Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to appear in Florida federal court Tuesday afternoon to be arraigned for allegedly refusing to return classified documents to federal authorities after he left the White House.
Trump was already the first former president to face criminal charges and is now the first to face federal charges. An indictment unsealed Friday alleges Trump, with the help of his body man Walt Nauta, flouted a subpoena requiring him to surrender highly sensitive documents that he kept in unsecured locations at his Mar-a-Lago residence — and that the men concealed this from federal officials as well as Trump’s own attorneys. The documents allegedly contained national defense information, including plans to attack an unidentified foreign country, and US nuclear weapons capabilities.
Trump was charged with a total of 37 counts, including willful retention of national defense information under the Espionage Act, making false statements and representations, conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, and scheming to conceal.
US District Judge Aileen Cannon, whom Trump appointed in 2019, is reportedly overseeing the case for now. She was previously appointed as a special master to examine the documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago last year and was criticized for delivering Trump several perplexing wins in those proceedings.
In the days since his indictment, Trump has indicated on his social network Truth Social that he intends to fight the charges, calling them the product of a political “witch hunt” and an attempt to interfere with the 2024 election. He is assembling a new legal team, reportedly headed by Todd Blanche, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York. But it’s unclear whether he’s secured local counsel licensed to practice in Florida.
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