bathroom at mar-a-lago. federal prosecutors say former president trump showed people who did not have security clearances an attack plan that was prepared for him by the defense department. and on another occasion, a map related to a military operation. the indictment describes an incident, neil, where trump is accused of saying, quote: as president, i could have declassified it. now i can t, you know? but this is still a secret. special counsel jack smith described the severity of these charges. laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the united states, and they must be enforced. violations of those laws put our country at risk. reporter: neil, former trump s aide, navy veteran walt nada, faces six felony charges for his handling of these documents, accused of lying to fbi agents. president trump is again using
belong to both to the federal government and the people of america, donald trump refused to cooperate. as we now know from the indictment unsealed by the department of justice yesterday, the former president and his personal valet had now codefendant walt nada, both have been indicted. trump alone faces 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information, and one counts of false statements. both men are also charged with one count each of conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a documents, corruptly concealing a document, concealing a document in a federal investigation, and a scheme to conceal. what nauta also faces a separate charge for making false statements. now, the government alleges in its indictment that trump was not nearly a passive bystander who got caught up in this ordeal. he was an active participant who was personally involved in the process of packing up documents, as he was set to leave the white house, and quote, cause scores of boxes,
for more on the indictment let s bring in cnn correspondent kara skonell. what more are we learning? yeah, i mean those photographs really stick out at you, to see just the type of evidence that the prosecutors have laid out in this indictment, which spans more than 40 pages. so, of those documents, i mean, part of this is the unlawful retention of those documents, you see those photographs of those boxes of materials that are held in public spaces, the ballroom, in a bathroom, ones that the indictment alleges were easily accessible. they said more than 150 social events, including weddings, were held at mar-a-lago during this time period, of really showing that the lack of security around these documents, some of them including ones that involve nuclear secrets. now, of the obstruction part, that involves charges involving one of trump s aides walt nada, also charged in this indictment and they describe here this timeline of where trump is subpoenaed by the department of justice f
when you are building a case normally as a prosecutor, yasmin, you ve got direct or circumstantial evidence. sometimes the most you get is circumstantial evidence. you have to basically tell the y to infer from what you have to be able to build a case. it is an overwhelming amount, however, of direct evidence of trump s guilt in this case. you already mentioned in the setup for this segment, you ve got trump s own words on audiotape, you have his lawyers, copious, his details notes memorializing the attempts by donald trump to try to obstruct an investigation by the federal government. you also have text messages as well, and obviously surveillance video as you could see, in the indictment, there is a date and time stamps that speak to actions taken by the codefendant, coconspirator, walt nada. we heard a lot of us that knew that walt was jack smith after he was appointed by merrick garland to do. so we did not know the depth of. it now that we ve, seen it is
prosecutor works for, running for reelection just like former president trump. that s the hard part about this entire prosecution. trump isn t the only one mentioned in this indictment. it s a speaking indictment, which is very powerful too, because it s not just here s the litany of charges, but this is how we got to this point. that in company with the pictures we ve now seen really tells a story. so trump s aide walt nada is also now facing charges and apparently nada provided some of the photographs to prosecutors, provided some of the evidence already. given that, he s facing charges along with trump. are you seeing a likelihood of nada flipping? trying to strike a deal with prosecutors to say i ve already provided these photographs, maybe i can give you a little bit more information too so that i am not facing jail time? that s a pretty common tactic