Former US president Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he has been indicted in the White House archives case, in which he is accused of taking entire boxes of documents, some of them marked “classified” and “top secret,” when he left the presidency.
The former president announced the indictment on Thursday evening in a post on his Truth Social network, revealing that he had been ordered to report to a court in Miami, Florida, on Tuesday.
“I have been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM,” Trump posted. "I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States.”
The precise charges were not immediately known, but US media reported that there were seven counts. "We're learning from our sources that there appear to be at least seven counts here," ABC News reported. "This ranges from everything from the willful retention of national defense information to conspiracy to a scheme to conceal, to false statements and representations."
Ahead of the indictment, federal prosecutors had told Trump’s attorneys in early June that he was a target of an ongoing federal criminal investigation.
Some of Trump’s close aides and allies, including ex-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former spokesperson Taylor Budowich, have already testified before grand jurors who brought the indictment.
The existence of the investigation became public when the US Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida in early August 2022, seizing boxes of documents Trump took from the White House when he left office.
Earlier in 2022, Trump had turned over 15 boxes of documents, including some marked as classified and “top secret,” at the request of the National Archives. But National Archives officials and federal investigators believed he held on to more, even though his attorneys had denied it, leading to the Mar-a-Lago search.
Trump has claimed that as president, he had the power to declassify documents simply “by thinking about it.”
