As Trump faces federal charges, the evidence seems stronger, and the legal issues simpler.
Donald Trump has been indicted by federal prosecutors in connection with his removal of documents from the White House, the former president announced on his social-media site tonight. He said that he has been summoned to appear on Tuesday at a U.S. courthouse in Miami. ABC News reports that he faces seven counts, but more information was not immediately available.
“I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States,” Trump wrote in a post, adding, “I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!”
In fact, the indictment is, like so many of the signal moments of his presidency, both eminently foreseeable and utterly astonishing. If it never seemed possible that a former president would face such charges, that’s mostly because it never seemed possible that a president would abscond with a large number of documents and then defy a subpoena to return them. Trump’s shock also reflects his feeling that he was, or ought to be, immune to consequences for his actions and not subject to the same rule of law as other citizens.
This indictment began looking likely in August 2022, when the FBI conducted a surprise search at Mar-a-Lago. Each new revelation since then has pointed toward charges. The federal government repeatedly asked Trump to return the documents; he refused, claiming that some belonged to him and that he had already returned those that didn’t. Some of the documents are believed to be extremely sensitive to national security. By this spring, I wrote, the big question was when and not if.
The indictment does not break the taboo of indicting a former president—that happened in April, when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records. But the case in Florida, apparently brought by Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith, represents the first federal charges against a former president. And it poses a far greater danger to Trump than the New York case, for several reasons.
