Former President Donald Trump on Thursday was bracing to be indicted at any time after receiving a letter from federal prosecutors formally informing him that he is a “target” in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents scandal.
Trump, who is holed up at his golf resort in Bedminster, N.J., was reportedly huddling with defense lawyers and discussing his perilous legal situation with political allies as a historic first federal indictment of a former president looms.
Trump late Wednesday repeated a convoluted unfounded claim about supposed misconduct by a prosecutor on special counsel Jack Smith’s team in an all-caps rant on his social media site.
“The fake ‘case’ against me must be immediately dropped,” Trump wrote.
Trump is expected to be charged for taking scores of classified documents when he left the White House and refusing to give them back.
He could also be charged for obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim the records and possibly showing them to others or using them for his own benefit.
A Washington D.C. grand jury has been hearing evidence in the documents case for months under the direction of Smith, a respected former Brooklyn federal prosecutor.
A second panel in Miami has recently started working on the case and at least one witness, a pro-Trump media representative, testified there on Wednesday.
Some legal analysts believe the Miami activity indicates Smith may charge Trump in the southern district of Florida, in which Mar-a-Lago is located.
Others say parts of the case could be charged in Miami and others in Washington, where courts are generally more used to dealing with classified documents cases.
Smith is separately investigating Trump for trying to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election, an effort that culminated with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
The documents case is not related to Trump’s criminal indictment in a Manhattan court on state charges related to hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels, which marked the first time a former president has faced any sort of criminal charges.