Former US President Donald Trump has been charged with using classified government documents after leaving the White House, several American media reported.
Trump confirmed on social media that the Department of Justice informed his lawyers that he was charged and that he was summoned to the federal court in Miami on Tuesday.
"The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
This indictment is being kept secret for now, but CNN, citing a source familiar with the matter, said it contains several criminal charges.
Trump will be the first former US president to be indicted in federal court.
He has already been charged separately in New York state with falsifying business documents in 2016 to hide a hush fee for an adult film actress. He pleaded not guilty in this case.
The US Department of Justice has been investigating Trump since early 2022 after the agency learned that he kept hundreds of classified government documents at his Florida residence and obstructed attempts to retrieve them.
Under US law, presidential papers belong to the government and must be turned over to the US National Archives when a president leaves office.
But Trump allegedly took hundreds of documents from the White House and sent them to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. In total, prosecutors seized more than 300 classified documents from Trump. They had various degrees of secrecy: secret and top secret.
The documents were obtained from various agencies, including the CIA, the FBI, and the National Security Agency. The documents were related to various domains of national security, including China and Iran's missile programs.
The aforesaid indictment has not yet been declassified, but the FBI warrant cites laws that may have been violated.
Violations of these laws are punishable by 10 to 20 years in prison.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing in connection with these documents, calling the respective investigation a "witch hunt" aimed at preventing him from running for president again.
