Trump faces new charges in Florida classified documents case
July 28, 2023
US prosecutors charged Donald Trump with willfully retaining classified records, court filings showed on Thursday, adding to the 37 criminal counts Trump already faces in the case.
The grand jury led by Special Counsel Jack Smith was in session in federal court in Washington on Thursday.
Smith filed three new counts against Trump, one for willfully retaining defense information and two for obstruction.
The indictment said that Trump and two employees "did corruptly alter, destroy, mutilate, and conceal" documents located at Mar-a-Lago with the intention to "impair" their use in any official proceeding.
What are the new charges?
The new charges center around a 2021 interview Trump gave for a memoir in which he discussed a "plan of attack" against another country. The information here was based on a classified document, which the indictment says Trump later returned in 2022.
The book's author, Trump's former chief of staff Mark Meadows, identified the country as Iran in a subsequent book.
The new charge could indicate a new angle of attack from prosecutors. It accuses Trump of retaining a document it alleges the former president knew was highly sensitive after leaving office — until now similar charges have centered around Trump failing to return classified documents when asked.
Meanwhile, an employee at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort has also been charged with arranging the deletion of security camera footage. Investigators had subpoenaed the footage on noticing the cameras during an inspection at the Florida resort.
According to the indictment, the employee then asked to arrange for deletion of the footage, saying to a colleague that the "boss" wanted it removed.
He has been charged with obstruction and false statements during a voluntary interview he gave to the FBI earlier in the year.
The footage is alleged to show another Trump employee who also faces charges moving boxes of documents to and from a storage room to coincide with FBI searches of the premises.
The indictment did not identify the fourth employee asked to delete the footage.
Trump had already hinted at more charges
Trump had already indicated earlier that new charges were likely in the offing, saying that his lawyers had met with Justice Department officials investigating his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden.
A Trump campaign spokesperson called the ongoing investigations "nothing more than a desperate and flailing attempt by Biden family and DOJ."
Trump is campaigning to secure the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Both Trump and the employee already charged prior to Thursday's new suspect have pleaded not guilty, with a trial date currently set for May 2024.
That would be at the height of the 2024 presidential campaign, with most bookmakers currently deeming Trump the front runner for the Republican nomination.
Legally, most experts concur that nothing in the US constitution would preclude an individual with criminal convictions from becoming president, though it would also be unprecedented.
msh/sri (AP, Reuters)