Trump pleads not guilty to classified documents charges

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - Former US President Donald Trump pleaded not guilty Tuesday to 37 counts brought by federal prosecutors related to his alleged retention of classified government records after he left office.

Trump entered his plea as expected at the federal courthouse in Miami, Florida, according to multiple reports. He is expected to deliver public remarks later Tuesday from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Trump became the first former US president to face federal charges when he was indicted by a Florida grand jury last week. He faces separate state charges related to his business dealings in New York.

The 37 counts include 31 of willful retention of national defense information, most of which are tied to documents that were seized when the FBI executed a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago estate on Aug. 8 last year. Eleven of the charges relate to documents that were handed to FBI investigators by Trump's attorneys in June.

The investigation kicked off after the National Archives and Records Administration retrieved 15 boxes of government files, including 184 classified documents, in January. It subsequently handed them over to the FBI as it referred the matter to the bureau.

Trump faces an additional count of conspiracy to obstruct justice alongside Waltine Nauta, a military valet to Trump during his time in the White House who went on to serve as a personal aide after he left office in January 2021.

The men are also charged with withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation and carrying out a scheme to conceal.

Trump and Nauta are separately each charged with one count of making false statements to federal investigators. The indictment was filed Thursday in the Southern District of Florida after it was returned by a grand jury.

Trump has maintained the case against him is politically-motivated, a charge denied by Special Counsel Jack Smith who was tapped to independently carry out the federal probe by US Attorney General Merrick Garland in November.

Speaking after the indictment was unsealed Friday, Smith said the application of US law, and collection of facts "determines the outcome of an investigation. Nothing more, nothing less."

"We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone," he said, as he vowed to "seek a speedy trial on this matter consistent with the public interest and the rights of the accused."