Former President Donald J. The indictments against Trump and personal assistant Walt Nauta, unsealed Friday, reveal many embarrassing and devastating new details that prosecutors had kept under wraps during a year-long investigation.
The 49-page indictment, which includes 37 charges against the former president and seven separate charges and one charge against his aide, gave an even clearer picture of the breadth of material critical to Mr Trump’s comically haphazard removal from the White House. And his staff handled the documents — and, most notably, what prosecutors described as obstruction and false statements intended to thwart the FBI and grand jury.
Here are some of the most important and startling allegations:
Mr Trump and Mr Nauta have been charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Mr. Prosecutors say they have amassed evidence that proves Trump deliberately ignored them — and took extraordinary steps to thwart the FBI and grand jury.
Hours before Trump’s lawyer went to Mar-a-Lago to search a storage room for documents — an effort to comply with a subpoena — his co-defendant, Mr. Trump instructed Nauta. He maintained that room as his property.
“I don’t want anyone to see my boxes, I really don’t,” said Mr. Trump told one of his lawyers in the indictment.
He kept boxes of important documents in the shower.
In April 2021, Trump’s staff had to move dozens of boxes from the ballroom space they were converting into office space, the indictment says. “There’s still a small room where his other stuff is,” one aide texted another. Soon, the boxes were hauled into a small bathroom adjacent to the Mar-a-Lago banquet room and piled near a small chandelier next to the toilet.
As the top secret documents were stored, they spilled on the floor.
One of the most striking images in the dossier is a picture of a box of top-secret national security documents spilled on the floor of a Mar-a-Lago storage room accessible to many of the resort’s employees in 2021. The files were marked with restricted “Five Eyes” classification markings indicating that they could only be viewed by officials with high-security clearances issued by the United States and its closest allies.
Trump pulled out a folder of his lawyer’s papers and suggested, ‘If there’s anything bad in there, you know, grab it.’
One of the most complicated sources for Trump, according to his lawyer, is what to do with a folder containing 38 documents with classification marks. Trump and the attorney had a discussion. Mr Trump, the lawyer, made a “grabbing motion” that said “why don’t you take them to your hotel room and if there’s something bad in there, you know, grab it and throw it away”.
This may indicate that he knew he was keeping sensitive documents, “bad” documents that allowed people without the appropriate security clearances to inspect them – rather than returning everything to the archives as the government demanded.
Mr. Trump shared secrets with visitors to Bedminster. There is audio.
Many of the episodes described in the filing have been described in the media — including a potentially damaging revelation that he showed secret U.S. war plans — as “top secret” and “confidential.” Classified.
“Look, I could have classified it as president,” Mr. Trump said. He later adds: “I can’t now, you know, but it’s still a secret.”
The secret map was reportedly shared with a member of the Political Action Committee.
In another incident in August or September 2021, he shared a top-secret military map with a staffer working in his political action group who did not receive security clearance.
According to the indictment, the former president suggested during the meeting that the military operation in the unnamed country was not going well. He showed the map to a member of the political action committee, but warned the man “not to get too close.”
In these conversations, he seemed less interested in the content of the object than in what was “given to me,” such as a gift or souvenir.
“Isn’t it amazing?” he asked an audience member after showing him a document – saying he had randomly plucked papers from “a huge pile”.
One of Trump’s lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran is the key witness.
Keeping precise notes (some of them transcribed from iPhone voice memos), Mr. Corcoran was in a position to pressure his fugitive client to act legally and defensively by returning the documents to the government. .
In one of the most shocking revelations, the prosecutors, Mr. Trump and Mr. Nauta moved around the boxes, prompting Mr. Corcoran couldn’t find them.
