Donald Trump faces 37 charges, including "withholding information on national security" and "obstruction of justice" in the White House records case, according to the indictment made public Friday. The former Republican president, who had taken boxes of files when leaving Washington, is also accused of false testimony and having colluded with his assistant Walt Nauta to conceal documents requested by the federal police. He also kept nuclear secrets after leaving the Oval Office, according to the indictment.
Donald Trump had taken the lead by announcing himself Thursday night to have been indicted by the federal justice, a historic first for a former president. "The corrupt Biden administration has informed my lawyers that I have been charged, presumably in the fake box case," he wrote on his Truth Social network in reference to the boxes of documents taken with him as he left Washington.
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Thousands of documents
In January 2021, when he left the White House to settle in his luxurious Mar-a-Lago residence, Donald Trump took away entire boxes of files. A 1978 law obliges the president to forward all his emails, letters and other working documents to the national archives.
A year later, after several reminders, he agreed to return 15 boxes with more than 200 classified documents. In a letter, his lawyers had then assured that there were no others. The federal police, however, had estimated that he had not returned everything and still kept many in his club in Palm Beach. FBI agents went there on August 8 and seized about thirty other boxes, containing 11,000 documents, some of them very sensitive on Iran or China.
