The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executed a search warrant on Monday at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida while investigating the handling of presidential documents.

As CNN reported, the former president was not in Florida when the FBI search warrant was executed. Axios reported that Trump was in New York City at the time.

Trump said his Florida residence and resort was "raided" by FBI agents. Trump released the statement on Monday, writing that his "beautiful home" was "currently under siege."

Agents seemed to be focused on an area of the club where Trump's personal residence and offices are located, according to CNN, citing a source familiar with the situation.

Trump released a statement on his Truth Social platform, writing, "After working and cooperating with the relevant government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate."

It wasn't immediately clear what the specific reason for the FBI raid was or what specific part of an investigation it was connected to.

Trump wrote in his statement, "Nothing like this has ever happened to a president of the United States before," he said.

CNN reported that the FBI executed a search warrant at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, located in Palm Beach, Florida.

If fully confirmed, the move will signal that the Department of Justice's investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection is honing in on Trump himself.

Trump claimed that agents broke open a safe, which, if accurate as the New York Times reported, would be one of the biggest escalations in the multiple investigations into the former president.

Bloomberg reported that the White House has referred questions about the raid to the Department of Justice.

U.S. President Joe Biden has renewed calls for the safe return of American Journalist Austin Tice who went missing in Syria over a decade ago.

On Wednesday Biden urged leaders in Damascus to help secure the repatriation of Tice as pressure continues to increase on the White House by families of hostages and detainees, Reuters reported.

Biden said that the U.S. government knows now "with certainty" that the U.S. journalist has been held by the Syrian government and called on the Syrian government to release him after 10 years in captivity, CNN reported.

Biden said, "We know with certainty that he has been held by the Syrian regime." The president said, "We have repeatedly asked the government of Syria to work with us so that we can bring Austin home."

Biden urged movement on the case for Tice's family, saying, "On the tenth anniversary of his abduction, I am calling on Syria to end this and help us bring him home." He said, "Tice family deserves answers, and more importantly, they deserve to be swiftly reunited with Austin."
 
According to CNN, the Syrian government and leader Bashar al-Assad, have not publicly acknowledged that Tice is being detained there.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Wednesday, "Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens will continue to engage with the Syrian government in close coordination with the White House, Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell, and our team here at the State Department."

Carstens secretly traveled to Damascus to meet with government officials there in 2020 while under then president Donald Trump. Then in May, he met with a top Lebanese security official in Washington to "discuss US citizens who are missing or detained in Syria." 

A top priority for the Tice family and U.S. officials is to continue to engage with the Syrian government and keep that engagement sustained.

A federal judge awaited arguments Thursday on whether to appoint an outside legal expert to review government records seized by the FBI last month in a search of former President Donald Trump's Florida home.

Lawyers for Trump say the appointment of a special master is necessary to ensure an independent inspection of the documents. This kind of review, they say, would allow for “highly personal information” such as diaries or journals to be separated from the investigation and returned to Trump, along with any other documents that may be protected by claims of attorney-client privilege or executive privilege.

The Justice Department says an appointment is unwarranted because investigators have completed their review of potentially privileged records and identified “a limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client privileged information.”

The government says Trump lacks legal grounds to demand the return of presidential documents because they do not belong to him. The department has also expressed concerns that the appointment could delay the investigation, in part because a special master probably would need to obtain a security clearance to review the records and special authorization from intelligence agencies.

The hearing before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon was scheduled for 1 p.m.

Video below: Trump's legal team responds to DOJ's latest filing on Mar-a-Lago search

Cannon had said on Saturday, before the latest arguments in the matter, that her “preliminary intent” was to appoint a special master. It was not clear whether she might make a final determination Thursday or how her view might be affected by the fact that the Justice Department says it has already reviewed potentially privileged documents.

It was also not clear who might be serve as that outside expert. In some past high-profile cases, the role has been filled by a former federal judge.

Cannon was nominated by Trump in 2020 and confirmed by the Senate 56-21 later that year. She is a former assistant U.S. attorney in Florida, handling mainly criminal appeals.

The Justice Department and former President Donald Trump's lawyers face a Friday midnight deadline for submitting proposals for how the special master review of the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago — including classified documents — should work.

They'll be filing the briefs even as the Justice Department appeals the order requiring the review, in which a third-party attorney will sift through the materials from Trump's Florida home and segregate out the privileged documents that should be withheld from federal investigators.

While the appeal plays out, prosecutors are also asking that its review of classified documents be allowed to continue separate from the special master review. The parties have been instructed by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to weigh in on the department's arguments about the documents in the filing due Friday.

With the Friday submission, the Justice Department and the Trump team will also be addressing questions about the review's logistics that are wonky, but stand to carry significance over how quickly the review will move and how much it will hinder the criminal investigation into the handling of documents from Trump's White House.

Cannon, a 2020 appointee of Trump who granted Trump's request for the review, has asked the parties to file jointly. But that doesn't mean the parties will be in agreement. Where they disagree, the judge has asked them to identify those disagreements.

Here's what to watch for:

Who do the parties nominate as special master?

The unique circumstances of the Mar-a-Lago search, coupled with Cannon's very murky order granting Trump's request for a special master, make the ideal candidate for the job a complicated formula.

The Justice Department has previously said that, if the reviewer is to handle classified materials, he or she should "already" have a top-secret clearance — a requirement the Trump team didn't oppose in earlier filings.

Video below: Mar-a-Lago search inventory released

It's also possible that the parties put forward candidates who do not have active security clearances but could go through the vetting process for one very quickly. Recent exiles from the government would fit the bill, as would former judges, who may not have clearance but would have been trusted with classified materials as part of their service on the bench.

But notably, the Justice Department asked Thursday that it not be required to share the classified materials it obtained with the special master — which may negate the need for a clearance.

As for legal expertise, reviewing for attorney-client privilege is the usual job of a special master. But the judge's order that executive privilege be part of what the special master looks at puts the review on uncharted territory. There is also lots of disagreement about the doctrine itself, though many legal experts are extremely skeptical of Cannon's view that it should play a role here.

One thing to look out for when the potential candidates are revealed is whether they have any experience litigating executive privilege, either on the federal side (where they would have likely pushed a broad view of its scope) or on the side of a party — such as Congress — seeking information from the executive branch (where they would have likely argued in favor of a narrow interpretation of the privilege).

What's the proposed scope of the review?

Cannon's Monday order signaled she wanted the special master review to help settle disputes over whether certain seized records were personal or presidential records, and whether the personal items of Trump's that were seized have evidentiary value.

The parties may sketch out how they believe the special master should make those determinations. DOJ has argued previously that its investigators should be allowed to hold on to certain personal items of Trump to the extent they provide evidence relevant to the statutes the government is investigating. (An inventory filed by the government details classified records being stored in boxes also containing Trump's clothing, gifts and press clippings.)

While the special master's job is to provide the court advice, the call on those questions will ultimately be up to the judge.

Thursday, DOJ added it plans to provide Trump with copies of all the unclassified documents that were seized and "that the government will return Plaintiff's personal items that were not commingled with classified records and thus are of likely diminished evidentiary value."

Cannon also declared a need for the special master to review for potentially privileged items. How a special master should approach attorney-client privilege is a well-developed area of law, though the judge has cast doubt on how the department was approaching the attorney-client privilege review when it was conducted with an internal "filter" team.

The judge also wants the special master to conduct a review for materials potentially covered by executive privilege, though her Monday order gave little guidance how that review would work in practice.

What does the Justice Department say about executive privilege?

How the special master should approach executive privilege could be the most contentious area of the joint filing.

The Justice Department has argued that there is no role for executive privilege to play in segregating the materials that should be withheld from investigators. Prosecutors may be disinclined to go into any detail over how it should be considered on Friday. They have previously argued in the case that the privilege is designed to protect the material from being disclosed to parties outside the executive branch.

The records that were seized at Mar-a-Lago by the executive branch are being disclosed within the executive branch in an executive branch function, the prosecutors have argued. By some definitions of the privilege, it could cover most or all the government records obtained in the search.

But the prosecutors have argued that there is no circumstance where a former president could be successful in asserting executive privilege over classified documents that are the subject of a criminal probe.

Trump's lawyers, meanwhile, have said little about which kinds of government records he would seek to assert executive privilege over and how he'd expect the special master to filter out the materials for him to do so.

A federal judge in Florida has dismissed former President Donald Trump's lawsuit against former first lady Hillary Clinton and former top FBI officials, calling it a "200-page political manifesto."

According to his lawsuit, Trump claimed the former Democratic presidential nominee, former FBI Director James Comey, and others conspired against him by claiming that he coordinated with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election, USA Today reported.

On Thursday, District Judge Donald Middlebrooks dismissed the case, saying that the lawsuit contained “glaring structural deficiencies” and that many of the “characterizations of events are implausible," the Associated Press reported.

In his lawsuit, Trump claimed that Clinton and the Democratic National Committee "worked together with a single self-serving purpose: to vilify Donald J. Trump," USA Today reported.

In his ruling, Middlebrooks wrote that none of Trump's claims supported that there was a conspiracy against him, the Associated Press reported.

In 2019, special counsel Robert Mueller's concluded after a special investigation that investigators "did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities," the Associated Press reported.

According to the news outlet, Trump's lawyer, Alina Habba, said the former President would appeal the dismissal.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department and Donald Trump's legal team are to stake out positions Friday on the precise role to be played by an independent arbiter tasked with reviewing documents seized during an FBI search of the former president's Florida home.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon had given both sides until Friday to submit potential candidates for the role of a "special master," as well as proposals for the scope of the person's duties and the schedule for his or her work.

The back-and-forth over the special master is playing out amid an FBI investigation into the retention of several hundred classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago within the past year. Though the legal wrangling is unlikely to have major long-term effects on the criminal investigation or knock it significantly off course, it will almost certainly delay it and has already caused the intelligence community to temporarily pause a national risk assessment it was doing.

Over the strenuous objections of the Justice Department, Cannon on Monday granted the Trump team's request for the special master and directed the department to temporarily halt its review of records for investigative purposes.

She said the person would be responsible for sifting through the records recovered during the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago and filter out from the criminal investigation any documents potentially covered by claims of attorney-client or executive privilege.

Roughly 11,000 documents — including more than 100 with classified markings, some at the top-secret level — were recovered during the search. That's on top of classified documents contained in 15 boxes retrieved in January by the National Archives and Records Administration, and additional sensitive government records the department took back during a June visit to Mar-a-Lago.

The Justice Department had objected to the Trump team's request for a special master, saying it had already completed its own review in which identified a limited subset of records that possibly involve attorney-client privilege. It has maintained that executive privilege does not apply in this investigation because Trump, no longer president, had no right to claim the documents as his.

The department on Thursday filed a notice of appeal indicating that it would contest the judge's order to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. Officials asked the judge to lift her hold on their investigative work pending their appeal, as well as her requirement that the department share with a special master the classified records that were recovered.

It is not clear whether Trump or anyone else will be charged.

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More on Donald Trump-related investigations: https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday did not concede the election he lost to leftist Lula da Silva in a brief speech that marked his first comments since results were released two days ago.

But afterward, Chief-of-Staff Ciro Nogueira told reporters that Bolsonaro has authorized him to begin the transition process.

Bolsonaro's address didn’t mention election results, but he said he will continue to follow the rules of the nation's constitution.

“I have always been labeled as anti-democratic and, unlike my accusers, I have always played within the four lines of the constitution,” Bolsonaro, flanked by more than a dozen ministers and allies, told reporters in the official residence.

Bolsonaro lost Sunday's race by a thin margin, garnering 49.1% of the vote to da Silva’s 50.9%, according to the nation's electoral authority. It was the tightest presidential race since Brazil’s return to democracy in 1985 and marks the first time Bolsonaro has lost an election in his 34-year political career, including seven races for a seat in Congress’ Lower House.

Much like former U.S. President Donald Trump, whom Bolsonaro openly admires, the far-right incumbent has repeatedly questioned the reliability of the country’s electoral system, claiming electronic voting machines are prone to fraud. He never provided any proof, even when ordered to do so by the electoral court.

That has led many political analysts to warn that Bolsonaro appeared to be laying the groundwork to reject election results.

In recent days, and without a public statement from Bolsonaro, truck drivers and other supporters of his blocked hundreds of roads across the country. Many said the election had been fraudulent and some called for military intervention and for Congress and the Supreme Court to be disbanded.

Earlier Tuesday, Brazil's Supreme Court ordered the federal highway police to immediately clear the roads.

A majority of the court's justices backed the decision, which accuses the highway police of “omission and inertia." Failure to comply will mean its director can be fined up to 100,000 reais (more than $19,000) per hour, be removed from his duties and even face arrest. Federal prosecutors in Sao Paulo and Goias states said they had opened investigations into the blockades.

By noon Tuesday, highway police said they had removed 306 blockades, but more than 260 were still in place.

“There is no doubt that, even though he might not be directly responsible for these actions, everything he has done as president stoked this, especially questioning the electoral process and the ballots,” said Williams Gonçalves, a political science professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

"Bolsonaro is completely isolated. Everyone responsible for other institutions has already recognized the election’s results,” Gonçalves said.

In Sao Paulo — Brazil’s most populous state and largest economy — traffic jams around the international airport led to dozens of flight cancellations, with videos on social media showing travelers rolling their suitcases along the highway in the dark trying to catch their flights. The highways had been cleared by Tuesday morning, but airport officials said access remained difficult as traffic was still backed up in and out of the airport.

There, Dalmir Almeida, a 38-year-old protester, told The Associated Press that after completing three days of strikes, he and others will drive their trucks to the military barracks to ask for their support. “The army will be in our favor,” he added.

At another road block in Sao Paulo state, protesters set tires on fire. Several demonstrators were wrapped in the Brazilian flag, which has been co-opted by the nation’s conservative movement for demonstrations. Huge lines of cars could be seen snaking along the highway.

Fears of escalation grew as the country's leftist Landless Workers’ Movement, a key ally of da Silva’s that has long staged occupations of what it considers vacant or unused lands, asked its militants on Tuesday to organize demonstrations in several states to unblock roads.

Sao Paulo Gov. Rodrigo Garcia told a news conference that the time for negotiations was over, and he was not ruling out the use of force by law enforcement.

“From now on, we are going to apply what the (Supreme Court) decision determined, starting with fines of 100,000 reais per hour for each vehicle that is contributing to this obstruction," he said.

In Minas Gerais, a key battleground state in the election, a video on social media showed a protester telling a reporter from the O Tempo news outlet that the election was “fraudulent” and warned of future protests. “We won’t stop as long as we don’t have a response from our president,” he said. “We want Bolsonaro in 2023 and for the years to come."

In Itaborai, a region in Rio de Janeiro state, an Associated Press reporter saw truck drivers kneeling in front of police officers and refusing to evacuate.

Users on social media, including in multiple Telegram and WhatsApp chat groups with names like “Paralysation," shared demands that the military take the streets, or that Congress and the Supreme Court be disbanded and the president remain in office.

Following the election, the electoral authority blocked two dozen Telegram groups that defended a military coup and called on their more than 150,000 followers to organize demonstrations, according to online news site UOL.

The Supreme Court's decision on Tuesday permits regular state police forces to reinforce federal highway police, and the governors of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo states ordered them to deploy, news outlets reported. The same was done in 2018, when an 11-day trucker strike brought Brazil to a halt.

Bolsonaro commands wide support from the police forces' rank and file, however, and it wasn’t clear how effective their involvement would be. Da Silva’s Workers’ Party had accused Bolsonaro’s campaign of deploying law enforcement to create traffic jams and deter people from voting on Election Day, and video footage shared on social media showed officials stopping buses.

Alexandre de Moraes, who presides over the the nation’s electoral authority, said police checkpoints delayed voters, but didn't stop them from reaching the polls.

The 2018 stoppage caused food prices to spike and left supermarket shelves without products as gas stations ran out of fuel. It caused billions in losses and revealed the vast power that truckers possess, particularly when they organize through social media platforms.

Bolsonaro, a lawmaker at the time and months away from winning that year's presidential election, was an outspoken supporter of the truckers, who are now among his constituents. This year, his administration limited interstate fuel taxes to help bring down prices and launched a financial aid program for truckers just months before the election.

On Tuesday, dozens of journalists from both national and international news outlets remained camped outside the presidential residence in the capital, Brasilia, awaiting any sign that Bolsonaro might speak about the election or the highway blockades.

“Bolsonaro’s strategy here, so far as there is one, seems to be strategic ambiguity," said Robert Muggah, co-founder of Igarapé Institute, a Rio de Janeiro-based think tank focused on security. “He’s focused on the street, and if chaos ensues so much the better. There is a real risk that police inaction could ignite simmering tensions.”

A court appearance was postponed Tuesday for a Donald Trump valet who's charged with helping the former president hide classified documents that the Justice Department wanted back.

A lawyer for the valet, Walt Nauta, told a judge that Nauta had been unable to find a Florida-based attorney and that he was stuck in Newark, New Jersey, and unable to fly down for the arraignment because of a flight that sat for hours on the tarmac before being canceled.

The lawyer, Stanley Woodward, said Nauta expressed his apologies to the court for not being present.

“Mr. Nauta takes very seriously the charges that he is facing,” he said.

As a result, a judge pushed Tuesday's scheduled arraignment back until July 6.

Nauta was charged earlier this month alongside Trump in a 38-count indictment filed by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith. Trump, a Republican, pleaded not guilty earlier this month to 37 counts related to the alleged mishandling of classified documents kept at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. Nauta's arraignment was postponed to give him time to find a Florida-based lawyer.

The indictment accuses Nauta of conspiring with Trump to conceal records that he had taken with him from the White House after this term ended in January 2021.

Video below: Audio of Trump's 2021 conversation about classified documents

Prosecutors allege that Nauta, at the former president's direction, moved boxes of documents bearing classification markings so that they would not be found by a Trump lawyer who was tasked with searching the home for classified records to be returned to the government. That, prosecutors said, resulted in a false representation to the Justice Department that a “diligent search” for classified documents had been done and that all documents responsive to a subpoena had been returned.

Nauta is a Navy veteran who fetched Trump’s Diet Cokes as his valet at the White House before joining him as a personal aide at Mar-a-Lago. He is regularly by Trump's side, even traveling in Trump's motorcade to the Miami courthouse for their appearance earlier this month and accompanying him afterwards to a stop at the city's famed Cuban restaurant Versailles, where he helped usher supporters eager to take selfies with the former president.

Meanwhile, on Monday, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon denied a Justice Department request to file under seal the names of 84 potential witnesses it wants Trump to be ordered to have no contact with as the case moves forward. She said that, in her view, the Justice Department did not explain why it needed to file the list with the court or why it was necessary to seal the list from public view.

She also scheduled a pretrial conference for July 14 to discuss matters related to the Classified Information Protection Act.

And last week, the Justice Department proposed a Dec. 11 trial date for Trump, requesting a postponement from a judge's initial date in August.

___

Tucker reported from Washington.

Republicans intensified their public criticism of former President Donald Trump on Thursday, saying it was time for the party to move on after an unexpectedly poor showing in the midterm elections, even as he plans to announce a third White House bid next week.

Virginia's Republican lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, once a vocal Trump supporter, said voters had sent "a very clear message" Tuesday that "enough is enough."

"The voters have spoken and they have said that they want a different leader and a true leader understands when they have become a liability," she said in an appearance on Fox Business. "A true leader understands that it's time to step off the stage. It is time to move on."

Earle-Sears, who served as co-chair of a group called Black Americans to Re-elect President Trump in 2020, also said she "just couldn't" support another Trump campaign.

Some advisers had urged Trump to delay his planned announcement until after the Dec. 6 Senate runoff election in Georgia that could determine which party controls the Senate to avoid turning the race into a referendum on him and unintentionally helping Democrats. But Trump has rebuffed that advice and intends to move forward with an announcement on Nov. 15, according to a senior adviser who requested anonymity to discuss the plans.

That leaves him trying to launch a comeback bid at a time when he finds himself in a position of extraordinary vulnerability after dominating the party, largely unchallenged, since he won the nomination in 2016. At the same time, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who easily won reelection Tuesday, is gaining new attention as Republicans openly weigh moving on from Trump.

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate's No. 2 Republican, noted Trump's role in lifting some inexperienced and controversial candidates during primaries earlier this year who went on to lose in this week's elections.

In an interview, Thune said there's "no substitute for good quality candidates."

"We had some very contested, competitive primaries this year," said Thune, who easily won reelection. "And in some cases, you know, there were lots of forces at work, including outside folks making endorsements in some of those races."

Thune said he hoped the party would begin to see the emergence of younger leaders.

"You can't have a party that's built around one person's personality," he said.

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who clashed with Trump during his first two years in office, called Trump "a drag on our ticket."

"We want to win. We want to win the White House and we know with Trump we're so much more likely to lose," he said in an interview with WISN 12 News. "If have a nominee not named Trump, we're so much more likely to win the White House than if our nominee is Trump."

Retiring Republican Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey also blamed Trump's intervention for GOP losses in his state and noted Trump-endorsed candidates did notably worse than other Republicans on the ballot.

"I think my party needs to face the fact that if fealty to Donald Trump is the primary criteria for selecting candidates, we're probably not gonna do really well," he said on CNN. "All over the country there's a very high correlation between MAGA candidates and big losses or at least dramatically underperforming."

Trump has disputed that he had a bad night.

"For those many people that are being fed the fake narrative from the corrupt media that I am Angry about the Midterms, don't believe it," he said on his social media network. "I am not at all angry, did a great job (I wasn't the one running!), and am very busy looking into the future. Remember, I am a 'Stable Genius.'"

While the sweeping victory Republicans predicted did not come to fruition, the party still appears well positioned to flip the House, and could ultimately take the Senate, too. Many races remain too early to call.

"There's no such thing as ugly wins or pretty losses," said Jason Miller, a former Trump campaign staffer who was among those who had advised him to delay his planned announcement until after the Georgia runoff.

"Nancy Pelosi's political career is over," he predicted. "The Biden agenda's dead."

Other Trump allies provided statements to media outlets on the former president's behalf, endorsing him before his impending announcement.

"I am proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for President in 2024. I fully support him running again," House GOP Chairwoman Elise Stefanik said in a statement. "It is time for Republicans to unite around the most popular Republican in America, who has a proven track record of conservative governance."

"If he runs in 2024 not only will he have my support, but he'll have the support of millions of Americans across the country," said Rep. Jim Banks, a top congressional ally.

Ohio Senate candidate JD Vance, who proved Trump's most successful endorsement, said if the former president decides to run again, he's confident he will be the party's nominee.

"Every year, the media writes Donald Trump's political obituary. And every year, we're quickly reminded that Trump remains the most popular figure in the Republican party," Vance said in a statement provided after inquiries to Trump's spokesman.

Meanwhile, Trump escalated his public rebuke of DeSantis, whom he has long considered his most formidable potential challenger. In a lengthy and angry statement Thursday evening, Trump berated Fox News and other Rupert Murdoch-controlled media outlets for going "all in for Governor Ron DeSanctimonious DeSantis," whom he slammed as "an average REPUBLICAN Governor with great Public Relations," as he again took credit for DeSantis's 2018 win.

While Trump allies had previously insisted that reports of tensions between the men were overstated, Trump, who has privately slammed DeSantis for failing to rule out a run against him, did so publicly.

"Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that's really not the right answer," he wrote, comparing the race to his winning 2016 campaign. "We're in exactly the same position now. They will keep coming after us, MAGA, but ultimately, we will win. Put America First and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

___

Associated Press writers Stephen Groves in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Virginia, contributed to this report.

Donald Trump became the first former president to face a judge on federal charges as he pleaded not guilty in a Miami courtroom Tuesday to dozens of felony counts accusing him of hoarding classified documents and refusing government demands to give them back.

The history-making court date, centered on charges that Trump mishandled government secrets that as commander-in-chief he was entrusted to protect, kickstarts a legal process that could unfold at the height of the 2024 presidential campaign and carry profound consequences not only for his political future but also for his own personal liberty.

Trump approached his arraignment with characteristic bravado, posting social media broadsides against the prosecution from inside his motorcade en route to the courthouse and insisting — as he has through years of legal woes — that he has done nothing wrong and was being persecuted for political purposes. But inside the courtroom, he sat silently, scowling and arms crossed, as a lawyer entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf in a brief arraignment that ended without him having to surrender his passport or otherwise restrict his travel.

CHANDAN KHANNA

The arraignment, though largely procedural in nature, was the latest in an unprecedented public reckoning this year for Trump, who faces charges in New York arising from hush money payments during his 2016 presidential campaign as well as ongoing investigations in Washington and Atlanta into efforts to undo the results of the 2020 race.

Always in campaign mode, he swiftly pivoted from the solemn courtroom to a festive restaurant, stopping on his way out of Miami at Versailles, an iconic Cuban spot in the city’s Little Havana neighborhood where supporters serenaded Trump, who turns 77 on Wednesday, with “Happy Birthday.” The back-to-back events highlight the tension for Trump in the months ahead as he balances the pageantry of campaigning with courtroom stops accompanying his status as a twice-indicted criminal defendant.

Yet the gravity of the moment was unmistakable.

Until last week, no former president had ever been charged by the Justice Department, let alone accused of mishandling top-secret information. The indictment unsealed last week charged Trump with 37 felony counts -- many under the Espionage Act -- that accuse him of illegally storing classified documents in his bedroom, bathroom, shower and other locations at Mar-a-Lago and trying to hide them from the Justice Department as investigators demanded them back. The charges carry a yearslong prison sentence in the event of a conviction.

Video below: Trump comments after classified documents arraignment

Trump has relied on a familiar playbook of painting himself as a victim of political persecution. But Attorney General Merrick Garland, an appointee of President Joe Biden, sought to insulate the department from political attacks by handing ownership of the case to a special counsel, Jack Smith, who on Friday declared, “We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone.”

Smith attended Tuesday’s arraignment, sitting in the front row behind his team of prosecutors.

The court appearance unfolded against the backdrop of potential protests, with some high-profile backers using barbed rhetoric to voice support. Trump himself encouraged supporters to join a planned protest Tuesday at the courthouse. Though city officials said they prepared for possible unrest around the courthouse, there were little signs of significant disruption.

Video below: Protesters outside Doral ahead of Trump arraignment

Trump didn’t say a word during the court appearance, other than to occasionally turn and whisper to his attorneys who were seated on either side of him. He fiddled with a pen and clasped his hands on the table in front of him as the lawyers and the judge debated the conditions of his release.

While he was not required to surrender a passport — prosecutors said he was not considered a flight risk — the magistrate judge presiding over the arraignment directed Trump to not discuss the case with certain witnesses. That includes Walt Nauta, his valet who was indicted last week on charges that he moved boxes of documents at Trump’s direction and misled the FBI about it.

Nauta did not enter a plea Tuesday because he did not have a local lawyer with him.

Trump attorney Todd Blanche objected to the idea of imposing restrictions on the former president’s contact with possible witnesses, noting they include many people close to Trump, including staff and members of his protection detail.

“Many of the people he interacts with on a daily basis — including the men and women who protect him — are potential witnesses in this case,” Blanche said.

Trump, who has repeatedly insisted that he did nothing wrong, showed no emotion as he was led by law enforcement out of the courtroom through a side door.

Even for a man whose presidency and post-White House life have been defined by criminal investigations, the documents probe had long stood out both because of the volume of evidence that prosecutors had seemed to amass and the severity of the allegations.

Video below: Why was Trump indicted and not Biden, Pence or Clinton?

A federal grand jury in Washington had heard testimony for months, but the Justice Department filed the case in Florida, where Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort is located and where many of the alleged acts of obstruction occurred.

Though Trump appeared Tuesday before a federal magistrate, the case has been assigned to a District Court judge he appointed, Aileen Cannon, who ruled in his favor last year in a dispute over whether an outside special master could be appointed to review the seized classified documents. A federal appeals panel ultimately overturned her ruling.

It’s unclear what defenses Trump is likely to invoke as the case moves forward. Two of his lead lawyers announced their resignation the morning after his indictment, and the notes and recollections of another attorney, M. Evan Corcoran, are cited repeatedly throughout the 49-page charging document, suggesting prosecutors envision him as a potential key witness.

Alon Skuy

In the indictment, the Justice Department unsealed Friday most of the charges — 31 or the 37 felony counts — against Trump relate to the willful retention of national defense information. Other charges include conspiracy to commit obstruction and false statements.

The indictment accuses Trump of illegally retaining national security documents that he took with him from the White House to Mar-a-Lago after leaving office in January 2021. The documents he stored, prosecutors say, included material on nuclear programs, defense and weapons capabilities of the U.S. and foreign governments and a Pentagon “attack plan,” prosecutors say. He is accused of showing off some to people who didn't have security clearances to view them.

Beyond that, according to the indictment, he repeatedly sought to obstruct government efforts to recover the documents, including by directing Nauta to move boxes and also suggesting to his own lawyer that he hide or destroy documents sought by a Justice Department subpoena.

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Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York and Terry Spencer in Doral, Florida, contributed to this report.

An IRS policy governing the audits of tax returns filed by U.S. presidents is under new scrutiny after a report published by a congressional panel found the agency failed to perform the mandatory inspection of Donald Trump's returns until Congress pressed for information about the process.

The three-point policy states that individual returns for the president and the vice president are subject to mandatory review, “should always be kept in an orange folder,” should be kept from the eyes of IRS employees and “should be locked in a secure drawer or cabinet when the examiner or reviewer is away from the work area.”

The report released Tuesday by the Democratic majority on the House Ways and Means Committee said the process, which dates to 1977, was “dormant, at best” during the early years of the Trump administration. Democrats in Congress are responding by introducing legislation that would codify the IRS policy into law with more stringent requirements.

Tax experts say the failure to launch the audit earlier is emblematic of a larger problem regarding the IRS’ capacity to examine high-income taxpayers’ returns — and a reminder of Trump as a norm-defying president.

John Koskinen, who served as IRS commissioner during both the Obama and Trump administrations, said the policy has been out of the public eye because presidents have traditionally released their tax-return summaries to the public.

“It only became an issue with a president who refused to release his tax returns,” Koskinen said. “If Trump had been releasing his returns, nobody would have raised this issue.”

Trump’s tax returns being handed over to Congress recently is the culmination of a yearslong legal fight between Trump and Democratic lawmakers.

Steve Rosenthal, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said the IRS’ failure to audit Trump is a showing that “the mandatory auditing program is broken, we cannot rely on the current system to fairly audit the president, and there’s a general problem of the IRS auditing sophisticated taxpayers.”

Rosenthal added: “This is a much larger problem than Donald Trump — yes, he makes bad things worse, but the situation was bad to begin with.”

A new $80 billion infusion of funds through the so-called Inflation Reduction Act is supposed to remedy the beleaguered agency's low staffing levels, outdated technology and host of other issues. Republicans who are poised to take control of the House in less than two weeks, however, have said they want to cut that funding.

Tuesday's committee report revealed that the IRS only began to audit Trump’s 2016 tax filings on April 3, 2019, more than two years into Trump’s presidency and just months after Democrats took control of the House. That date coincides with Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., the panel chairman, asking the IRS for information related to Trump’s tax returns.

The report's findings prompted lawmakers to recommend a statutory requirement for the mandatory examination of the president's taxes, with “disclosure of certain audit information and related returns in a timely manner.”

Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he will work to pass the bill through the Senate. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the chamber would “move swiftly” to advance the legislation.

The issue highlights frustration with the so-called tax gap, which is the difference between how much money is owed to the federal government and how much is paid. IRS data released in October projects that for 2017 to 2019, the estimated average gross tax gap will be $540 billion per year.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in August, and has repeated at various speaking engagements, that the new funds allocated by Congress would be used to increase audits on high-wealth individuals, firms and complex pass-throughs.

“This is challenging work that requires a team of sophisticated revenue agents in place to spend thousands of hours poring over complicated returns, and it is also work that has huge revenue potential,” she told former IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig in August.

In an application of the IRS policy on mandatory presidential audits, well-trained agents, forensic experts, tax attorneys and others would be required to oversee a presidential audit as complicated as Trump's, which included hundreds of businesses, properties and complex business interests.

The congressional report highlighted the lack of staffing and availability of experts to examine Trump's taxes. The report states that the IRS believed that accuracy of his filings was ensured because he had legal counsel and an accounting firm representing him.

The question of whether presidential tax documents should be disclosed is another matter of debate among tax experts and advocates.

Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, said Congress would be setting a “dangerous new precedent” by releasing the presidential records. Koskinen said that “it's a significant serious precedent for a committee to seek returns and then release them."

“I see two big issues here — what is the IRS going to do to ensure presidents are audited regularly, and what's the rationale for releasing these returns," Koskinen said.

Rosenthal said he thinks presidential returns should be publicly disclosed to ensure proper oversight.

“When this information is made public, the president is going to be more wary about cheating on their taxes and making them public — the results would put both the IRS and president on their best behavior,” he said.

Donald Trump has been indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents at his Florida estate, a remarkable development that makes him the first former president in U.S. history to face criminal charges by the federal government that he once oversaw.

The Justice Department was expected to make public a seven-count indictment ahead of a historic court appearance next week in the midst of a 2024 presidential campaign punctuated by criminal prosecutions in multiple states.

The indictment carries unmistakably grave legal consequences, including the possibility of prison if Trump's convicted.

But it also has enormous political implications, potentially upending a Republican presidential primary that Trump had been dominating and testing anew the willingness of GOP voters and party leaders to stick with a now twice-indicted candidate who could face still more charges. And it sets the stage for a sensational trial centered on claims that a man once entrusted to safeguard the nation's most closely guarded secrets willfully, and illegally, hoarded sensitive national security information.

The Justice Department did not immediately confirm the indictment publicly. But two people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to discuss it publicly said that the indictment included seven criminal counts. One of those people said Trump's lawyers were contacted by prosecutors shortly before he announced Thursday on his Truth Social platform that he had been indicted.

Within minutes of his announcement, Trump, who said he was due in court Tuesday afternoon in Miami, began fundraising off it for his presidential campaign. He declared his innocence in a video and repeated his familiar refrain that the investigation is a “witch hunt.”

Video below: Background on Trump's DOJ document case

The case adds to deepening legal jeopardy for Trump, who has already been indicted in New York and faces additional investigations in Washington and Atlanta that also could lead to criminal charges. But among the various investigations he faces, legal experts — as well as Trump's own aides — had long seen the Mar-a-Lago probe as the most perilous threat and the one most ripe for prosecution. Campaign aides had been bracing for the fallout since Trump’s attorneys were notified that he was the target of the investigation, assuming it was not a matter of if charges would be brought, but when.

Appearing Thursday night on CNN, Trump attorney James Trusty said the indictment includes charges of willful retention of national defense information — a crime under the Espionage Act, which polices the handling of government secrets — obstruction, false statements and conspiracy.

The inquiry took a major step forward last November when Attorney General Merrick Garland, a soft-spoken former federal judge who has long stated that no one person should be regarded as above the law, appointed Jack Smith, a war crimes prosecutor with an aggressive, hard-charging reputation to lead both the documents probe as well as a separate investigation into efforts to subvert the 2020 election.

The case is a milestone for a Justice Department that had investigated Trump for years — as president and private citizen — but had never before charged him with a crime. The most notable investigation was an earlier special counsel probe into ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia, but prosecutors in that probe cited Justice Department policy against indicting a sitting president. Once he left office, though, he lost that protection.

Video below: Supporters gather outside Mar-a-Lago following news of Trump's indictment

The indictment arises from a monthslong investigation into whether Trump broke the law by holding onto hundreds of documents marked classified at his Palm Beach property, Mar-a-Lago, and whether Trump took steps to obstruct the government’s efforts to recover the records.

Prosecutors have said that Trump took roughly 300 classified documents to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House, including some 100 that were seized by the FBI last August in a search of the home that underscored the gravity of the Justice Department’s investigation. Trump has repeatedly insisted that he was entitled to keep the classified documents when he left the White House, and has also claimed without evidence that he had declassified them.

Court records unsealed last year showed federal investigators believed they had probable cause that multiple crimes had been committed, including the retention of national defense information, destruction of government records and obstruction.

Since then, the Justice Department has amassed additional evidence and secured grand jury testimony from people close to Trump, including his own lawyers. The statutes governing the handling of classified records and obstruction are felonies that could carry years in prison in the event of a conviction.

Even so, it remains unclear how much it will damage Trump's standing given that his first indictment generated millions of dollars in contributions from angry supporters and didn’t weaken him in the polls.

The former president has long sought to use his legal troubles to his political advantage, complaining on social media and at public events that the cases are being driven by Democratic prosecutors out to hurt his 2024 election campaign. He is likely to rely on that playbook again, reviving his longstanding claims that the Justice Department — which, during his presidency, investigated whether his 2016 campaign had colluded with Russia — is somehow weaponized against him.

Trump’s legal troubles extend beyond the New York indictment and classified documents case.

Smith is separately investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. And the district attorney in Georgia’s Fulton County is investigating Trump over alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election in that state.

Signs had mounted for weeks that an indictment was near, including a Monday meeting between Trump’s lawyers and Justice Department officials. His lawyers had also recently been notified that he was the target of the investigation, the clearest sign yet that an indictment was looming.

Though the bulk of the investigative work had been handled in Washington, with a grand jury meeting there for months, it recently emerged that prosecutors were presenting evidence before a separate panel in Florida, where many of the alleged acts of obstruction scrutinized by prosecutors took place.

The Justice Department has said Trump repeatedly resisted efforts by the National Archives and Records Administration to get the documents back. After months of back-and-forth, Trump representatives returned 15 boxes of records in January 2022, including about 184 documents that officials said had classified markings on them.

FBI and Justice Department investigators issued a subpoena in May 2022 for classified documents that remained in Trump’s possession. But after a Trump lawyer provided three dozen records and asserted that a diligent search of the property had been done, officials came to suspect even more documents remained.

The investigation had simmered for months before bursting into front-page news in remarkable fashion last August. That’s when FBI agents served a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago and removed 33 boxes containing classified records, including top-secret documents stashed in a storage room and desk drawer and commingled with personal belongings. Some records were so sensitive that investigators needed upgraded security clearances to review them, the Justice Department has said.

The investigation into Trump had appeared complicated — politically, if not legally — by the discovery of documents with classified markings in the Delaware home and former Washington office of President Joe Biden, as well as in the Indiana home of former Vice President Mike Pence. The Justice Department recently informed Pence that he would not face charges, while a second special counsel continues to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents.

But compared with Trump, there are key differences in the facts and legal issues surrounding Biden’s and Pence’s handling of documents, including that representatives for both men say the documents were voluntarily turned over to investigators as soon as they were found. In contrast, investigators quickly zeroed on whether Trump, who for four years as president expressed disdain for the FBI and Justice Department, had sought to obstruct the inquiry by refusing to turn over all the requested documents.

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Tucker reported from Washington. Colvin reported from Des Moines, Iowa.

The federal criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump’s potential mishandling of classified documents escalated in stunning fashion this week with Trump’s indictment.The indictment hasn’t been unsealed yet, so details of the charges aren’t publicly available. But the investigation – led by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith – revolves around sensitive government papers that Trump held onto after his White House term ended in January 2021. The special counsel has also examined whether Trump or his aides obstructed the investigation.Federal authorities have recovered more than 325 classified documents from Trump. He has voluntarily given back some materials, his lawyers turned over additional files after a subpoena, and the FBI found dozens of classified records during a court-approved search of his Mar-a-Lago home last summer.Trump has denied all wrongdoing and claims the investigation is a politically motivated sham, intended to derail his ongoing campaign to win the Republican 2024 nomination and return to the White House.Here’s a timeline of the important developments in the blockbuster investigation.May 2021An official from the National Archives and Records Administration contacts Trump’s team after realizing that several important documents weren’t handed over before Trump left the White House. In hopes of locating the missing items, NARA lawyer Gary Stern reaches out to someone who served in the White House counsel’s office under Trump, who was the point of contact for recordkeeping matters. The missing documents include some of Trump’s correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as well as the map of Hurricane Dorian that Trump infamously altered with a sharpie pen.July 2021In a taped conversation, Trump acknowledges that he still has a classified Pentagon document about a possible attack against Iran, according to CNN reporting. The recording, which was made at Trump’s golf club in New Jersey, indicates that Trump understood that he retained classified material after leaving the White House. The special counsel later obtained this audiotape, a key piece of evidence in his inquiry.Fall 2021NARA grows frustrated with the slow pace of document turnover after several months of conversations with the Trump team. Stern reaches out to another Trump attorney to intervene. The archivist asks about several boxes of records that were apparently taken to Mar-a-Lago during Trump’s relocation to Florida. NARA still doesn’t receive the White House documents they are searching for.Jan. 18, 2022After months of discussions with Trump’s team, NARA retrieves 15 boxes of Trump White House records from Mar-a-Lago. The boxes contained some materials that were part of “special access programs,” known as SAP, which is a classification that includes protocols to significantly limit who would have access to the information. NARA says in a statement that some of the records it received at the end of Trump’s administration were “torn up by former President Trump,” and that White House officials had to tape them back together. Not all the torn-up documents were reconstructed, NARA says.Feb. 9, 2022NARA asks the Justice Department to investigate Trump’s handling of White House records and whether he violated the Presidential Records Act and other laws related to classified information. The Presidential Records Act requires all records created by a sitting president to be turned over to the National Archives at the end of their administration.Feb. 18, 2022NARA informs the Justice Department that some of the documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago included classified material. NARA also tells the department that, despite being warned it was illegal, Trump occasionally tore up government documents while he was president.April and May 2022On April 7, NARA publicly acknowledges for the first time that the Justice Department is involved, and news outlets report that prosecutors have launched a criminal probe into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents. Around this time, FBI agents quietly interview Trump aides at Mar-a-Lago about the handling of presidential records as part of their widening investigation.April 11, 2022The FBI asks NARA for access to the 15 boxes it retrieved from Mar-a-Lago in January. The request was formally transmitted to NARA by President Joe Biden’s White House Counsel’s office, because the incumbent president controls presidential documents in NARA custody.April 29, 2022The Justice Department sends a letter to Trump’s lawyers as part of its effort to access the 15 boxes, notifying them that more than 100 classified documents, totaling more than 700 pages, were found in the boxes. The letter says the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies need “immediate access” to these materials because of “important national security interests.” Also on this day, Trump lawyers ask NARA to delay its plans to give the FBI access to these materials. Trump’s lawyers say they want time to examine the materials to see if anything is privileged, and that they are making a “protective assertion of executive privilege” over all the documents.Video below: Supporters gather outside Mar-a-Lago following news of Trump's indictmentMay 1, 2022Trump’s lawyers write again to NARA, and ask again that NARA postpone its plans to give the FBI access to the materials retrieved from Mar-a-Lago.May 10, 2022Debra Steidel Wall, the acting archivist of the United States, who runs NARA, informs Trump’s lawyers that she is rejecting their claims of “protective” executive privilege over all the materials taken from Mar-a-Lago and will therefore turn over the materials to the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies, in a four-page letter.May 11, 2022The Justice Department subpoenas Trump, demanding all documents with classification markings that are still at Mar-a-Lago. At some point after receiving the subpoena, Trump asks his lawyer Evan Corcoran if there was any way to fight the subpoena, but Corcoran tells him he has to comply, according to notes Cochran took and later gave to investigators. Also after getting the subpoena, Trump aides are captured on surveillance footage moving document boxes into and out of a basement storage room – which has become a major element of the obstruction investigation.May 12, 2022News outlets report that investigators subpoenaed NARA for access to the classified documents they retrieved from Mar-a-Lago. The subpoena is the first public indication of the Justice Department using a grand jury in its investigation.June 2, 2022As part of the effort to comply with the subpoena, Corcoran searches a Mar-a-Lago storage room and finds 38 classified documents. According to a lawsuit that the former president later filed, Trump invites FBI officials to come to Mar-a-Lago to retrieve the subpoenaed materials.June 3, 2022Federal investigators, including a top Justice Department counterintelligence official, visit Mar-a-Lago to deal with the subpoena for remaining classified documents. The investigators meet with Trump’s attorneys, including Corcoran, and look around the basement storage room where the documents were stored. Trump briefly stops by the meeting to say hello to the officials, but he does not answer any questions. Corcoran hands over the 38 classified documents that he found. Trump lawyer Christina Bobb signs a sworn affidavit inaccurately asserting that there aren’t any more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.June 8, 2022Trump’s attorneys receive a letter from federal investigators, asking them to further secure the room where documents are being stored. In response, Trump aides add a padlock to the room in the basement of Mar-a-Lago.Video below: Explaining Trump's classified document indictmentJune 24, 2022Federal investigators serve a subpoena to the Trump Organization, demanding surveillance video from Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s company complies with the subpoena and turns over the footage. CNN has reported that this was part of an effort to gather information about who had access to areas at the club where government documents were stored.Aug. 8, 2022The FBI executes a court-approved search warrant at Mar-a-Lago – a major escalation of the investigation. The search focused on the area of the club where Trump’s offices and personal quarters are located. Federal agents found more than 100 additional classified documents at the property. The search was the first time in American history that a former president’s home was searched as part of a criminal investigation.Aug. 11, 2022Trump sends a message through one his lawyers to Attorney General Merrick Garland, saying he has “been hearing from people all over the country about the raid” who are “angry,” and that “whatever I can do to take the heat down, to bring the pressure down, just let us know,” according to a lawsuit he later filed. Hours later, after three days of silence, Garland makes a brief public statement about the investigation. He reveals that he personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant, and that the Justice Department will continue to apply the law “without fear or favor.” Garland also pushes back against what he called “unfounded attacks on the professionalism of the FBI and Justice Department.”Aug. 12, 2022Federal Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart approves the unsealing of the Mar-a-Lago search warrant and its property receipt, at the Justice Department’s request and after Trump’s lawyers agree to the release. The warrant reveals the Justice Department is looking into possible violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice and criminal handling of government records, as part of its investigation.Aug. 22, 2022Trump files a federal lawsuit seeking the appointment of a third-party attorney known as a “special master” to independently review the materials that the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago. In the lawsuit, Trump’s lawyers argue that the Justice Department can’t be trusted to do its own review for potentially privileged materials that should be siloed off from the criminal probe.Sept. 5, 2022In a major ruling in Trump’s favor, Federal District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, grants Trump’s request for a special master to review the seized materials from Mar-a-Lago. She says the special master will have the power to look for documents covered under attorney-client privilege and executive privilege.Sept. 8, 2022The Justice Department appeals Cannon’s decision in the special master case.Sept. 15, 2022Cannon appoints senior Judge Raymond Dearie to serve as the special master and sets a November 30 deadline for the Brooklyn-based federal judge to finish his review of the seized materials.October 2022A maintenance worker drains the swimming pool at Mar-a-Lago, which ends up flooding a room where there are computer severs that contain surveillance video logs, according to CNN reporting. It’s unclear if the flood was accidental or on purpose, and it’s possible that the IT equipment wasn’t damaged, but federal prosecutors found the incident to be suspicious.Nov. 4, 2022Former Trump administration official Kash Patel testifies before the federal grand jury in the classified documents investigation. A Trump loyalist, Patel had publicly claimed that Trump declassified all the materials that ended up at Mar-a-Lago, even though there is no evidence to back up those assertions.Nov. 18, 2022Garland announces that he is appointing special counsel Jack Smith to take over the investigation.Dec. 1, 2022A federal appeals court shuts down the special master review of the documents that the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago. The appeals panel rebuked Cannon’s earlier decisions, writing that she essentially tried to “interfere” with the criminal probe and had created a “special exception” in the law to help Trump.Video below: Boston presidential historian on Trump indictment: 'Just a bad, bad look'Dec. 23, 2022Trump attorney Timothy Parlatore testifies before the special counsel’s grand jury, where he described how Trump’s lawyers scoured his properties for classified materials. He later left Trump’s legal team.Late 2022 and early 2023Trump’s legal team searches four of his properties in Florida, New York and New Jersey for additional classified material. They find two more classified files in a Florida storage unit, and give them to the FBI. Around this time, Trump’s team also finds additional papers with classification markings at Mar-a-Lago, and they give those materials to the Justice Department. They also turn over a laptop belonging to a Trump aide who had copied those documents onto the computer, not realizing they were classified.Spring 2023A string of key witnesses testify before the special counsel’s grand jury in Washington, D.C. This includes Trump administration officials Robert O’Brien and Ric Grenell, who handled national security and intelligence matters; Margo Martin, a communications aide who continued working for Trump after he left the White House; and Matthew Calamari Sr. and his son, Matthew Calamari Jr., longtime Trump employees who oversee security for the Trump Organization.Mid-March 2023In response to a new subpoena from the special counsel, Trump’s lawyers turn over some material related to a classified Pentagon document that he discussed at a recorded meeting in 2021. However, Trump’s team wasn’t able to find the specific document – about a potential U.S. attack on Iran – that prosecutors were looking for.March 25, 2023Corcoran, the lead Trump attorney, testifies before the grand jury in Washington, D.C. This occurred after a federal judge ordered him to answer prosecutors’ questions, ruling that attorney-client privilege did not shield his discussion with Trump because Trump might been trying to commit a crime through his attorneys. Corcoran later recused himself from handling the Mar-a-Lago matter.June 2023The first public indications emerge that the special counsel is using a second grand jury in Miami to gather evidence. Multiple witnesses testify in front of the Miami-based panel, CNN reported.June 5, 2023Trump lawyers meet with senior Justice Department officials – including special counsel Smith – to discuss the Mar-a-Lago investigation. The sitdown lasted about 90 minutes, and Trump’s team raised concerns about the probe, which they have called an “unlawful” and “outrageous” abuse of the legal system.June 7, 2023News outlets report that the Justice Department recently sent a “target letter” to Trump, formally notifying him that he’s a target of the investigation into potential mishandling of classified documents.June 8, 2023News outlets report that Trump has been indicted in connection with the classified documents investigation. Trump also says in a social media post that the Justice Department informed his attorneys that he was indicted – and called the case a “hoax.”

Former President Donald Trump says he has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Florida – the second indictment he has been handed in recent months. ABC News and CNN confirmed the indictment, citing sources.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment or confirmation.

Trump has been a target in a federal investigation into the possible mishandling of classified documents, with special counsel Jack Smith using a second grand jury in Miami to gather new evidence.

Video above: Trump reacts to new report that he knowingly kept a classified record

The developments came after a period of escalating activity in the federal criminal probe, which has focused on Trump having dozens of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort after he left the White House.

The investigation has focused not only on the possession of classified documents, including at the top-secret level, but also on the refusal of Trump to return the records when asked, and on possible obstruction.

The FBI issued a subpoena last year for classified records at the property, and after coming to suspect that Trump and his representatives had not returned all the documents, returned with a search warrant and recovered an additional 100 with classification markings.

Beyond the Mar-a-Lago investigation, another probe in Washington, also conducted by Smith, centers on efforts by Trump and his allies to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Trump was indicted by a New York grand jury earlier this year in a case related to hush money payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign. He pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, and a March 2024 trial date has been set in that case.

This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.

CNN and the Associated Press contributed to this report.