Trump has been indicted in federal classified document probe
Former President Donald Trump said Thursday that he has been indicted on charges connected to his handling of classified national security records, writing on social media that he has been summoned to federal court on Tuesday in Miami.
The precise charges that federal prosecutors have obtained against Trump were not immediately clear, but Trump said his attorneys were informed by the Justice Department on Thursday that a grand jury indictment had been obtained.
Prosecutors are charging the former president with seven criminal counts, according to a person familiar with the indictment.
The documents investigation has been overseen by special counsel Jack Smith and appeared to be nearing the charging phase in recent days. Smith’s team recently sent Trump a target letter and Trump’s lawyers met with senior Justice Department officials in Washington in what now appears to have been an unsuccessful bid to head off criminal charges against the former president.
A Justice Department spokesperson referred questions about Trump’s assertions about an indictment to a Smith spokesperson, who declined to comment Thursday evening.
It’s a moment as fraught as it is historic: the first-ever federal charges against a former president, who also happens to be the Republican Party’s frontrunner for the 2024 nomination. The charges ignite what is sure to be a protracted and intense period of pretrial litigation that will overlap with the GOP nominating contest and galvanize Republican voters who have so far been unfazed by Trump’s legal entanglements.
Trump, who is already facing state felony charges in Manhattan related to alleged hush money payments to a porn star, has now been tagged with his second set of criminal charges, with more potentially looming. An Atlanta-based district attorney is gearing up to make a charging decision in a long-running probe of Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election as soon as next month. And Smith is similarly investigating Trump for his effort to derail the transfer of power to Joe Biden.
Read the full story at: POLITICO
