Reader Poll: Who Do You Think Will Be Indicted Next?

They say that misery loves company, and Donald Trump is no longer alone in being indicted for allegedly mishandling classified documents. And he may get more company soon.

Trump and his body man Walt Nauta have both been charged in the investigation into the former president’s handling of classified material. Nauta’s charging caught many people off guard, as special counsel Jack Smith, who leads the investigation, has played his cards close to his chest.

But it shows that Smith’s investigation is more far-reaching than initially expected.

As now twice-indicted former President Donald Trump confronts yet another legal battle, he is shaking up his legal team for the umpteenth time.

Trump announced on Truth Social Friday that he is calling up Todd Blanche “and a firm to be named later” to represent him as he faces charges for mishandling and refusing to return classified government information after leaving the White House.

With the call-up, the twice-impeached and liable-for-sexual-abuse former president is saying bye-bye to lawyers Jim Trusty and John Rowley. The departure was unexpected, as Trusty had been on CNN just hours earlier going to bat to defend Trump.

Blanche is an elite white-collar criminal defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor. Previously, he has represented former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and Igor Fruman, a former Rudy Giuliani associate who allegedly helped scour Ukraine for damaging information on Trump’s rivals. Fruman was sentenced to a one-year prison term for a campaign finance violation.

Manafort was able to evade mortgage fraud and other charges with the help of Blanche—charges Blanche had called “politically motivated,” just as Trump’s team calls the ones he faces now.

For their part, Trusty and Rowley claim to be resigning because it is “a logical moment” to step aside since the case has been filed in Miami. It is unclear why exactly it’s a “logical moment” for someone’s two defense lawyers to “resign” just because it’s in Miami (unless they personally felt victimized by Ron DeSantis’s war on civil rights or something).

Perhaps Trump fired them to shake up his legal defenses, given how poor his track record in the courts has been up to this point. But Trump recruited Blanche before his Manhattan arraignment too, and well, we saw how that went. Perhaps the lawyers did leave of their own volition, but to jump from a sinking ship. Either way, the shake-up doesn’t necessarily bode strongly for the serial criminal.

Donald Trump’s aide Walt Nauta has been charged as part of the investigation into the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.

Trump on Thursday became the first former president to be federally indicted when he was charged with seven counts, which reportedly include violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction, and making false statements. Other charges are expected against some of his allies, but it is not yet known what those charges might include.

The charges against Nauta have not yet been revealed, but he has been a particular focus of special counsel Jack Smith’s team. Investigators suspected Nauta had helped move and possibly hide classified documents stored at Mar-a-Lago.

Nauta joined Trump’s team as a military valet at the White House, and he is one of the few remaining staffers from Trump’s time in office. After Trump lost the presidency, Nauta went to work for him at Mar-a-Lago, eventually leaving the military to stay on as a civilian aide. Nauta has quickly become Trump’s right-hand man: At the White House, he would reportedly stand nearby, ready with whatever Trump needed, be it a coat, a drink, or a piece of paper. Now he shadows Trump on all of his campaign appearances.

He also moves boxes at Mar-a-Lago. Prosecutors obtained notes from one of Trump’s lawyers, Evan Corcoran, which revealed that Trump and Nauta knew exactly where and when Corcoran was planning to search for the documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Nauta had previously testified that Trump asked him to move boxes out of the storage room both before and after the subpoena was issued. The Guardian reported that prosecutors could be investigating whether Nauta knew exactly what was in the boxes he was moving.

At one point, another Mar-a-Lago employee helped Nauta move some of the boxes. That second employee, while draining the resort pool in October, flooded a room full of computer services used to store surveillance footage from around the property. It is unclear whether the flood was accidental or intentional.

According to Corcoran’s notes, Nauta had also offered to help him look through the boxes in the storage room, which Corcoran declined. But he took breaks during the multiday search, leaving the storage room unattended multiple times.

Trump lashed out Friday at the Department of Justice over Nauta’s indictment, calling the department employees “thugs” on Truth Social. “They are trying to destroy his life, like the lives of so many others, hoping that he will say bad things about ‘Trump,’” he wrote. “The FBI and DOJ are CORRUPT!”

This story has been updated.

Former President Donald Trump has now been twice criminally indicted, this time facing federal charges for taking hundreds of classified documents from the White House and refusing to turn them over. It’s a fun development given that he has repeatedly called for the lengthy imprisonment of those who mishandle classified information.

“On political corruption, we are going to restore honor to our government,” Trump said at a North Carolina rally in August 2016, while first campaigning for president. “In my administration, I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.”

“One of the first things we must do is to enforce all classification rules and to enforce all laws relating to the handling of classified information,” he said a month later at a Pennsylvania rally.

His repeated calls were an attack on his then-opponent, Hillary Clinton, as he successfully “but her emails”–ed his way into the White House. He repeated the calls for imprisonment as president too.

“That is the most confidential stuff,” Trump said in 2017, after calls between him and foreign governments, as well as communications between soon-to-be national security adviser Michael Flynn and foreign governments, were leaked. “Classified. That’s classified. You go to prison when you release stuff like that.”

“He leaked CLASSIFIED information, for which he should be prosecuted,” Trump tweeted in April 2018, heeding false accusations that former FBI Director James Comey released classified information to the media.

In 2020, Trump repeatedly said that former national security adviser John Bolton should be imprisoned “for many, many years” for his memoir that apparently included “classified information, highly classified information and confidential information.”

Trump even went as far as to tell Fox host Brian Kilmeade that Bolton should go to jail whether he knew he leaked information or not.

The former president has insisted that the material he took to his lavish Florida estate was already declassified and that he has the power to declassify documents anyway, “just by thinking about it.”  But in a newly released audio recording, Trump himself admits what everyone else already knew: He doesn’t have some magical power to declassify things, especially when he’s not even president.

In the recording, Trump says he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, speaking to two people who did not have security clearance. “This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is, like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information,” Trump said. “As president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t,” he concedes.

Keep that pretty open admission (of again, what we already know to be true) in mind as Republicans trip over themselves finding new ways to defend Trump. For instance, Senator J.D. Vance insists that “everyone agrees the president has the authority to declassify anything,” even while the man he’s defending has outright admitted he does not.

Donald Trump is the first former president to be both federally indicted and indicted at all, and yet his rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination are too scared to use that against him.

Republicans were livid at the Justice Department after Trump was indicted Thursday night for allegedly mishandling classified documents, and the other GOP presidential hopefuls were no exception. Almost all have accused the Biden administration of pushing a politically motivated investigation.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is second to Trump in the polls (albeit by a country mile) and his favorite target, slammed the supposed “weaponization of the federal government.” “We have for years witnessed an uneven application of the law depending upon political affiliation,” he tweeted.

Senator Tim Scott also decried the “weaponization of the Department [of] Justice” against Trump, and said that the scales of justice are “weighted.”

Vivek Ramaswamy said there were “two standards of justice” and promised to pardon Trump if he is elected next year. He also said the United States is an “administrative police state” and pushed the GOP-backed falsehood that the January 6 rioters were “peaceful … protesters.”

Nikki Haley, who served as ambassador to the U.N. under Trump, also called out supposed “double standards” and “vendetta politics” in a bland tweet. “This is not how justice should be pursued in our country,” she said. “It’s time to move beyond the endless drama and distractions.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence—who, don’t forget, Trump said deserved to be hanged—said he was “deeply troubled” by the indictment.

“But let me be very clear: No one is above the law,” he added.

Chris Christie, who is hinging his whole campaign on being the anti-Trump, also said that no one is above the law. But he seemed unwilling to go further, urging people to wait and “see what the facts are when any possible indictment is released.”

The only candidate to take a firm stand was Asa Hutchinson. The former Arkansas governor called on Trump to drop his presidential campaign.

“With the news that Donald Trump has been indicted for the second time, our country finds itself in a position that weakens our democracy,” Hutchinson said in a statement. “Donald Trump’s actions—from his willful disregard for the Constitution to his disrespect for the rule of law—should not define our nation or the Republican Party.”

Doug Burgum has yet to comment on the indictment.

The candidates’ pussyfooting should come as no surprise: They have been loath to condemn him for anything, even when he was criminally indicted or found liable for sexual abuse. Rather than take a stand, they’re content to cower behind Trump and hope his fan base will transfer its rabid loyalty to one of them.

This post has been updated.