story. this is now the second indictment for the former president who is criminally charged by a manhattan grand jury in march on 30 counts of his fraud and he has pleaded not guilty. now he s facing 37 federal charges relating to classified documents in his time in office uncovered by federal agents. a special counsel has been investigating this case since november of last year. what makes this situation more extraordinary, is mr. trump is currently the frontrunner in the 2024 election, and this means he could be taking on joe biden while a special counsel is working to convict him. over the next hour, pamela brown lays out everything we know about this case and takes us through the twists and turns that brought us to this moment. we will explore what this means for the former president and what implications this may have for the presidential race. i am an innocent man, i m an innocent person. donald trump is posting on his own social media site that he has been indicte
welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer in washington with erin burnett in new york. breaking now, 37 criminal charges against donald trump revealed in a detailed federal indictment that s now public. the former president of the united states accused of storing and hiding very sensitive, highly classified documents as mar-a-lago allegedly conspireing with an aide to defy a subpoena for the material. wolf, prosecutors say trump kept secret information in a ballroom, up on a stage, in a bedroom and in a bathroom and even in a shower. the former commander in chief showed off documents including a document trump is said to have described as a, quote, plan of attack. tonight, erin, special counsel jack smith is vowing a very speedy trial arguing laws must be enforced as the indictment warrants trump risked exposing military and nuclear secrets of the united states and its allies. this is a special edition of the situation room. the
camera at that and cnn camera at that and cnn tonight . captions by vitac www.vitac.com white house officials are worried, cnn has learned, about the trove of classified and top secret materials found in former president donald trump s house. the biden white house has been virtually silent publicly on the danger that those sensitive documents pose. but a senior administration official says that privately, officials are expressing deep concern about the material trump was trying to hang onto. according to a source, u.s. intelligence officials are also worried about whether any of it puts their sources and methods at risk. we still do not know who had access to the classified materials in the basement of mar-a-lago. even trump s own lawyer cannot answer that question. and only one or two people had access to that room to your knowledge? that s my understanding. i mean, i would have to check with, you know, the maintenance of that area. but my understanding is very s
back to the storage room. there are 30 boxes that walt and another person moved back into the storage room, and then evan does his search and finds documents with classification documents on it. it was part of an effort to not only conceal documents from investigators but from trump s own lawyers. if you moved them hoping to evade somehow the scrutiny of the department of justice, a federal grand jury or the archives, you are laying out a case for something illegal. the thing that surprised me most about the indictment were the details about the alleged movement of boxes by walt prior to evan s search. the scope they are alleging there and the backup of texts, supposedly, as well as video, that s something that is far beyond, you know, what we had seen.
that means something that would cause exceptionally grave damage to the united states if revealed. information limited to what is called five eyes. i m looking at the classification documents. five eyes, information that the united states intelligence communities only shares with the closest partners, a small number of countries. and another one fisa. foreign service intelligence surveillance court. so it brings home the gravity of why we are here where we are, which is why did the justice department have to conduct such an investigation. part of it of the information that the president was retaining, and then not returning. that s what gets into the obstruction side of things. very damning, indeed.