The Daily - Special Episode: A Second Trump Indictment

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

The seven new criminal charges against Donald Trump relate to his handling of classified material upon leaving office and then obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them. Michael S. Schmidt, who covers national security and federal investigations for The Times, talks about what this will mean for Trump, and for President Biden, whose administration will now be prosecuting his biggest potential rival for the White House.Guest: Michael S. Schmidt, a Washington correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: Trump is the first former president in U.S. history to face federal charges.The former president assailed Hillary Clinton for her handling of sensitive information. Now, the same issue threatens his chances of reclaiming the White House.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. In a momentous legal decision, the Justice Department has decided to bring federal criminal charges against Donald Trump over his handling of classified materials. I spoke with my colleague, Mike Schmidt, about what that will mean for Trump and for President Biden, whose administration will now be prosecuting his biggest potential rival for the White House. It's Friday, June 9th. Mike, good evening. I just want to set the scene for people.

It is 9.25 p.m. We are calling you in your car in suburban Virginia, which means you weren't prepared for this. We weren't prepared for this. This was a surprise. So thank you for making time for us. two months, former President Trump has been indicted. These are astonishing times. So just to start, Mike, what do we know at this point on Thursday night about what has just happened? About an hour and a half ago, Donald Trump took to his social media platform and announced that he had been indicted in connection with an investigation of his handling of classified documents. He broke the story himself. He volunteered it. Trump just put it out there. Trump has been under investigation by a special counsel for many months.

Investigators have been looking at documents he took from the White House at the end of the administration and held on to and refused to give back to the government. In the minutes after Trump put this out there, our reporters scrambled to try and figure out what's known about this indictment. And they learned that there are seven charges. Okay. And what do we know about these charges? We know that at least one of the charges is a conspiracy to obstruct justice. Another is providing the government with false statements. One is a violation of the Espionage Act, which almost always relates to the retention of classified documents. So we can see a picture emerging that the government's indictment

is going to focus on how Trump wanted to hold on to these documents that were not his, they were the government's, even after the government asked for them back and ultimately subpoenaed them. Right. Well, let's just reestablish the basic facts here. This is a case that has received a tremendous amount of attention.

And I think by now, the basic facts are relatively well known. But just to recap them, Trump leaves office and takes with him hundreds of classified documents, which the National Archive discovers are missing and asks for the return of. That doesn't happen. Instead, Trump tries to keep them, which prompts the FBI to search Mar-a-Lago and get many of them back. And these charges you're outlining, they seem mostly focused on the alleged crime of a cover-up rather than the original taking of documents. Do I have that right? Yeah. Had Donald Trump just given all of this back when the government nicely asked for it in the months after he left office, there would almost certainly be no problem here. But the issue is that the government asked nicely, and then it asked in a more stern way through a subpoena. In a more stern way through a subpoena.

Right. And from the beginning of that process, even as it got more serious and serious, Trump and his lawyers essentially did everything they could to hold on to these materials until the Justice Department took this extraordinary step last August and executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago to essentially get them back. Right. You're starting to hint at this, but what do we understand to be the most compelling evidence gathered by the special counsel to justify these charges that Trump sought to obstruct the government's effort to retrieve these documents. So we will learn much more when we actually see the indictment when the Justice Department unseals it. But from what we know, the most glaring example is that as the Justice Department was trying to get these back,

get these back. Trump's lawyer said to the department under oath that he had handed everything over and had no more classified documents. But then when the FBI went in and did a search of Mar-a-Lago, they found dozens upon dozens of classified documents showing as clear as day that what Trump's lawyer had told the department was completely wrong. So as the special counsel's office dug into this investigation and essentially talked to everyone around Trump, ranging from his valets to his secret service agents to his lawyers. They were able to learn about a range of other things that Trump had done to essentially try and hide or hold on to the documents in the face of the government's efforts. Such as what? They learned about how Trump had used an aid to go and get the documents and bring them to him so he could go through them and figure out which ones he wanted to hand back to. They were able to force his lawyers to testify, something that usually

never happens before a grand jury about what Trump was telling them. Investigators were also able to obtain an audio recording that had captured Trump just months after he left office discussing a document about plans to essentially invade Iran. And it was during that conversation on that audio recording that Trump said he was unable to declassify the documents because he had already left office, essentially signaling that he knew it was still classified. I mean, there's a bunch of things about this alleged audio recording that seem very important. The first is that it reveals that the nature of these documents is very sensitive, war planning around Iran. And secondly, it, as you said, suggests that he very well understands, in fact, says it

out loud in a recording, that he understands the documents he has kept are classified. And on top of that, you don't need to be an FBI espionage investigator to know that the president of the United States is given some of the most sensitive information that the government has. So if this is stuff that Trump took from the White House, it was stuff that was given to him when he was president and contains the national security secrets that underpin all of America's military and intelligence operations around the world. Right. And as our colleagues have reported in The Times, these documents were being kept in a pretty unsecured location at a resort with members who mingled very close by. As a diagram that our colleagues did showed, there were parties at Mar-a-Lago just feet from the closet where many of these documents are believed to have been held. believed to have been held. Other documents were found in the desk in his office, an office in which hundreds of people have come parading through in the two and a half years since he left office.

So not only did he take these documents with him and then mislead the government about it, but it's not like he was holding them in some special secret safe that no one could break into. They were kind of just mingling around Mar-a-Lago like anything else. Mike, these are federal charges being brought by the Department of Justice and the Attorney General, Merrick Garland, who answers to President Biden, which now means the administration of the sitting Democratic president who is seeking re-election will be trying to convict his Republican front-runner opponent in the coming presidential race. This is astonishing. It's so, so extraordinary.

As we head into the 2024 election, Donald Trump will be defending himself in court against Biden's Justice Department at the same time that he'll be trying to win the Republican nomination so he can take on Biden. I just, I don't know what to say. We thought we had seen everything between the investigations into him when he was president and the impeachment. But even this has a layer of extraordinariness. It's just Trump finds a way to outdo himself. Mike, adding to the extraordinary nature of all this is the fact that President Biden himself is under investigation by a different special counsel for the way he handled classified documents that were found to conceal them. Regardless, this, we have to imagine, is going to fuel Trump's claim that the Biden Justice Department

is the wrong entity to bring this case against Trump and that they're out to get him. Look, Trump cited Biden's documents in his announcement of his own indictment. Understanding classified documents and the ins and outs of the Presidential Records Act and how classified documents should be handled is not something that the average person is interested in or will understand. But Republicans will seize on the idea that Biden has done the same thing as Trump to try and undermine the validity

of this investigation. Right. And I have to think that this will inevitably fit into Donald Trump's narrative now many years in the making about the federal government being weaponized against him. Of course. Even when Trump was president of the United States and controlled the Justice Department and the entire executive branch, he claimed that the deep state of the government was out to get him. Now he's being charged by the Biden Justice Department. And there's never been anything like what's happened. I'm an innocent man. I'm an innocent person. Not surprisingly, on the same platform where he announced his indictment, he put out a video.

The whole thing is a hoax, just like Russia, Russia, Russia, just like the fake dossier was a hoax. You saw the Durham report. You saw the Mueller report. It was all a big hoax. You had two impeachments and they lost and we won. Claiming that the government was out to get him. I'm innocent and we will prove that very, very soundly and hopefully very quickly. Thank you very much. So Mike, what happens now? Trump's announced he's been indicted. We're waiting for the indictments to be unsealed. What do the next few days look like? In Trump's announcement, he said that on Tuesday afternoon, he will be appearing in court in Miami.

It's likely that what Trump's referring to is that he will be arraigned. He essentially will be booked and brought before a judge who will determine whether he can be released and under what terms. And while that scene will be extraordinary, as we keep on saying, it'll be very similar to the one that we saw just weeks ago when he was arraigned in court in New York on charges filed there. Right. And like that arraignment in New York on 30 felony counts related to a hush money scheme that Donald Trump was alleged to have been involved in, we already know will involve a trial that starts in March of 2024 at the height of the Republican

presidential primaries. Do we know anything about when a federal trial related to classified documents might get underway? So given the complexities of this case and the fact that the federal system tends to take a little bit longer than most, it's likely that Trump may not go on trial for another two years or so until after the election. Wow. So this is not something that will be resolved soon.

And like, if Trump does go to trial, and if he is convicted, what kind of sentence could he face with these federal charges? We will really need to see the indictment to get an exact figure about his exposure. But we know that people that have been found guilty on similar charges have faced years, if not decades, in prison. The government takes classified documents and the retention of them very seriously. On top of that, in this case,

you have efforts to obstruct the government's attempts to get those materials back. So all of that taken together means that he could face a fair amount of time in prison if found guilty. amount of time in prison if found guilty. He has never faced down something like he's facing down with this indictment. But as we've seen, Donald Trump has an almost Houdini-like ability to get himself out of trouble. Well, Mike, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me. of trouble. Well, Mike, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Thanks for having me. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Thursday night, congressional Republicans reacted to the latest Trump indictment with fury, vowing to use their power to retaliate against the Biden administration for bringing the charges. In a tweet, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy wrote that Republicans, quote, will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable. Democrats, meanwhile, called the charges both justified and overdue. Congressman Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said that the indictment revealed that Trump,

quote, put our national security in grave danger. Today's episode was produced by Rachel Quester and Mary Wilson, with help from Asta Chaturvedi. It was edited by Rachel Quester and Mary Wilson, with help from Asta Chaturvedi. It was edited by Rachel Quester and Lisa Chow, contains original music by Mary and Lozano, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg

and Ben Landsferk of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.