at SECRET; 31 at CONFIDENTIAL. Of these, Trump’s office held 6 at TOP SECRET; 18 at SECRET; and 3 at CONFIDENTIAL.
The indictment does not seek to charge possession of all of these documents. Only 31 documents are specifically mentioned for the purposes of the charges; one charge per document—to allow the government to take or withdraw each document in the trial separately. The case will therefore center on these documents and not the others.
The named documents are not provided in full, but are described in the indictment. They are:
For those with screen readers the text is given below:
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