(CNN) — Special counsel Jack Smith’s monthslong investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents has entered a new chapter with the indictment of the former president, sources familiar told CNN Thursday.
Trump has been charged with seven counts in the indictment, according to another source familiar with the matter. The former president wrote on Truth Social that he had been informed by the Justice Department he was indicted and that he was “summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM.”
Smith, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, was tasked in November to look into whether Trump or his aides committed crimes by taking classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago resort after he left the White House and whether they obstructed the investigation. The probe had escalated in recent weeks with several high-profile interviews and a former White House official telling prosecutors that Trump knew the proper process for declassifying documents and followed it correctly at times while in office, undercutting Trump’s claims that he automatically declassified everything he took with him to Mar-a-Lago. Earlier this week, CNN reported that the Justice Department informed the former president’s legal team that he is a target in the probe – such notification is often a strong sign that an indictment could follow.
Trump has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to the charges. He and his right-wing allies have slammed the probe as partisan and a weaponization of the federal government.
“The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Smith, who is also overseeing the DOJ’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, however, has investigated members of both parties, handling some of the most high-profile political corruption cases in recent memory – to mixed outcomes.
The…
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