Trump says he’s been charged by Florida grand jury amid Mar-a-Lago documents probe

Former President Donald Trump said Thursday night he’s been indicted by a federal grand jury in Florida following an investigation into his taking classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago resort when he left office.

In a furious statement, Trump said he’s been summoned to federal court in Miami next Tuesday.

“The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax,” he raged.

“I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States, who received far more votes than any sitting President in the History of our Country,” Trump wrote, adding, in all caps, that he was innocent.

The Justice Department did not immediately confirm the indictment or provide comment.

The unprecedented indictment marks the first time in American history that a former president has faced federal criminal charges and could dramatically shake up the 2024 race for the White House, in which Trump is the Republican front runner.

It comes several weeks after Trump was also criminally charged in Manhattan in connection with hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, a case that is considered far less legally consequential.

Trump admits taking thousands of documents with him to Mar-a-Lago when he left office in 2021.

After months of haggling with federal archives officials, he returned several boxes. But prosecutors demanded the rest of them, prompting them to hit him with a subpoena.

Prosecutors later became convinced that he was hiding even more documents, leading to a bombshell judge-approved search that turned up more than 100 additional classified documents.

The documents found by the feds reportedly include some that described the nuclear capabilities of a foreign power and some that could expose American spies and intelligence methods.

Some of the most sensitive documents were found in Trump’s personal office, strongly suggesting they were improperly moved from a locked storage room where most of them were place after being brought from the White House.

Trump dug himself deeper into a legal hole by repeatedly claiming that he had every right to take the documents and has not denied showing them to others.

He also appeared to confirm that he intentionally took them from the White House, undermining a potential future defense that he didn’t know exactly what was taken.

“I would have every right to,” he told a recent CNN town hall.

Video surveillance footage shows workers taking boxes into the room on June 2, 2022, the day before top prosecutors went to meet with Trump lawyers and take back documents.

One major breakthrough in the probe came in March when prosecutors convinced a judge to compel the testimony of Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran because she found there was probable cause to believe Trump used his conversations with his own lawyer to commit crimes.

Prosecutors suspect Trump misled Corcoran to trick him into drafting a letter saying that a “diligent search” turned up no additional classified documents, a claim that turned out to be false.

The motive for Trump’s document hoarding have never been publicly established, although tantalizing hints have emerged.

He was caught on audiotape waving a document he said was a plan for a potential U.S. attack on Iran at a meeting at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf resort about an unrelated book project.

Smith has also subpoenaed details of Trump’s company’s dealing with foreign nations in the Middle East and elsewhere, suggesting he may be hunting for evidence that Trump hoped to parlay the documents into lucrative business deals.

Since leaving office, Trump has spearheaded deals in Oman and with Saudi Arabia, which partnered with Trump to host its ultra-lucrative LIV pro golf tournaments.

The documents case is only one of several legal problems facing Trump, who faces a March 2024 trial in Manhattan on criminal charges related to the hush money payments.

Smith’s prosecutors are also investigating the sprawling effort by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which climaxed in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

High-profile witnesses like ex-Vice President Mike Pence and Trump’s own lawyers have been forced to testify before a separate grand jury about that scheme. There is no sign that charges are imminent in that probe.

In Georgia, prosecutors in Atlanta’s Fulton County are expected to decide by August whether to charge Trump with election interference or other crimes in trying to undo his narrow loss of the Peach State to President Joe Biden.

Trump was also recently found liable and ordered to pay $5 million to columnist E. Jean Carroll for sexually abusing her in a department store dressing room and defaming her.

He faces a second civil suit by Carroll and potentially stiffer financial penalties after he repeated false claims that she was lying and the case is a hoax.