We Asked Our Politics Editor To Explain Trump's Second Indictment
Our Biggest Takeaway: He's Tired
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article erroneously stated that President Trump was charged with 37 crimes. In reality, he was charged with 40 crimes. That’s our mistake.
Friday’s federal indictment news broke after our staff had already left the office for the weekend.1 First thing Monday morning, we sat down with our Politics Editor to unpack this developing story.
What can you tell us about this new legal hurdle for President Trump?
On Friday, the Department of Justice announced that former President Donald J. Trump has been charged with 40 felony counts. 31 are for keeping classified national security documents, and the rest are related to his efforts to cover that up.
But wait. Wasn’t he just indicted?
Right. You’re probably thinking of a few months ago, when President Trump was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records. Or you might be thinking of last month, when a jury found that he sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll.
A lot of people have gotten those cases mixed up with this one, and that’s understandable. It’s hard to keep track of it all, due to the sheer number of crimes, alleged crimes, and civil wrongdoing.
Yeah, we’re certainly writing a lot of explainers lately.
Every newsroom is trying to figure this out. How do you cover a former president who keeps getting indicted? What’s the easiest way for our audience to differentiate at least 74 crimes plus civil liabilities?
Actually, there’s a potential lawsuit in Georgia regarding whether he broke the law trying to overturn the state’s election results. If that goes through, we should do another one of these.
So how *is* this indictment different from the first one?
Big picture, President Trump’s first indictment was at the state level. This indictment is at the federal level, making it it the first federal indictment of a president in U.S. history.
So jurisdiction and trial venue is one big difference, right off the bat. Another key difference is that President Trump said he did it.
What do you mean, “said he did it”?
Yeah. So, with the last set of charges, there were no recordings of him saying “I committed those crimes,” which is really what you look for as a prosecutor.
This time, though, we have multiple conversations where President Trump holds up military documents and says things like:
“Isn’t it amazing? I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look.”
“This totally wins my case, you know. Except it it is like, highly confidential. This is secret information.”
“See, as president I could have declassified it. Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
These are all things he said with full knowledge that he was being recorded.
Is this one of those things where you say, “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up”?
Well, you can’t really call it a cover-up, because of the recording where he says he did it. He definitely tried to cover it up, which is why those charges are in there. But in this case, no, it’s mainly the crimes that are bad.
The crimes of keeping national security documents.
Yeah. And keeping them just, like… out?
Or right under a window.
Hey, at least they’re organized. It’s not like people could just knock over a stack of boxes and send classified documents into the wind.
I have bad news for you.
When President Trump’s executive assistant received this photo from the president’s lawyer, she texted back “Oh no oh no.”
So yeah, it really comes down to the crimes here, huh?
Alleged crimes. You have to remember: we wouldn’t even know that he did them, were it not for the many times he said he did.
Crimes, plural.
President Trump has… um.… He has committed lot of crimes. Or, I guess, a lot of crimes keep happening in the same room as the one he’s in. That’s the most nonpartisan way I can say that.
How will this affect his reelection campaign?
It depends on the outcome of the trial. Right now, President Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. If he’s acquitted, he’ll likely continue on to be the nominee. He might even see a popularity boost, just from the pure spectacle of it.
On the other hand, if he’s convicted, he’ll likely still become the Republican nominee, but he’ll be serving some sort of jail time while he runs. Maybe he’s under house arrest, or something like that.
Has that happened before? A person running for office from jail?
Yes.2 It’s one of the coolest ways to run for office, if we’re being honest. He might even see a popularity boost, just from the pure spectacle of it.
We’re more of a family, really.
In 1920, Hoosier Socialist Eugene V. Debs ran for president while serving prison time for sedition. The sedition in question? “War is bad.” (Woodrow Wilson was not an ally of free expression.)