By Yashwant Raj
Washington, Jun 9 (IANS): Former US President Donald Trump was indicted on Thursday with multiple federal criminal charges in connection with his handling of classified documents from his presidency.
Trump, who became the first former President in US history to face federal criminal charges, announced his indictment in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.
"I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax," Trump wrote, referring to the boxes of documents that he had carried with him from the White House at the end of this presidency to his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, which contained many files that were described as "classified".
"I AM AN INNOCENT MAN!" he wrote in a subsequent post and said in a video, using capital letters that he is known to for rhetorical flourish.
The former President, who is huddled with his advisers in his Bedminster home in New Jersey, will appear on Tuesday afternoon at the federal courthouse in Miami.
The indictment will be unsealed then, detailing the charges.
US media is reporting that Trump has been indicted with seven criminal charges, including conspiracy to obstruct justice and willful retention of documents.
The former President has sought to portray the indictment as a political move by President Joe Bien, who beat Trump in the race for the White House in 2020. Trump is running again and is likely to win the Republican nomination to go up against Biden in 2024; he is the frontrunner.
Trump already holds the dubious honour of being the first American President to face criminal charges when he was accused of 37 counts in a case in New York, where he was born and lived most of his life, in connection with paying off an adult film star to keep quiet about an affair that he has denied publicly.
Trump is facing a growing list of legal troubles. He has already lost a civil case of defamation against a columnist who has alleged he raped her in the 1990s. He is also under federal investigation for his role in an assault on the US Congress on January 6, 2021, and state investigation in Georgia for trying to overturn the outcome of the voting in the state in the 2020 presidential election.