Donald Trump said on his Truth Social platform that he is under investigation by the federal government for allegedly mishandling confidential materials after leaving the White House.
“I have been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday,” Trump wrote in the post. “I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States.”
With the sealed indictment, the scandal-plagued Republican would achieve yet another “first”: No US president, living or dead, has ever been charged with a crime. After Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg unveiled 34 state-level felony charges of falsifying business records in a case involving a hush-money payment to an adult film star in April, Trump became the first US president to be criminally prosecuted.
“I’m an innocent man,” Trump maintained in a video posted shortly after the announcement on Thursday. “I did nothing wrong.”
With the sealed indictment, the scandal-plagued Republican would achieve yet another “first”: No US president, living or dead, has ever been charged with a crime.
After Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg unveiled 34 state-level felony charges of falsifying business records in a case involving a hush-money payment to an adult film star in April, Trump became the first US president to be criminally prosecuted.
“Our country is going to hell. And they come after Donald Trump, weaponising the justice department, weaponising the FBI,” Trump said in the video, claiming the indictment is intended to derail his 2024 candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. “It’s called election interference. They’re trying to destroy a reputation so they can win an election.”
Following a search of Mar-a-Lago in August, a number of other prominent politicians, such as current US President Joe Biden and Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence, came forward to hand up any secret materials kept at their homes. However, a lot of analysts have said that Trump’s situation is unique.
The National Archives initially removed 15 boxes of records from Mar-a-Lago as Trump was getting ready to leave office in January 2022, some of which contained sensitive data.
However, there were still more records there. In May of that year, the former president’s possession of sensitive documents required the FBI to issue a subpoena.
A search warrant was issued for Mar-a-Lago in August when FBI investigators began to believe there were still more records there, despite a signed statement from Trump’s legal team claiming otherwise. About 100 more documents with secret markings were recovered as a result, increasing the total to 300.
