US documents affair: What you need to know about Trump’s alleged indictment

EIt was Trump himself who was the first to report the charges against him on Thursday evening. In his social network “Truth Social” he said that the “corrupt Biden government” had informed his lawyers about it. He was an innocent man, Trump wrote in capital letters. He never thought that this could happen to a previous American president. “This is really a dark day for America.” A spokesman for special counsel Jack Smith did not want to confirm the indictment in the evening, but a speedy decision had become apparent in the past few days. On Wednesday, American media reported that the Justice Department had notified Trump’s lawyers that he was the subject of the investigation into the documents affair – a standard procedure when an indictment is imminent. The indictment would be the first federal charge against a former US president.

United States vs. Donald Trump – What are the charges about?

Trump – now the Republican frontrunner for next year’s presidential election – had taken hundreds of secret documents from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida at the end of his term, instead of giving them to the national archives as usual. In 2021, the archives asked him for the first time to return documents that they unlawfully suspected to be in his possession. In early 2022, after months of back and forth, Trump initially handed over 15 boxes of documents in which more than 100 classified items were found.

At the request of a federal court, Trump’s lawyers turned over 38 more classified documents to the Justice Department in June – and claim that after a careful search, all documents have now been returned. However, during a court-ordered raid in August last year, the FBI found more than a hundred secret documents. In November, Attorney General Merrick Garland installed Special Counsel Jack Smith. Because of Trump’s planned candidacy, this is “in the public interest”; the “extraordinary circumstances” required this.

Investigators’ findings, which have so far been made public through American media, indicate that Trump and a small group of associates and confidants took steps to alter or destroy evidence. For example, according to CNN, prosecutors have a recording from 2021 of Trump talking about a Pentagon classified document on Iran that he kept after his term in office. The audio track is intended to suggest that Trump was aware that he had not released the secret document – which he had repeatedly claimed in relation to the papers in question. Video recordings should also show how Trump’s employees cleared boxes with documents on his property to other places between the first return and the raid. This should possibly prevent them from being found.

There are some investigations going on against Trump. Why is this case particularly dangerous for his political career?

First of all: A condemnation of Trump would not per se impede his political ambitions. The American Constitution does not prevent the President from ruling even from prison. In the case of the secret documents, Trump’s problem is different. According to media reports, among the seven counts of the indictment are the intentional withholding of national defense secrets (this relates to the Espionage Act), obstruction of justice and conspiracy. With regard to the conspiracy charge, there are two possibilities: either someone else is being charged in this matter in addition to Trump, or a witness involved has decided to testify against the former president.

The decisive factor will be whether Trump’s alleged indictment will ultimately lead to a conviction: A US federal law prohibits someone who has been convicted of “intentional” and “unlawful” taking government documents with him from holding a political office. For the presidential election next year, however, this is probably not important: it is considered extremely unlikely that there will be a verdict in this case before the presidential election.