After last month’s indictment in the classified docs case, it was difficult to imagine things getting worse for Donald Trump. Then the new indictment arrived.
As this week unfolded, the political world had certain expectations regarding Donald Trump’s legal predicaments. With the former president receiving a target letter last week, and with the grand jury in the special counsel’s 2020 election investigation meeting this week, many observers were on “indictment watch” — with the assumption that if Trump were going to face new charges, they’d relate to his efforts to overturn his defeat.
As it turns out, Jack Smith and federal prosecutors had a different plan in mind. The former president is facing new charges, but as NBC News reported, a new indictment relates to his classified documents scandal, not the 2020 probe.
The federal indictment, filed in the Southern District of Florida, alleges that Trump was part of a scheme to delete security video and that a newly charged defendant — who was identified as a property manager at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence — told another employee that “the boss” wanted the server deleted.
To be sure, the original 37-count indictment in this case, which was unsealed last month, was brutal. The special counsel’s office had collected striking evidence of the Republican allegedly taking and keeping highly sensitive national security documents, and storing them around his glorified country club — including, famously, in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom.
