Trump investigations: The classified documents case

A federal judge in Florida on Monday threw out the criminal case focused on how former President Donald Trump handled classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, ruling that the appointment of the prosecutor in the case, Special Counsel Jack Smith, violated the Constitution.

It is a huge setback for prosecutors in a case that had already suffered repeated delays, making a verdict even before today’s ruling unlikely to come before the November election, and delivering a big win to Trump at the start of this week’s Republican National Convention. But it’s hardly a surprise given the repeated rulings in favor of Trump given by US District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who has been accused of partisan bias in favor of the GOP and the former president. Prosecutors are expected to appeal the ruling and potentially ask that the case be reassigned to a different federal judge.

A Manhattan jury just found former President Donald Trump guilty on 34 felony counts. The former president is still facing other criminal charges across four jurisdictions — Georgia, Florida, New York, and the District of Columbia — all as he runs for the presidency again.

The cases, involving allegations of attempted election theft, mishandling classified documents, and hush money payments, have grown so sprawling that it’s tough for anyone but the most die-hard political obsessive to follow them in detail.

We now have more information about how prosecutors conducted their search for classified documents that former President Donald Trump kept after leaving office, despite court orders requiring that he turn them over.

On Wednesday, a magistrate judge unsealed additional portions of an affidavit submitted by federal authorities when they sought a court order allowing them to raid Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last August. It has new details on security footage that showed boxes of documents being moved and the interactions Trump’s lawyers had with prosecutors. But it still leaves some questions about the case unanswered, including how prosecutors came to suspect that Trump hadn’t turned over all of the documents in his possession.

Former President Donald Trump insists that he’s being unjustly criminalized for retaining documents from his time in office, while his predecessors and political opponents are being let off the hook for the same behavior. But that’s just not the case. Though other politicians have previously retained documents without legal consequences, Trump’s case differs in key ways, and that’s what drove prosecutors to seek the extraordinary federal charges against him.

In his first public remarks following his arraignment on 37 federal charges Tuesday, Trump made a series of inapt comparisons to cases involving his 2016 Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, former President Bill Clinton, his onetime vice president Mike Pence, and President Joe Biden. All four have faced questions about holding on to records related to their public service. If they weren’t indicted for retaining documents, he claims, then the only plausible conclusion is that he’s been singled out as the victim of yet another “witch hunt.”

Special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of former president Donald Trump in the classified documents investigation was unsealed Friday. It is detailed and damning.

The indictment alleges that, while out of office, Trump deliberately kept many documents involving military, nuclear, and intelligence secrets. It makes the case that he knew full well some of that information was classified.

Former President Donald Trump is now facing his second indictment — this time, from the feds.

Trump announced in posts on Truth Social Thursday evening that the government had informed his attorneys that he had been indicted and that he should report to the federal courthouse in Miami Tuesday afternoon. The New York Times confirmed the indictment, citing multiple people familiar with the matter.