June 09, 2023 12:22 PM UTC

Holy Shit! Unsealed Trump Indictment is Devastating

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE #3: Here’s the entirety of the statement made by Special Counsel Jack Smith, who said, “We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone.” Smith said that Trump’s actions “put this country at risk.”

Jack Smith: “Today, an indictment was unsealed, charging Donald J. Trump of felony violations of our national security laws, as well participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice. This indictment was voted by a grand jury of citizens in the southern district of Florida.” pic.twitter.com/XD5EGOkTOq

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 9, 2023

—–

UPDATE #2: Via The Washington Post:

—–

UPDATE:

Reading the indictment. A thread:

Paragraph 3 is perhaps one of the most damning statements ever made about an American president (1/x) pic.twitter.com/wxjDXsazDF

— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) June 9, 2023

—–

The criminal indictment against former President Donald Trump that Trump himself announced on Thursday has been unsealed. We wrote about some of the reaction to the news earlier today, but now that the official indictment has been released, this story requires a new headline altogether.

It is so much worse than anyone might have imagined — 38 separate counts worse.

After seeing the unsealed indictment, it is no wonder that Trump’s primary attorneys, Jim Trusty and John Rowley, abruptly resigned from the case on Friday morning. You can CLICK HERE to read the full indictment.

Here’s the rundown, via The New York Times:

The 49-page indictment gave the clearest picture yet of the files that Mr. Trump took with him when he left the White House. It said he had illegally kept documents concerning “United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.”

Prosecutors presented evidence that Mr. Trump shared a highly sensitive “plan of attack” against Iran to visitors at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. in July 2021 — and was recorded on tape describing the material as “highly confidential” and “secret,” while it admitting it had not been declassified. In another incident in September 2021, he shared a top secret military map with a staff member at his political action committee who did not have a security clearance. [Pols emphasis]

It is unusual for prosecutors to unseal an indictment before a defendant shows up in court for an initial appearance. But the decision to release the document in this case came as Mr. Trump and his allies had been aggressively attacking the investigation and, in the view of federal law enforcement officials, distorting elements of the case.

The Washington Post notes that prosecutors allege that Trump also repeatedly tried to obstruct the investigation.

Special Counsel Jack Smith will make public remarks about the indictment this afternoon (scheduled for 1:00 pm Colorado time).

For more details, check out this Twitter thread from CBS News reporter Robert Costa.

As for the many Republicans who immediately spoke out on Thursday about Trump’s indictment being some sort of “witch hunt”… let’s just say they probably wish Twitter had an ‘edit’ function:

We will update as more information becomes available.