Snejana Farberov | New York Post
The historic federal indictment of Donald Trump on seven charges related to the mishandling of government documents has raised many questions about the legal repercussions for the embattled former president as he tries to regain the White House.
The Post looks at the case against the 76-year-old and what happens now.
An indictment is a formal charge of a serious crime. When a person is indicted, they are given a formal notice signaling that a grand jury — an impartial group of 23 citizens — believe that they had committed an offense. Trump announced the news of his indictment Thursday night, after federal prosecutors informed his lawyers of the charges.
The Justice Department has yet to release the seven-count indictment, but ABC News, citing sources familiar with the matter, reported the charges include willful retention of national defense information; conspiracy to obstruct justice; withholding a document or record; corruptly concealing a document or record; concealing a document in a federal investigation; scheme to conceal; and false statements and representations.
Officials with the National Archives and Records Administration contacted Trump’s representatives in the spring of 2021 when they realized that important material from his time in office was missing from their collection.
A Trump flack told the Archives in December 2021 that records responsive to their request had been found at his Mar-a-Lago estate. In January 2022, the National Archives collected 15 boxes of documents, including “classified national security information”, from the Palm Beach home.
That May, the FBI and the DOJ issued a subpoena for all remaining classified records in Trump’s possession, 38 of which were picked up on June 3. According to CNN, officials who arrived at Mar-a-Lago were shown a basement storage room where additional boxes containing White House documents and other materials were kept.
On Aug. 8, FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago in accordance with a warrant approved three days earlier by US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart. Investigators retrieved thousands of documents, about 100 of which had classification markings.
They’re not supposed to, but they do. Under the post-Watergate Presidential Records Act, any records handled by the president or vice president as part of their official duties revert to the federal government in the form of the National Archives upon the conclusion of each administration.
However, Archives COO William Bosanko told lawmakers in March that every presidential administration covered by the act has stored “classified information in unclassified boxes.” Bosanko explained that sensitive records become easily lost or mingled with regular documents because the White House treats its various offices as “open storage,” to which multiple individuals have access and the ability to move papers in and out.
An aggravating factor appears to be the former president’s reluctance to cooperate with the National Archives, the FBI and DOJ.
Two weeks after the Aug. 8 search, the New York Times reported that Trump had resisted requests to return boxes of documents from his presidency, saying the material was “mine.”
More worryingly for Trump from a legal perspective, the former president’s attorneys handed over a letter to federal investigators June 3, 2022 avowing that a “diligent search was conducted of the boxes” taken to Mar-a-Lago from the White House as Trump departed office and that “any and all responsive documents accompany this certification.”
The letter was signed by Christina Bobb, the designated custodian of Trump’s records. Bobb was interviewed by the FBI in early October.
Trump said in a social media post that he had been summoned to appear in federal court in Miami next Tuesday at 3 p.m. He is expected to be taken into custody after his surrender, fingerprinted and booked before facing a judge, but it is extremely unlikely that he will be jailed after his arraignment.
