Trump indicted over alleged retention of documents at Mar-a-Lago – as it happened

While the indictment is historic – marking the first time a former president will face criminal charges – neither the indictment itself nor a conviction would prevent Trump from running for or winning the presidency in 2024.

Polling has also shown that the indictment is unlikely to turn his existing supporters off – and may even galvanise their support. Surveyed in a USA Today/Suffolk poll in April, two-thirds of his supporters said an indictment would not make a difference to their view of Trump. Almost all of the remaining third said the indictments would make them more likely to support him, not less likely: 27% compared to 4%.

According to Pew Research surveying conducted last year, just 7% of Republican supporters say investigations into Donald Trump and his administration are very important to their vote in the coming election.

Within 20 minutes of his announcement that he had been indicted, Trump began fundraising off it for his 2024 presidential campaign. The former president sent out an email to supporters immediately after his announcement on Thursday afternoon.

“The Biden-appointed Special Counsel has INDICTED me in yet another witch hunt regarding documents that I had the RIGHT to declassify as President of the United States,” it said, and asked supporters to “Please make a contribution to peacefully stand with me today and prove that YOU will NEVER surrender our country to the radical Left – for 1,500% impact.”

Californian congressman Ted Lieu has hit back at House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s comments, saying he is “intentionally misleading the public” by implying the indictment had been issued by Presiden Biden.

Donald Trump will attend the summons personally on Tuesday, his lawyers say.

“He’s gonna show up,” said lawyer Jim Trusty, speaking to CNN on Thursday evening. “He’s disappointed that this is where we are as a country and this is where the Department of Justice is, but he’s not - you’re not going to see him, you know, hide in Scotland.”

Trusty would not confirm which members of Trump’s legal team would be present at the hearing – there have been months of distrust and turmoil among the lawyers representing the former president. Correspondent Hugo Lowell has an exclusive report on that here:

Trump’s lawyer Jim Trusty has said the charges fall under the Espionage Act, and include false statements, obstruction of justice, and illegally retaining classified documents. Speaking to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Thursday night, Trusty said Trump’s attorneys received a summons via email from the Justice Department on Thursday listing the charges, but haven’t seen the indictment yet.

Trusty said that because the document was a summons rather than an indictment, the number of charges was not entirely clear, but there appeared to be seven, all broadly falling under the Espionage Act.

“It does have some language in it that suggests what the seven charges would be. [It’s] not 100% clear that all of those are separate charges, but they basically break out from an Espionage Act charge,” he said, and said those included several obstruction-based charges, false statement charges, and a potential conspiracy charge.

Trusty said he expects to see the indictment between now and Tuesday, and had been summoned to appear at the courthouse at three o’clock on Tuesday.

Governor Ron DeSantis, a GOP presidential hopeful and key Trump challenger for the party’s nomination, has responded in support of the former president, saying “the weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society”.

In a tweet he repeated sentiments shared by other top Republicans, insisting the charges were politically motivated.

“We have for years witnessed an uneven application of the law depending upon political affiliation,” he said, before bringing focus back to his campaign. “The DeSantis administration will bring accountability to the DOJ, excise political bias and end weaponization once and for all.”

He’s not alone.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican entrepreneur hoping to be the next president, also voiced his support for Trump and promised him a pardon should the Ramaswamy campaign succeed.

“It would be much easier for me to win this election if Trump weren’t in the race, but I stand for principles over politics,” he said. “I commit to pardon Trump promptly on January 20, 2025, and to restore the rule of law in our country.”

US House speaker Kevin McCarthy has promised to use his position to come to Trump’s defense, echoing the former president’s claims that the indictment was politically motivated. Calling it a “dark day” for the country, the top Republican in the House tweeted, “it is unconscionable for a President to indict the leading candidate opposing him”.

Claiming that Biden also kept classified documents, he added: “House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”

Not all Republicans agree with the characterization, however. Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, who is challenging Trump for the party’s presidential nomination, called on him to end his campaign.

“Donald Trump’s actions – from his willful disregard for the constitution to his disrespect for the rule of law – should not define our nation or the Republican party,” he said. “This is a sad day for our country.”

Former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steel agreed, rebutting the claims that Trump is being targeted. “Remember: he is in this position because of his own actions; there was no ‘witch-hunt’; a federal judge ruled there was probable cause Trump committed a crime.” Steele tweeted. “HE owns this.”

The charges have done little to slow the Trump campaign down. Reportedly emboldened by the indictment, he is still planning to go ahead with campaign stops in Georgia and North Carolina this weekend and will likely use the charges to rally his base around him.

CNN reports someone close to the team said that he and his advisers are “very jacked up right now” and “ready to fight back”. But even if they can frame the charges in an advantageous way for supporters, significant challenges remain.

More from CNN:

Despite possibly giving Trump a boost in polls and fundraising that could help him in the Republican primary, several top advisers know the risk associated with a federal indictment and believe it will hurt Trump in the long term.

Trump and his team had been bracing for a potential indictment in the investigation into his handling of classified documents. However, many of them were shocked to learn of the actual indictment earlier tonight. Multiple sources told CNN they are still trying to figure out what exactly the charges are.”

The charges are historic – marking the first time a former president has been indicted – but also come as he remains a Republican frontrunner in his bid to retake the White House.

His base is expected to rally around him and already Republican supporters have echoed his claims that the investigation is politically motivated. Texas congressman Troy Nehls tweeted Trump’s Truth Social post stating, “President Trump has been indicted. We live in a Banana Republic.” Senator Chuck Grassley and congressman Wesley Hunt both tied the news to unproven allegations that Biden was involved in a foreign bribery scheme. (NBC reports Biden’s response about the document was “It’s a bunch of malarkey.”)

But according to a Yahoo-YouGov poll taken late last month, non-Republican voters think the allegations against Trump are “serious”. The poll reports that 66% of registered voters expressed that view. Meanwhile, only 42% of registered Republicans called the crime serious. The news also altered some American perceptions of the former president, with 34% responding that the allegations caused them to view him more negatively, with 43% saying their view did not change.

The justice department investigation – launched in 2022 after the National Archives discovered classified materials in 15 boxes of documents Trump wrongfully kept after he left office – has focused on three statutes under title 18 of the US criminal code: willful retention of national defense information, obstruction of justice and the retention of government documents.

Prosecutors also looked into whether Trump showed others classified national security materials that were found in his Mar-a-Lago office.

My colleague Hugo Lowell reports:

The investigation into the obstruction, meanwhile, has focused on whether the failure by Trump to fully comply with the subpoena last year was a deliberate act of obstruction because he wanted to retain the classified documents even after he had left office, the people said.

Last June, the since-recused Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran found 38 classified documents in the storage room at Mar-a-Lago and told the justice department that no further materials remained there – which came into question when the FBI seized 101 more classified documents months later.

Corcoran later told associates he felt misled because he had asked whether he should search elsewhere at Mar-a-Lago, such as Trump’s office, but was waved off, the Guardian first reported. Corcoran’s notes also showed he told Trump he had to return all classified documents in his possession.

The White House has not issued a statement or commented on the indictment, aside from emphasizing that the justice department investigation is independent and not reporting to the Biden administration.

One official told CNN that the president learned of the charges along with the public from this evening’s news coverage.

In a 4-minute video posted to Truth Social, Trump argued that he’s innocent and that this is a politically motivated attack – a rallying cry he’s used through the years to bolster his base and deny the many accusations made against him.

“I’m an innocent man. I’m an innocent person,” he said, calling the investigation “election interference at the highest level”.

He used the video to frame his presidency in a favorable light before saying that “our country is going to hell”.

“We’re a failing nation” he said. “And this is what they do.”

Here’s a bit of background on the case and what we know so far:

• Trump shared the news on Truth Social, telling his followers that he must appear at the federal courthouse in Miami on Tuesday.

• This is the first time the former president has been charged with federal criminal charges by the justice department, but are only one part of his mounting legal troubles. He was also indicted by a Manhattan grand jury in March, faces state criminal charges in New York and is being investigated by the district attorney in Fulton county, Georgia, over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

• The justice department inquiry, headed by special counsel Jack Smith, has been investigating whether Trump illegally handled documents and this indictment signifies their case is a strong one. As my colleague Sam Levine points out:

The justice department is generally extremely careful when they choose to bring cases and so the fact that prosecutors felt confident enough to indict Trump, knowing the political maelstrom that would result, is a signal of the strength of the case against him.

• Among the evidence against Trump is a 2021 recording, where he can be heard discussing one of the classified documents. First reported by CNN, on the recording he refers to the document as classified, undercutting his defense that he declassified the documents during his presidency.

In a historic development Donald Trump has been indicted for charges connected to his alleged retention of national security documents.

The charges – which include willful retention of national security material, obstruction and conspiracy, according to a person familiar with the matter – came more than a year after federal prosecutors began investigating the former president for knowingly retaining the classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after he left office.