7 Wild Takeaways From Donald Trump’s Impeachment

federal prosecutors on friday unsealed charges against the former president donald trump ― accusing him of inappropriately maintaining and distributing sensitive US government information after leaving office, and then obstructing authorities’ efforts to investigate his alleged misconduct.

The 49-page indictment repeatedly accuses Trump of endangering national security and misleading federal agents in coordination with his aide Walt Nauta. The allegations range from the shocking, such as Trump describing US military operations to people without security clearance, to the surreal, such as the former reality TV star storing documents in a shower at his Mar-a-Resort resort. Lake.

“I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!” Triumph saying of the prosecution on Thursday on his Truth Social website. He faces more than 30 charges and is expected to contest them all. In a separate post on the site, he accused to the government of the United States of “trying to destroy the life (of Nauta)”. An attorney for Nauta did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the charges.

The favorite for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination is expected to appear in court on Tuesday, June 13.

Here are some of the biggest revelations in the charge sheet prepared by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith.

The indictment undermines Trump’s most consistent line of defense since the investigation into his handling of documents began last year: that he used his authority as president to declassify all the material he took.

Prosecutors say they can prove that in at least two conversations in 2021, Trump admitted to possessing material that was still classified.

In July 2021, he held a meeting at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with two members of his staff and two people working on an autobiography of his former chief of staff Mark Meadows. Trump agreed that the meeting could be recorded.

During the recorded conversation, Trump allegedly said that he was showing the other four people a “plan of attack.” The plan was developed by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, Trump claimed, saying he undermined a recent New Yorker story in which Milley expressed fear that Trump would attack Iran.

“This was not done by me, it was done by him,” Trump allegedly said in the recording. He asked the people with him to “watch” but added, “It’s like, highly confidential… secret, this is secret information.”

Trump then allegedly acknowledged that the material he was speaking about was not declassified, saying, “As president, I could have declassified it… Now I can’t, you know, but this is still top secret.”

CNN first reported about the existence of the recording last week.

Later that year, Trump had a meeting with a political adviser in which he mentioned a US military operation in a different country, according to the indictment.

He then showed a classified map of that country to the adviser, who worked for Trump’s political action committee. Trump said he shouldn’t share the map and the adviser shouldn’t get too close, the indictment says.

By handling his trove of confidential documents, Trump repeatedly exposed classified material to people who had no authority to see it and who had not been vetted, prosecutors allege, risking information leaks and the government’s internal decision-making and information-gathering processes. US government

In the two cases in which Trump knowingly shared classified military documents with others, none of the other individuals involved had security clearance or other government approval to view those documents, the indictment argues.

The government’s case against the former president also suggests that many other people could have found sensitive information because of Trump’s bizarre approach to storing the documents. In one example from December 2021, Trump aide Nauta discovered that several boxes of documents had been dropped in a storage room, spilling materials on the floor. One of them was marked as only accessible to officials of the Five Eyes intelligence gathering alliance: US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Nauta allegedly took photos of the spill, one of which showed classified information, and texted them to a colleague.

“Oh no, oh no,” the colleague replied.

The indictment also alleges that Trump sought the “concealment” of the boxes of documents and cites instances in which he appeared to speak favorably, or even encourage, keeping the documents hidden.

“I don’t want anybody looking, I don’t want anybody looking at my boxes, I really don’t want, I don’t want you looking at my boxes,” Trump said, according to one of his lawyers.

“Wouldn’t it be better if we tell them we don’t have anything here?” he asked, according to the same lawyer.

The same lawyer also said that Trump made a non-verbal suggestion that the lawyer take a folder with him and pull out potentially damaging documents.

“He made a funny move like, well, why don’t you take them to your hotel room and if there’s something really bad in there, like, you know, take it out? And that was the motion she made. He didn’t say that,” the attorney recalled, according to the indictment.

Trump amassed documents related to a wide range of national security issues, the indictment claims, including the United States’ nuclear capabilities and data on the vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies and possible responses to attacks. The list of agencies whose documents he allegedly withheld reads like a Who’s Who of US intelligence “alphabet” agencies and the federal defense sector.

Beyond the CIA, Trump is alleged to have kept documents that came from the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the State Department’s Office of Intelligence and Research.

The NSA is responsible for intercepting information from foreign electronic “signals” and distributing it to lawmakers and military leaders. The NGIA and NRO work to obtain, analyze, and exploit geospatial information and imagery, including space surveillance, while the Office of Intelligence and Research supports US diplomatic efforts.

Trump is also alleged to have kept documents from the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, the latter of which is tasked with ensuring that the United States’ nuclear weapons program is safe and effective.

In the list of specific prosecution documents, the classification statuses included “top secret,” “secret,” “special handling,” “FISA,” and “NOFORN.” The latter two likely refer to documents related to activities related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is concerned with countering the espionage activities of foreign governments and restricting the disclosure of the contents of documents to foreign citizens. The indictment also includes the classification categories of the documents found at Mar-a-Lago: 17 Top Secret, 54 Secret and 31 Confidential.

Among other places, Trump kept confidential documents in a storage room and a bathroom with shower at Mar-a-Lagosays the prosecution. The indictment also says he stored boxes of documents in a ballroom setting that was accessible to visitors, as well as in a business center on his Mar-a-Lago property. A photo included in the charging document shows a ballroom scene filled with cardboard boxes of documents, as if they were being prepared for a move.

According to the indictment, some of the boxes from the Mar-a-Lago business center were moved to the bathroom/shower room after two Trump employees texted each other. One said there was still “a little space in the shower where the other stuff is” as they were looking for extra storage space.

In another exchange, a “Trump family member” texted Nauta to coordinate which boxes to take on a flight, warning there would be little space because “the plane will be full of luggage.”

The indictment cites a conversation Trump apparently had with two of his lawyers about Hillary Clinton and her private email server, which Trump repeatedly attacked during the 2016 election cycle, spawning the line “Lock her up!” Whether Clinton’s use of a private email server was illegal remains the basis of various right-wing conspiracy theories.

The indictment does not mention Clinton by name, but appears to refer approvingly to a lawyer who, in Trump’s eyes, took responsibility for his email problems.

“He was the one who deleted all her emails, all 30,000 emails, because they were basically about her scheduling, going to the gym, and her beauty appointments. And he was great… So she didn’t get in trouble because he said he was the one who deleted them,” Trump said, according to the indictment.

The indictment also cites several public statements Trump made on classified document laws while he was a candidate in 2016, criticizing Clinton’s handling of documents, as evidence that he understood what he was doing.

The impeachment comes with a whopping 37 counts against Trump himself.

This includes 31 counts for the alleged willful withholding of national defense documents, with a maximum prison sentence of 10 years and a $100,000 fine. The charges also include conspiracy to corrupt 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. Neither charge has a mandatory minimum sentence, but they do have maximum sentences of five to 10 years and maximum fines of $250,000 per charge.

The indictment also includes charges against Trump aide Nauta on five of those counts, plus a single count of making false statements and representations against Nauta alone.