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.”