Trump’s Distortions of Federal Indictment

In the days leading up to his June 13 arraignment and in a speech several hours afterward, former President Donald Trump distorted what the federal indictment against him said and made faulty comparisons to other politicians’ actions.

• Trump claimed the indictment against him contains “fake and fabricated charges.” In fact, Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, called it “very detailed” and “very, very damning.”

• Trump and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham have misleadingly objected to Trump being charged under the Espionage Act, saying he wasn’t a “spy.” He was charged under a section of the act concerning willful retention of national defense documents.

• Trump wrongly claimed the Presidential Records Act was “really the ruling act,” not the Espionage Act.

• The former president mischaracterized the lengthy effort by the National Archives and Records Administration and the Department of Justice to retrieve presidential records and classified materials from him — claiming that he was “negotiating” with NARA and “the next thing I knew, Mar-a-Lago was raided by gun-toting FBI agents.”

• Trump compared his situation to what he called the Bill Clinton “socks case.” But Clinton’s case was not about classified documents. It involved audiotapes of Clinton’s conversations with a historian documenting his presidency; the National Archives said the tapes were Clinton’s personal records, and a federal judge dismissed the case.

• He claimed a photo in the indictment showed only “newspapers, personal pictures” spilling out of a box onto the floor. But some information is redacted in the photo, and the indictment says the spilled records included a classified document available only to a five-country intelligence alliance.

• Trump claimed Hillary Clinton deleted “33,000 emails in defiance of a congressional subpoena.” He’s referring to personal emails, not government records, and there is no evidence she knew when they were deleted.

• He falsely suggested that Biden is “obstructing” a federal review of more than a thousand boxes of Biden’s records. The FBI searched the Senate records that Biden had donated to the University of Delaware, and Biden’s attorneys gave federal officials the classified documents that were found at Biden’s home and former office.

• Trump promoted a misleading claim that Biden “had to sign off” on the FBI’s criminal investigation of Trump. The investigation was already underway when the White House, following federal law, requested that the FBI be allowed to review 15 boxes containing classified documents that Trump gave to the National Archives in January 2022.

Trump made these claims in from Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, after and in speeches and social media posts over several days beforehand, including a in Columbus, Georgia. On June 13 in a Miami courthouse, Trump was booked on , including willfully retaining national defense information, conspiring to obstruct justice, withholding and concealing documents,