Donald Trump, a former president, announced that he has been indicted in a review into how he handled confidential data. This is his second indictment in around two months.
On Thursday night, Trump announced the information in a vehement post on his Truth Social website.
In his letter, Trump said, “The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, allegedly over the Boxes Hoax.”
Trump said he had been summoned to appear at the federal courthouse in Miami on Tuesday at 3pm.
Trump: ‘I am an innocent man’
‘I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States, who received far more votes than any sitting President in the History of our Country, and is currently leading, by far, all Candidates, both Democrat and Republican, in Polls of the 2024 Presidential Election,’ Trump wrote in another post.
‘I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!’
It comes after Trump on March 30 became the first former president to be indicted, in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into his role in a hush payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records on April 4.
Shortly after 7.30pm on Thursday, Trump sent out a fundraising email with the indictment news and asked his supporters to ‘make a contribution to peacefully stand’ with him.
‘We are watching our Republic DIE before our very eyes,’ stated the email.
‘The Biden-appointed Special Counsel has INDICTED me in yet another witch hunt regarding documents that I had the RIGHT to declassify as President of the United States.
‘This witch hunt began when the FBI RAIDED my home and then staged it to look like a made-for-TV crime scene with police sirens and flashing red and blue lights.’
The investigation, overseen by special counsel Jack Smith, centers on boxes of records that the FBI seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on August 8. They included 184 documents that were marked as classified. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and repeatedly called Smith’s probe a witch hunt.
On Thursday, a federal grand jury reportedly met in Florida in Smith’s probe.
The indictment is under seal, a source told NBC News.
A spokesperson for Smith declined to comment.
Trump shared a four-minute-long video on Truth Social in which he asserted he is innocent and slammed the Biden administration.
‘They can’t stop, because it’s election interference at the highest level,’ said Trump. ‘There’s never been anything like what’s happened. I’m an innocent man. I’m an innocent person.’
In another post, he wrote that ‘this is indeed a DARK DAY for the United States of America’.
Trump’s new indictment comes six days after the Justice Department said it would not file charges against his former vice president Mike Pence for classified documents found in his Indiana home. Pence filed to run for president on Monday.
Despite growing legal troubles, Trump remains the clear frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination.
The former president Donald Trump aggressively criticized the criminal accusations he is facing and the several other investigations into him in his first statements following his arraignment.
At after 8.15 p.m., from Mar-a-Lago, Trump said: “God bless you all.” He had just finished getting his fingerprints taken in a Manhattan courthouse. God’s blessings on you all. Furthermore, I had no idea that something similar could occur in the United States.
Defending our country bravely against those who want to do it harm is the only crime I have ever done.
Trump claims election interference is behind criminal charges after his arrest
Trump slammed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into a hush money payment to a porn star, and called the presiding Justice Juan Merchan a ‘Trump-hating judge’.
He also ripped other probes on him including Georgia’s investigation into whether he and his allies tried to overturn the state election, and a federal investigation into his handling of classified documents that wound up at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump called special counsel Jack Smith – who is overseeing the federal probes into the classified materials and his actions around the January 6 Capitol riot – a ‘lunatic’.
The ex-president also brought up the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and blamed the country’s problems including an economic slowdown on the Biden administration and Democrats.
Some TV news stations did not air Trump’s full speech, even though it ran for less than 30 minutes. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow explained that it was ‘basically a campaign speech in which he is repeating his same lies and allegations against his perceived enemies’.
Meanwhile, ABC News cut it off as Trump claimed that President Joe Biden would provoke an ‘all-out nuclear World War 3’.
Trump walked into his Florida resort to cheers from fans wearing MAGA hats.
His family members who entered Mar-a-Lago smiling included his son Eric Trump and wife Lara Trump, and his youngest daughter Tiffany Trump. Walking behind them was Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who appeared for a speech outside Manhattan Criminal Court before being swarmed by protesters and escorted away by police.
What is Trump charged with and what’s next?
WHAT’S THIS CASE ABOUT?
The grand jury spent weeks investigating money paid during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to two women who alleged that they had extramarital sexual encounters with him.
Trump has denied the allegations.
His former lawyer Michael Cohen, who testified as a key prosecution witness, paid Daniels $130,000 through a shell company he set up and was then reimbursed by Trump, whose company logged the repayments as legal expenses.
Earlier in 2016, Cohen also arranged for former Playboy model Karen McDougal to be paid $150,000 by the publisher of the supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer, which squelched her story in a journalistically dubious practice known as ‘catch and kill’.
WHAT’S AN INDICTMENT?
An indictment is the formal charge brought against someone after a grand jury — which is made up of members of the community — votes and enough members agree there’s sufficient evidence to charge someone with a crime.
The indictment against Trump remains sealed, as is standard in New York before an arraignment. But once the document is made public, it will lay out the crime or crimes that Trump is accused of committing.
Sometimes indictments include a lengthy narrative with lots of details about the allegations, while others are more basic and just outline the charges a defendant is facing.
WHAT ARE THE CHARGES?
Trump is facing multiple charges of falsifying business records, including at least one felony offense, according to two people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss information that isn’t yet public.
Under the law, prosecutors must prove there was an ‘intent to defraud’.
The felony falsifying business records offense requires prosecutors to prove that the records were falsified with the intention of committing, aiding or concealing a second crime.
It’s not clear yet what prosecutors allege the second crime to be, but experts have said it is probably some kind of campaign finance violation.
WHAT’S AN ARRAIGNMENT?
An arraignment is generally the first time a defendant appears in court after being charged.
The judge will tell Trump the charges against him and advise him of his right to go to trial and other things.
Trump will enter a plea of not guilty — as is standard for defendants to do at arraignment. The indictment is expected to be unsealed upon his arraignment.
Trump is expected to walk out of the courtroom because the charges against him don’t require that bail be set in New York.
It’s possible — but unlikely — that Judge Juan Merchan could decide that Trump is a flight risk and order him held, with or without bail, though Trump’s lawyers would vigorously fight that.
WHAT WILL TRUMP’S DEFENSE BE?
Trump’s lawyers have vowed to ‘vigorously fight this political prosecution in court’.
Defense attorney Joe Tacopina has described Trump as a victim of extortion who had to pay the money because the allegations were going to be embarrassing to him. But he says it had nothing to do with the campaign.
Trump will no doubt try to fight the case on multiple fronts. He may try to have the case moved out of Manhattan or New York City entirely — arguing he can’t get a fair trial there — though it’s rare for judges to agree to do that.
Trump may also argue that the statute of limitations has passed.
He has complained that the statute of limitations ‘long ago expired’ because the hush money payments and Cohen’s reimbursements happened more than six years ago.
New York’s statute of limitations for most felonies is five years. For misdemeanors, it’s just two years. But in New York, the clock can stop on the statute of limitations when a potential defendant is continuously outside the state.
Trump visited New York rarely over the four years of his presidency and now lives mostly in Florida and New Jersey.
WHAT ARE THE POLITICAL RAMIFICATIONS FOR TRUMP?
Neither the indictment itself nor a conviction would prevent Trump from running for or winning the presidency in 2024.
Already, the charges have been a boon to his fundraising. The campaign announced Friday evening that it had raised over $4 million in the 24 hours after the indictment became public, far smashing its previous record after the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.
Trump’s team over the weekend blasted out emails full of supportive comments from dozens of top Republicans, many of whom had already been supportive of him leading up to the indictment.
Those likely to be facing off with Trump in next year’s GOP primary contests have also slammed the prosecution.
Former Vice President Mike Pence called the indictment ‘an outrage’ and ‘nothing more than a political prosecution’.
Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said on Twitter that the indictment ‘is more about revenge than it is about justice’.
Biotech investor Vivek Ramaswamy, who is also seeking the GOP presidential nomination, called the indictment ‘a dark moment in American history’.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Saturday accused District Attorney Alvin Bragg of weaponizing the law ‘for political purposes’ to bring a case against a former president, never mentioning Trump by name.
Trump finished his remarks with his familiar campaign slogan.
‘With a very dark cloud over our beloved country,’ he said, ‘I have no doubt that we will make America great again.’
