Donald Trump faces 37 felony counts related to retaining classified information, obstructing justice and false statements, unsealed documents show.
The newly unsealed documents show that the former president kept classified documents in a bathroom, shower, ballroom, storeroom, office, bedroom.
It said Trump was personally involved in moving boxes to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
The charges accuse the president of risking some of the country’s most sensitive security secrets.
Details on US nuclear weapons programmes, potential vulnerabilities of the US and its allies and US plans for retaliatory military attacks were in some of the documents.
The indictment marks the first time in US history that a former president faces criminal charges by the federal government he once oversaw.
Trump faces the possibility of prison if convicted, with some of the charges carrying up to 20 years.
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Charged alongside Trump was his aide Walt Nauta, who was seen on a CCTV camera removing boxes at the Mar-a-Lago estate.
The newly unsealed indictment is built on Trump’s own words and actions as recounted to prosecutors by lawyers, close aides and other witnesses.
It accuses Trump of enlisting aides in his efforts to hide the records and telling his lawyers he wanted to defy a subpoena for the materials stored at his Florida estate.
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“I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes,” one of Trump’s lawyers described the former president saying, according to the indictment.
He also asked if it would be better “if we just told them we don’t have anything here”.