Donald Trump Charged with Violating the Espionage Act in Historic Federal Indictment
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The Justice Department's investigation into how Trump handled classified documents after his presidential term resulted in unprecedented federal criminal charges on Thursday
Former President Donald Trump has been indicted in special counsel Jack Smith's classified documents probe, according to multiple reports.
Trump took to his social media site on Thursday to announce the indictment, lobbing accusations at the Biden administration.
"The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoard, even though Joe Biden has 1850 Boxes at the University of Delaware," Trump wrote on Truth Social, chalking the criminal charges up to a sabotage attempt by President Biden, who has kept a distance from the Department of Justice's investigations into Trump for that very reason.
The DOJ has not yet weighed in on the reported charges.
The federal indictment contains at least seven counts, including willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements and conspiring to obstruct justice, according to The New York Times.
He is set to be arraigned in federal court in Miami on Tuesday, according to ABC News.
Outlets including The Independent report that Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, provided evidence to the grand jury and will plead guilty to federal charges as part of a limited-immunity deal in exchange for his testimony — though Meadows' lawyer denied to The Independent that his client had agreed to any guilty pleas.
News of the indictment comes after prosecutors investigating the case reportedly accessed a July 2021 recording of the former president acknowledging that he retained a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran.
In early June 2023, CNN reported that the recording, which was made roughly six months after Trump left the White House, captures the former president suggesting he would like to share the information found in the classified documents but is aware that his ability to declassify records after leaving the White House is limited.
While it's unclear what sort of evidence Meadows would have provided to the grand jury, it's worth noting that he wrote about the existence of a "four-page report" that contained information about "a plan to attack Iran" in his own autobiography.
Trump was previously indicted by a Manhattan grand jury in March 2023 for allegedly paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels while he was a presidential candidate in 2016.
With that initial indictment, Trump became the first sitting or former president in U.S. history to face criminal charges.
In May, Trump was also found liable for sexually abusing and defaming former Elle advice columnist E. Jean Carroll following a highly publicized civil trial in Manhattan.
Related: Trump Suspected of Violating Espionage Act, According to Mar-a-Lago Search Warrant
The latest charges against Trump, which could provoke turmoil in the U.S. given his status as a 2024 presidential candidate, come 10 months after news of alleged mishandling of sensitive White House records first broke in 2022.
The FBI conducted a search at the former president's Mar-a-Lago home on Aug. 8 as part of a criminal investigation that began after the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) revealed in February that officials had removed from the property 15 boxes of documents that should have been handed over at the end of the Trump presidency.
"As required by the Presidential Records Act (PRA), these records should have been transferred to NARA from the White House at the end of the Trump Administration in January 2021," the agency said in a statement, which also indicated that the former president's team said they would continue searching for additional material that legally belonged to the agency.
Related: Trump Lawyer Told DOJ No Classified Docs Were at Mar-a-Lago Before FBI Search: Reports
Around that time, NARA asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether Trump violated the Presidential Records Act, The Washington Post reported, and later informed DOJ officials that some of the retrieved documents contained classified material.
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Investigators visited Mar-a-Lago in early June of 2022 and removed additional material marked classified, The New York Times reported. Around that time, a Trump attorney signed a written statement to confirm that all material marked as classified had been returned, according to the Times.
But during the Aug. 8 search, FBI agents found and removed 11 sets of classified documents, an unsealed receipt from the search showed. Some of the documents were marked top secret and were only meant to be viewed at secure government facilities.
Related: Trump's Attorney Says He and His Family Watched the FBI Search in New York via Security Feed
After news of the search broke, The Washington Post reported that the investigators were looking for documents related to nuclear weapons.
The warrant, which was also unsealed Aug. 12, revealed that the FBI was investigating Trump for potential violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and criminal handling of government records.
The New York Times reported last September that the former president was warned about his handling of secret materials back in 2021 by a former White House attorney, but Trump has repeatedly claimed that any documents stored at Mar-a-Lago had been declassified by him.
It's unclear, however, if he undertook any formal process to declassify them. The claim has also been refuted by more than a dozen former Trump administration officials.
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