DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Donald Trump''s chances of returning to the White House ... trends now
The wide-ranging indictment against Donald Trump over his handling of top secret official documents represents a seminal episode in American political history.
Trump's career has been full of legal challenges, but never before has a former president been charged with crimes at a federal level.
Indeed, so serious are the seven charges against Trump – including obstruction of justice and the wilful retention of national defence information – that he could in theory receive a 100-year jail term.
Even if that is improbable, the clear strength of the case against him deals a blow to both his crumbling reputation and his chances of regaining the White House.
Trump's ugly past is catching up with him and, while some of his defenders pretend the case against him amounts to nothing more than defective filing or disorganisation, nothing could be further from the truth.
Trump's career has been full of legal challenges, but never before has a former president been charged with crimes at a federal level
The seven charges against Trump include obstruction of justice and the wilful retention of national defence information and could in theory see him serve a 100-year jail term
After all, other leading US politicians, including presidents Obama and Biden and former vice-president Mike Pence, held on to classified documents but escaped prosecution because they gave them up as soon as they were found. The crucial difference is that Trump, through his lawyers, denied having documents stored in his resort of Mar-a-Largo in Florida.
And what a hoard – 11,000 documents, many of which were classified top secret, containing details of US agents abroad.
Trump clearly knew he should not have held on to this material. That is shown by a secret tape-recording of a meeting at which he boasted that he had in his hands a plan drawn up General Mark Milley, the US military chief of staff, for an invasion of Iran.
In it, Trump says he could not show it to anyone because of its national security implications. So he was obviously aware of the sensitivity of the documentation.
Just as incriminating was his excuse that he could not hand back some of the files because they had been damaged in a flood – exactly the excuse he used when he was investigated by New York authorities over the financial operations of a Hyatt Hotel.
Trump's prospects are bleak. He is up against a crack prosecution team led by indefatigable special counsel Jack Smith, the
