Former President Donald Trump said Thursday that he’s been indicted over the case involving sensitive documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
On his social media page, Mr. Trump said the Justice Department informed his attorneys he has been indicted and that he has been summoned to appear at the federal courthouse in Miami at 3 p.m. Tuesday.
“The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax,” he wrote.
“This is indeed a DARK DAY for the United States of America. We are a Country in serious and rapid Decline, but together we will Make America Great Again!”
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The Justice Department‘s move makes Mr. Trump the first former president to be indicted on federal charges.
For months, special counsel Jack Smith has been investigating why classified documents were stored at Mar-a-Lago instead of at the National Archives. He was also looking into whether anyone impeded efforts to retrieve them.
Mr. Trump proclaimed his innocence Thursday night in a four-minute video that appeared on his social media site. Democrats, he said, were politically targeting him and have been doing so since his 2016 run for office, when the FBI launched its flawed probe into allegations that Mr. Trump colluded with the Russians.
“It’s called election interference. They are trying to destroy a reputation so they can win an election,” Mr. Trump said. “I’m an innocent man, I’ve done nothing wrong. We’ll fight this out just like we’ve been fighting for seven years.”
The Trump campaign said the former president violated no laws and was being held to a different legal standard than other former presidents.
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“We are confident that no matter how crooked the Executive branch has become, the American justice system is resilient and will throw this case out in its entirety. If not, our cherished Constitution is in serious trouble,” the campaign said in a statement. “President Trump will fight this unconstitutional abuse of power until he is ultimately vindicated. He will never stop fighting for the American people, and he will continue to work to restore the greatness of the United States of America.”
Mr. Trump‘s announcement about the indictment came the same day that lawmakers viewed a formerly undisclosed FBI memo alleging a $10 million bribery scheme involving President Biden, his family members and Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
Republican leaders rallied to Mr. Trump‘s cause and lamented the unprecedented indictment of a former president.
“It’s a sad day for America. God bless President Trump,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
The reaction from Trump world was swift and angry.
Mr. Trump‘s son, Don Jr., said the indictment is aimed at kneecapping the former president ahead of the 2024 election, where he is the leading GOP candidate to face off against Mr. Biden.
“Biden’s corrupt DOJ is openly interfering in the 2024 presidential election to stop Trump because they know Biden can’t beat him in a fair race,” Don Trump Jr. tweeted. “That’s what this is really all about and everyone knows it.”
Pollsters, however, shrugged off the impact on Mr. Trump‘s approval rating with his sizable base of GOP support.
“I think it will backfire just like the Bragg indictment backfired,” Jim McLaughlin, who has conducted polls for Mr. Trump, told The Washington Times.
Mr. McLaughlin said the public is aware of the many boxes of classified documents discovered in various, unsecured locations by President Biden and dating back to his time as a senator.
“Donald Trump is already leading Biden in the polls so Biden’s justice department goes after Biden’s political opponent,” Mr. McLaughlin said. “The American people know indicting Trump is pure politics.”
Mr. Trump experienced a boost in his support among Republican voters after the Manhattan district attorney charged him this year with trying to cover up hush money payments to a porn star and a Playboy bunny during the 2016 campaign.
Hours before Mr. Trump broke the news, Kelley Koch, chair of the Republican Party in Dallas County Iowa, predicted an indictment would do more to bolster the former president in the eyes of the party faithful. Ms. Koch said a lot of Republican voters believe the powerbrokers in Washington are bent on stopping Mr. Trump from returning to the White House.
“I think [his support] is going to harden,” Ms. Koch told The Times. “They are just hammering him and it is just outrageous. … If he was somebody else, I don’t think it would happen.”
The prospect of Mr. Trump being indicted over the classified documents has long loomed over the 2024 GOP presidential race.
Mr. Trump‘s rivals, for the most part, have rallied behind him and said they are concerned the focus on Mr. Trump is a byproduct of the weaponization of the Justice Department and the FBI.
Former Vice President Mike Pence told reporters Thursday at a campaign stop in Iowa that he hopes the DOJ does not indict his former boss, but if it does he hopes the case is solid.
“My hope is the Department of Justice would be able to present to the American people that the facts in the case, and the applicable law, rise to the level to justify what would be an unprecedented prosecution of the former president,” said Mr. Pence.
Vivek Ramaswamy, a businessman vying for the 2024 GOP presidenital nomination, said it was hypocritical of the Justice Department “to selectively prosecute Trump but not Biden.”
“It would be much easier for me to win this election if Trump weren’t in the race, but I stand for principles over politics,” he tweeted. “I commit to pardon Trump promptly on January 20, 2025, and to restore the rule of law in our country.”
But one of the more obscure GOP candidates — Steve Laffey, the former mayor of Cranston, Rhode Island — took direct aim at the former president.
“After being convicted in federal court for sexual harassment, indicted by Manhattan prosecutors for falsifying business records, and now facing a federal indictment, enough is enough,” Mr. Laffey said. “President Trump will have more court appearances than campaign stops at this rate. It’s time the [Republican National Committee] and voters take a closer look at the candidates and realize that Donald Trump cannot win the 2024 presidential election.”
The charges against Mr. Trump come nearly a year after FBI agents executed a search warrant on his residence and office at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Mr. Trump was found to have had more than 300 documents with classified markings at Mar-a-Lago, including some that were discovered by FBI agents two months after Mr. Trump‘s lawyers said their search hadn’t turned up any more records.
About half of those documents had been recovered by the National Archives and Records Administration in January 2022. The documents turned over to the National Archives were contained in 15 boxes, which included CIA, FBI and National Security Agency documents.
The warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago, which was made public days after the search, revealed that federal authorities were investigating Mr. Trump for possible violations of the Espionage Act, among other statutes.
A property receipt of items seized by the FBI shows that investigators recovered a trove of materials, including 11 sets of classified documents, some of which were marked top secret.
Attorney General Merrick Garland responded to growing concern about the investigation by appointing Jack Smith as a special prosecutor to oversee the criminal investigations into Mr. Trump.
Mr. Smith, a former chief of the Justice Department‘s public corruption unit, was tasked with investigating the former president’s retention of highly sensitive government documents at Mar-a-Largo as well as efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to subvert the 2020 election and the transition of power to President Biden.
In January it was revealed that classified documents were discovered in the fall of 2022 at a private Washington office Mr. Biden used after leaving the Obama administration.
It was revealed earlier this year that classified documents were discovered in the fall of 2022 at a private Washington office Mr. Biden used after leaving the Obama administration.
Legal representatives for Mr. Biden then searched his home in Wilmington, Delaware, and found additional classified material in his garage.
While most of the documents were in the garage, a single page was found in an adjacent room. No documents were found in the Rehoboth Beach Home.
In response, Mr. Garland tapped Robert K. Hur, a former U.S. attorney in Maryland who served as a Justice Department official during the Trump administration to investigate the matter.
Mr. Hur’s probe operated on a separate track from Mr. Smith‘s probe.
Mr. Pence also discovered classified documents in a safe at his home in Indiana.
The Justice Department investigated the matter and last week sent a letter to Mr. Pence’s attorney that the investigation is complete and no criminal charges will be sought. About a dozen documents with classified documents were discovered at Mr. Pence’s home in January after he asked his lawyers to perform a search for such materials “out of an abundance of caution.”
His lawyers said that the items had been “inadvertently boxed and transported” to Mr. Pence’s home at the end of the Trump administration.
Former Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican whose stint included chairing the House Oversight Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, said the indictment represents a slippery slope, particularly when the average person could be asking why Mr. Trump faces legal action but Mr. Biden and Mr. Pence did not.
“You just want to make sure when you set this sort of precedent that you get it right,” Mr. Davis said. “I understand the subtleties in the law and the differences in the [documents cases], but what does this look like to the average person? It looks like what we see in other countries.”
“They better have this right,” he said. “This is a significant precedent. This is not a one-off.”
• Seth McLaughlin and Jeff Mordock contributed to this story.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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