June 9 (UPI) — Prosecutors unsealed a 38-count federal indictment against Donald Trump and an associate Friday, releasing new details in the criminal case against the former president and his handling of classified documents.
Trump faces 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information, according to the indictment, which is being heard in the Southern District of Florida in Miami.
Trump’s aide Walt Nauta also is named and charged in the 49-page indictment.
“The purpose of the conspiracy was for TRUMP to keep classified documents he has taken with him from the White House and to hide and conceal them from a federal grand jury,” the indictment states.
The former president is expected to appear in court in person on Tuesday but will have a new legal team with him.
Special Counsel Jack Smith was scheduled to make public comments on the case later in the afternoon Friday.
Earlier on Friday, lawyers who had been representing Trump in the federal case over potential mishandling of classified documents resigned.
“I want to thank Jim Trusty and John Rowley for their work, but they were up against a very dishonest, corrupt, evil, and ‘sick’ group of people, the likes of which has not been seen before,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social account Friday.
“We will be announcing additional lawyers in the coming days. When will Joe Biden be Indicted for his many crimes against our Nation? MAGA!”
The two lawyers issued their own joint statement Friday.
“This morning we tendered our resignations as counsel to President Trump, and we will no longer represent him on either the indicted case or the January 6 investigation,” Trusty and Rowley wrote.
“Now that the case has been filed in Miami, this is a logical moment for us to step aside and let others carry the cases through to completion. We have no plans to hold media appearances that address our withdrawals or any other confidential communications we’ve had with the president or his legal team.”
The news comes after Trump was formally indicted on federal charges surrounding his handling of documents marked “Top Secret” after leaving the Oval Office. FBI agents raided his Mar-a-Lago resort home in Palm Beach, Florida, last summer, taking boxes of classified documents relating to his time in the White House.
The case reportedly is being assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, ABC first reported. Several other outlets, including the New York Times also reported Cannon’s name on the court filings.
Cannon, 42, was appointed by Trump and has previously handled motions related to the Mar-a-Lago case.
In September, she granted Trump’s request for a “special master” to review the seized documents. At the time, the former president contended the FBI may have planted evidence among the hundreds of papers.
Cannon’s directive was opposed by the Justice Department, which argued she overstepped her bounds.
It was later overturned last December in a unanimous ruling by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Weeks before, the same three-judge panel was heavily critical of Trump’s legal team, and the request to appoint a “special master” in the case.
