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Donald Trump is facing charges related to classified documents because he tried to cover up his wrongdoing, his former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has said.
On Thursday, a grand jury indicted Trump on 37 counts including obstruction of justice and the unlawful retention of defense information for storing dozens of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after leaving office in January 2021. The former president has been accused of refusing to return them to the FBI and the National Archives. On Tuesday, at 3 p.m. ET, he will be arraigned in a Miami courthouse, after which he is expected to be released.
Mulvaney, who served as the acting White House chief of staff under Trump from January 2019 until March 2020, told the British right-wing media company GB News that the legal case against the former president is "strong." Newsweek has reached out to Trump's legal team via email for comment.
"If Donald Trump had done what Joe Biden did here, what Mike Pence did here—when they found their classified documents, they gave them back," he said on Monday. "And there are no charges against Pence, there's not going to be charges against Biden. The difference here is what Trump did to try and cover up what he did in the first place."
Mulvaney said: "As is so often the case, it's not the underlying crime, it's the interference, it's the cover-up, that gets folks in trouble. And they have him with significant evidence, it looks like, as to obstruction. So I think that the chances of a guilty verdict are fairly high and the chances of real jail time are pretty high."
Asked about how long a jail sentence Trump would be given if found guilty, Mulvaney said that "with his age, it doesn't really make much difference. I think the maximum, if you add up all the math, the maximum could be over 500 years, the minimum would be 100 years."
Former Trump chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Trump's federal indictment: "I think the chances of a guilty verdict are fairly high, and the chances of real jail time are pretty high." pic.twitter.com/BCCYFHnfkN
— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) June 12, 2023
The charges against him include 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information under the Espionage Act, with the charges carrying a maximum term of 10 years imprisonment. Four other charges relate to conspiracy and withholding or concealing documents and carry a maximum sentence of 20 years each.
Two counts relating to scheming to conceal as well as false statements and representations to justice officials carry maximum sentences of five years each.
Thousands of documents were seized during an FBI raid last year, including about 100 marked as classified.
Trump has maintained his innocence throughout the Department of Justice's probe and the indictment, alleging that the investigation is politically motivated and calling it "election interference at the highest level."
He has insisted that documents found by the FBI at his Florida resort last summer were declassified, though a tape available to federal prosecutors and obtained by CNN appears to show that the former president was aware of being in possession of at least one document that he had not declassified and was then unable to.
"As president, I could have declassified, but now I can't," Trump said, according to the transcript obtained by the news company. "Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this," he said. "This was done by the military and given to me."
Trump is seeking re-election to the White House in 2024 and is currently considered the favorite among the Republican candidates who have put their names forward for the GOP primary.
Update 06/13/2023 12:00 p.m. ET: The story was updated with a new headline.
About the writer
Giulia Carbonaro is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on the U.S. economy, housing market, property ... Read more