In this 2022 file photo, Donald Trump announces he is running for president for the third time at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla.Andrew Harnik/The Associated Press
Former president Donald Trump is facing 37 criminal charges for taking classified documents on the U.S. nuclear program and other highly sensitive military secrets to his Florida estate after he left office, and obstructing efforts by the federal government to get them back.
The indictment Friday – complete with photographs of boxes containing secret papers piled up in a chandelier-adorned Mar-a-Lago bathroom – comes on the heels of state-level charges in a separate case in New York related to Mr. Trump’s hush-money payment to a porn star.
The former president faces two further criminal investigations into his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
These legal troubles are certain to be central to the 2024 presidential campaign, in which Mr. Trump is the leading contender for the Republican nomination. No current or former U.S. president has ever previously been criminally indicted, let alone twice, plunging the country into uncharted territory.
Here is what to know.
What is Mr. Trump accused of doing?
The indictment, approved by a grand jury in Miami at the behest of special counsel Jack Smith, accuses Mr. Trump of taking 337 classified documents to Mar-a-Lago in 2021, including information on nuclear weapons, U.S. vulnerabilities to attack and plans for responding to potential attacks from other countries.
The former president’s aides initially stored the papers on a ballroom stage and in a bathroom before moving them to a basement storage facility.
Mr. Trump, the indictment says, stonewalled the National Archives and the FBI when they tried to get the documents back. He turned over some papers voluntarily but hid others. At one point, Mr. Trump is accused of deceiving his own lawyers into falsely certifying, in response to a subpoena, that all of the documents had been returned.
On two occasions, Mr. Trump showed intelligence documents, including one detailing how the U.S. would hypothetically attack a foreign country, to various people without security clearances. At other times, he asked his lawyers if he could lie to a grand jury and claim not to have any more documents.
The FBI says it only finally recovered all of the documents after executing a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago last August.
The former president’s charges include illegally holding on to national defence information and conspiracy to obstruct justice. One of his aides, Walt Nauta, also faces charges of helping Mr. Trump’s obstruction plan and lying to the FBI about it.
What effect will this have on the presidential campaign?
There is nothing to stop Mr. Trump from running or serving as president while under indictment, or even after a criminal conviction. He chose to announce the charges before Mr. Smith did in a bid to frame them as a plot by his political enemies.
In a video, the former president referred to the investigation as the “boxes hoax.”
“They come after me because now we’re leading in the polls again by a lot,” he said. “This is warfare for the law.”
Most top Republicans, including Mr. Trump’s presidential nomination rivals, rallied to his defence. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis described the charges as the “weaponization of federal law enforcement” and a “mortal threat to a free society.” House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy called it a “dark day” and accused President Joe Biden of personally indicting Mr. Trump, even though Mr. Smith is an independent special prosecutor.
Still, most of the other contenders for the Republican nomination are betting that voters are tired of Mr. Trump’s non-stop drama and might prefer a candidate who could focus entirely on campaigning against Mr. Biden.
The exact timeline for the court cases is not yet clear, but it seems likely they will stretch into the 2024 election, meaning Mr. Trump will have to juggle his campaign with the legal battles.
What’s going on with the other charges and investigations?
In April, Mr. Trump was hit with separate charges over a US$130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels to stop her from publicly discussing an alleged extramarital affair with Mr. Trump before the 2016 election. In that case, the former president was accused of falsifying business records to conceal the payment. He has pleaded not guilty and also denies having an affair with Ms. Daniels.
In a civil case last month, a New York jury found Mr. Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming magazine writer E. Jean Carroll and ordered him to pay her US$5-million in damages.
Mr. Smith is also looking into Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss to Mr. Biden. Prosecutors in Atlanta are conducting their own state-level investigation into the same matter.
A different special counsel, Robert Hur, is investigating Mr. Biden for keeping about 20 classified documents at his private homes in Delaware and at a Washington think tank he used to work for. Mr. Biden voluntarily turned the papers over last year.
Mr. Trump’s former vice-president Mike Pence, who is also running for the 2024 presidential nomination, was investigated by the FBI after he, too, discovered classified documents at his house. Mr. Pence was cleared of wrongdoing. It likely helped that he pro-actively disclosed the papers’ existence and promptly gave them back to the federal government – a stark contrast with how Mr. Trump is alleged to have behaved.
Meanwhile, prosecutors in Texas are deciding whether to bring charges over a political stunt last autumn, orchestrated by Mr. DeSantis, in which Venezuelan migrants were rounded up in San Antonio and dropped on Martha’s Vineyard, a liberal island in Massachusetts. Some of the asylum seekers have said they were tricked into getting on the planes.
Is there any precedent for any of this?
No U.S. president or former president has ever faced criminal charges at either the federal or state levels. Richard Nixon, for instance, was pre-emptively pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford. In the case of the only other president to have been arrested – Ulysses Grant, in 1872 – the infraction was reckless driving, which Mr. Grant resolved by paying a fine.
There is at least one previous case of a person running for president from prison: in 1920, Eugene Debs was serving time for sedition after he encouraged people to resist the U.S. military draft when he was nominated by the Socialist Party. He placed a distant third.
There have also been a few high-profile classified document cases in recent years. In 2012, then-CIA director David Petraeus gave sensitive files to his biographer, with whom he was also having an extramarital affair. In 2003, former national security advisor Sandy Berger stole intelligence information from the National Archives by stuffing it down his pants and in his socks. Both cases resulted in convictions.
In 2016, the FBI publicly chided Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s rival for the presidency, for using a private e-mail server while she was secretary of state. But the agency decided not to bring criminal charges after most of the emails turned out to be routine.
What happens next?
Mr. Trump will surrender at a Miami courthouse on Tuesday afternoon to be formally charged. The New York case returns to court in September. It is unclear when the other investigations will wrap up.
The former president saw the latest of many changes to his legal team Friday, announcing the removal of Jim Trusty and John Rowley and their replacement with Todd Blanche, the same lawyer who is leading his defence in New York.
He did receive one potential piece of good news: by getting the indictment in Florida rather than Washington, Mr. Smith has set up the possibility of judge Aileen Cannon hearing the case. Ms. Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, made several rulings in his favour last autumn – effectively freezing the documents investigation – before she was overruled by an appeals court.
In addition to fighting the criminal cases on their merits, Mr. Trump will likely launch constitutional challenges – asserting, for instance, that presidents can’t be charged – which could mean the cases could take years to resolve.