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The new charges filed against Donald Trump in the classified documents case are among some of the most damning for the former president due to the evidence against him, according to a legal expert.
Trump has long denied any wrongdoing in connection to the classified documents case, and has already pleaded not guilty to 37 charges. In a statement on Thursday, Trump's campaign team said: "Deranged Jack Smith knows that they have no case and is casting about for any way to salvage their illegal witch hunt and to get someone other than Donald Trump to run against Crooked Joe Biden."
Newsweek has contacted Trump's office for comment via email.
In a new superseded indictment unsealed on Thursday, Trump was charged with three additional felony offenses as part of Special Counsel Jack Smith's probe. These include allegations he called on Mar-a-Lago employee Carlos De Oliveira to delete security-camera footage taken at the Florida resort, which had been sought by federal prosecutors.
Trump is also facing an additional charge under Espionage Act stemming from his alleged possession of a war plan. It is believed to be a classified material about a potential attack on Iran during his time as president. Trump was recorded talking about how he was in possession of the document at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, in a July 2021 meeting.
The new charges add further legal peril for the former president amid his latest White House run. It is also heavily rumored that the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential candidacy will soon be indicted as part of Smith's January 6 probe, as well as an investigation in Georgia over the attempts to overturn the state's 2020 election results.
During the July 2021 Bedminster meeting with people who did not have security clearance to view classified information, the sound of rustling papers can be heard as Trump discusses the secret Pentagon document.
Elie Honig is a former federal prosecutor and CNN's legal analyst. He said that Trump now being charged with willfully retaining national defense information in connection to the war plan is the "single most important incident" alleged in the entire indictment against the former president.
"Here's Donald Trump months after he's left the White House, and he's talking about war plans," Honig said on CNN's The Situation Room.
"He's alluding to documents. You can hear papers being shuffled, but the question is, does he actually have a classified document in front of him that he's showing to these civilians with no security clearance?" Honig added. "Now we know the answer, those papers he was shuffling? Yes, they were classified documents.
"They were related to war plans, and the DOJ [Department of Justice] has that document. That is now a new charge in this indictment, and that makes that incident so much worse than just Donald Trump exaggerating or bragging or bluffing as he has suggested," Honig said.
"This means he actually had that classified document in his possession," he added. "He was showing it to others. He was bragging about it. He was disseminating it, to use the legalistic word. That's an enormously powerful incident for prosecutors."
The meeting Trump had at his golf club in Bedminster took place between his aides and two people who were writing a biography of former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. During the meeting, Trump appears to admit to retaining a classified military document about a potential attack on Iran, and that the former president no longer had the power to declassify it.
"I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look [rustling papers]. They presented me this. This is off the record, but they presented me this. This was him," Trump said, in reference to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley.
"See, as president, I could have declassified it. Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret," he added.
The conversation suggests that Trump was aware that he had willfully retained secret information when he left the White House in January 2021. It contradicts his claims that he had declassified all the materials he was in possession of before he left office.
The conversation at Bedminster was previously included in Trump's original classified document indictment, but the former president did not face any charges related to it at the time.
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more