Federal authorities have unsealed the sprawling indictment that outlines criminal charges relating to the hundreds of classified documents found at former President Donald Trump's Florida resort last August.
Trump, who first announced that he had been indicted Thursday evening and has continued to rail against the Justice Department, is accused of breaking seven different laws, including willful retention of national defense information and false statements and representations, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document, concealing a document in a federal investigation and a scheme to conceal.
In the hours since the Department of Justice unsealed the 37-count indictment, questions have arisen on social media about what specifically indicted means and what an indictment is, as evidenced by Google Trends data.
An indictment is defined as a formal written statement framed by prosecutors and found by a jury charging a person with an offense, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. In potential felony cases, a prosecutor presents the evidence to a grand jury, a small group of impartial citizens, usually made up of around 16-23 members, according to the Office of the United States Attorneys. The grand jury's job is to listen to the prosecutor and witnesses and then vote in secret on whether they believe enough exists to charge a person with a specific crime.
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Being indicted, similarly, is when an individual is given "formal notice that it is believed that they committed a crime," according to the DOJ. Thursday' marked Trumps second indictment, but the first on a federal level - for both himself and for a U.S. president - either former or sitting.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing in the case, a stance he maintained Friday, writing in a social media post that, "Under the Presidential Records Act, I'm allowed to do all this." He also criticized Smith, calling him "a Trump Hater — a deranged 'psycho' that shouldn't be involved in any case having to do with 'Justice.'"
The indictment alleges that when Trump left the White House he took documents that “included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the U.S. and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for a possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.”
It added that, “On two occasions in 2021, Trump showed classified documents to others.”
Read the full 49-page document detailing the charges against former President Trump here.
In one instance, Trump showed a writer, a publisher and two members of his staff who lacked security clearance a copy of a “plan of attack” that, according to a recording of Trump, he described as “highly confidential,” the indictment states.
In the second instance, Trump allegedly showed two members of his political action committee, neither of whom had a security clearance, a “classified map related to a military operation.”
Both of those alleged incidents occurred at Trump’s New Jersey golf club, which means the documents would have been transported there from Florida.
The filing further alleges that the documents were stored haphazardly — including for two months in the Mar-a-Lago ballroom, where they were photographed on a stage. They were also kept in a business center, a bathroom and a shower, the filing says.
The unsealing of the indictment came on the same day Trump announced that two of the lawyers representing him in the case, Jim Trusty and John Rowley, were leaving his legal team. “They were up against a very dishonest, corrupt, evil, and ‘sick’ group of people, the likes of which has not been seen before,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
He added that he's now being represented by attorney Todd Blanche, who's also defending Trump in New York criminal court, where the former president has been charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in a hush-money case. Trump has pleaded not guilty in the case, which is scheduled to go to trial in March.
Blanche declined to comment on the indictment.
Trump is scheduled to be arraigned before a magistrate judge in Miami federal court on Tuesday afternoon.
The indictment estimates a trial in the case would last 21 days.
