Special counsel Jack Smith unsealed an unprecedented indictment Friday, alleging President Donald Trump unlawfully kept classified documents — including on nuclear secrets and military vulnerabilities — and stored the sensitive material in boxes in his bathroom, shower, and elsewhere in his Florida home.
The 49-page document was unsealed, laying out 37 counts against Trump on Friday afternoon that alleged Trump was “personally” involved in the transport of the documents from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago home.
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He was hit with 31 counts for the willful retention of national defense information, one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, one count of withholding a document or record, one count of corruptly concealing a document or record, one count of concealing a document in a federal investigation, one count for a scheme to conceal, and one count related to alleged false statements.
Trump revealed Thursday evening that Smith, who was hand-picked by Attorney General Merrick Garland, had informed him he was being indicted related to his alleged mishandling of classified records at his Florida resort home of Mar-a-Lago and that he had been summoned to appear in a Miami federal courthouse on Tuesday afternoon. The former president said Friday that one of his close aides, Walt Nauta, had been indicted, too.
The unsealed indictment stated classified documents in Trump’s boxes included “defense and weapons capabilities” of both U.S. and foreign countries, U.S. “nuclear programs,” and possible “vulnerabilities” of the U.S. and its allies to a “military attack.”
The indictment alleged that after his presidency, Trump improperly held on to classified documents originating from the CIA, the Pentagon, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Department of Energy, and the State Department and its Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
“In January 2021, as he was preparing to leave the White House, Trump and his White House staff, including Nauta, packed items, including some of Trump’s boxes,” Smith contended. “Trump was personally involved in this process. Trump caused the boxes, containing hundreds of classified documents, to be transported from the White House to The Mar-a-Lago Club.”
Nauta was also charged with six criminal counts — conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding of a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheme to conceal, and a false statements charge.
“The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax,” Trump posted on his Truth Social social media site on Thursday evening, declaring, “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!”
The new charging document said that Mar-a-Lago “was not an authorized location for the storage, possession, review, display, or discussion of classified documents,” but “nevertheless, Trump stored his boxes containing classified documents in various locations at The Mar-a-Lago Club — including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room.”
The DOJ said Trump also twice showed classified documents to other people at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey in 2021.
Smith wrote that, in July 2021, Trump gave an interview where he talked about a classified “plan of attack” on a yet-unnamed country. Trump remarked on a recording that “this is secret information” and that “as president I could have declassified it … now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
The indictment said Trump and Nauta conspired with each other from May to August 2022, and that “the purpose of the conspiracy was for Trump to keep classified documents he had taken with him from the White House and to hide and conceal them from a federal grand jury.”
Nauta was a former Navy sailor and military valet in the Trump White House who then followed Trump to his Florida resort home of Mar-a-Lago after Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden. The Trump body man, who accompanied the 2024 GOP front-runner on campaign trips this year, moved boxes around Mar-a-Lago, according to the indictment.
Judge Aileen Cannon, a district court judge in Florida who gave Trump a temporary win when she appointed Judge Raymond Dearie to be the special master in the Mar-a-Lago saga in September, has apparently been assigned to oversee the criminal case against Trump in southern Florida.
Smith is known to have convened grand juries in the nation’s capital and in southern Florida, with the Florida grand jury reportedly receiving testimony on the classified documents saga in recent days. Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has reportedly testified before one of Smith’s grand juries.
It is still possible that charges could be handed down in both districts.
Trump lamented Thursday that “I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States.”
“This is indeed a DARK DAY for the United States of America,” the former president said. “We are a Country in serious and rapid Decline, but together we will Make America Great Again!”
Smith has been tasked with investigating Trump related to the Capitol riot and to his alleged mishandling of classified information at his Florida resort home of Mar-a-Lago. Garland had the power to reject the charges, but apparently allowed the indictment to proceed.
Trump’s statement on Thursday evening also pointed to President Joe Biden’s own apparent mishandling of classified information.
Joe Biden is being investigated by another Garland-appointed special counsel, Robert Hur. Biden’s personal attorneys said they first discovered classified documents in early November at the Penn Biden Center, located in the nation’s capital. Biden’s lawyers later found more classified documents at his Wilmington home in Delaware, and the DOJ found more when it conducted its own search.
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Trump had been lashing out at Smith and the Justice Department on Truth Social the past week, saying the “Boxes Hoax” is a way for the DOJ to interfere with the 2024 presidential election.
Trump said Friday afternoon that Smith is “a Trump Hater—a deranged ‘psycho’ that shouldn’t be involved in any case having to do with “Justice,” other than to look at Biden as a criminal, which he is!”
