The ex-president made clear he’s gonna fight the charges on political grounds.
Smith’s indictment suggests Trump personally directed aides to stash highly classified documents in cardboard storage boxes that he ordered shipped to Mar-a-Lago as his presidency expired. When the National Archives and Justice Department attempted to retrieve them, the Justice Department says, Trump ordered a valet to relocate dozens of boxes so they wouldn’t be found.
The indictment includes 31 charges for “willful retention” of classified documents, many of them described as military secrets of foreign governments, including allies. Six of the charges against Trump and his body man, Walt Nauta, were also for obstructing the grand jury investigation. Trump made no secret of his plan to portray the prosecution against him — brought by special counsel Jack Smith — as secretly engineered by President Joe Biden, though the White House and the Department of Justice have gone to great lengths to keep a wall between them on the matter.
Smith on Friday delivered his first public statement since taking over the investigation in November, saying “laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States and they must be enforced.Trump previewed some of his legal defenses as well, citing Bill Clinton’s decision to keep tapes from a journalists’ interview in his home rather than turn them over to the National Archives.
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