The federal indictment of Donald Trump recounts, in damning detail, the story of a shocking and unprecedented crime: Special counsel Jack Smith alleges that the former president willfully retained classified national security documents after leaving office, storing them in an insecure location at Mar-a-Lago and showing them off to members of the public. But the indictment is equally focused on the cover-up that occurred after the Justice Department caught wind of this initial crime. According to Smith, Trump and Waltine Nauta—once his “bag man,” now his co-defendant—hid key documents from Trump’s own lawyer and falsely informed the FBI that they had turned over all relevant materials.
This blundering plot constituted a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice, forming the basis of six more felony charges for Trump. Four of these charges carry a 20-year maximum sentence, 10 years longer than the maximum sentence for unlawfully retaining national security documents. The charges, in other words, are just as serious, if not more so, than the allegations at the heart of the indictment.
Trump and Nauta were not exactly subtle in their alleged scheme to conceal documents from the prying eyes of lawyers and FBI agents. According to the indictment, the grand jury issued a subpoena on May 11, 2022, demanding all documents in Trump’s possession with classification markings. Twelve days later, two of his attorneys met to discuss the matter. Trump told them: “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?” and suggested that his lawyers should lie on his behalf. “Trump Attorney 1,” who is undoubtedly Evan Corcoran, said he would return on June 2 to go over the boxes of documents, identify the papers sought by the grand jury, and ensure compliance with the subpoena.
Between that meeting and Corcoran’s return, Trump allegedly directed Nauta to smuggle approximately 64 boxes of classified documents from the Mar-a-Lago storage room to Trump’s personal residence. (Some were stored in a shower.) The FBI interviewed Nauta during this period, asking him if he was aware of any boxes transferred to Trump’s private residence. Nauta—who had been busy moving boxes into Trump’s private residence—said no.
Shortly before Corcoran returned on June 2, Trump allegedly told Nauta to return 30 boxes to the storage room. It appears that the former president had removed all documents of interest and then returned enough boxes to trick Corcoran into thinking that he had access to the entire set of files. Corcoran still found 38 documents with classified markings; Trump may have overlooked these documents, or intentionally left them for Corcoran to find so he would not grow suspicious. Either way, Trump allegedly implied to Corcoran that he should “pluck” them out before turning over the files to the FBI. (He did not.)
Then, on Trump’s behalf, Corcoran and another attorney certified that they had searched all of the “boxes that were moved from the White House to Florida” and provided all classified documents to federal investigators, as required by law. Following this handoff, the indictment states, Nauta surreptitiously loaded several boxes onto the plane that Trump and his family would fly “north for the summer.” Trump and Nauta must have thought they had gotten away with their alleged scheme scot-free.
They hadn’t. Their alleged box switcheroo was captured on surveillance footage obtained by prosecutors and shown to the grand jury. It formed one basis of the warrant that authorized a search of Mar-a-Lago in August, when FBI agents found many more documents that Trump had allegedly concealed from his lawyers and law enforcement.
Federal law does not look kindly upon criminal conspiracies to obstruct an investigation into the unlawful concealment of top-secret national security documents. These papers, after all, included highly classified information about other countries’ nuclear programs and military activities, details about the United States’ own nuclear weaponry, information about potential “retaliation in response to a foreign attack,” revelations about the United States’ own military vulnerabilities, and much more. Trump allegedly concocted a weeks-long plot to ensure that he could keep all these documents in his personal possession. That now translates into extraordinarily serious federal charges.
Just how serious? Smith hit Trump with a variety of charges designed to punish suspects who attempt to thwart an FBI investigation. The marquee charge is “conspiracy to obstruct justice,” backed up by several charges of illegally concealing documents that are the subject of a federal investigation, as well as making false statements to law enforcement. A majority of these crimes carry a 20-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine. Each is a felony offense.
It may be fruitful to compare this obstruction case with the one that Robert Mueller identified but failed to charge. In that investigation, Mueller found that Trump had used thinly veiled code—telling his underlings “I expect loyalty,” for instance—to cajole them into lying to law enforcement. He urged various associates to withhold the whole truth at key junctures and applied personal pressure to lobby them against cooperating with the probe. And he tried to wheedle his White House counsel into firing Mueller. All damning stuff, to be sure. But compare that to what Smith has; proof that Trump: 1) repeatedly lied to his own lawyers to avoid complying with a subpoena; 2) directed the concealment of incriminatory evidence so that the FBI would not find it; and 3) lied to the FBI himself by representing, through his lawyers, that he had complied with prosecutors’ demands. The difference is stark. Mueller’s case connected the dots between various unseemly actions to identify a broader conspiracy behind the scenes. Smith’s case rests on surveillance footage, audio recordings, photographs, texts, and other communications that catch Trump in the act of obstructing justice. It really is that black and white.
The former president is in grave legal jeopardy. These are major crimes that carry life-ruining penalties. Smith’s ironclad allegations of a criminal conspiracy to obstruct a federal investigation are not a mere afterthought to this indictment. They are an independent and dire threat to Donald Trump.
