This is a Cato Special Podcast. I'm Caleb Brown.

If it weren't for that one thing, the federal charges of illegally retaining classified documents,

criminal conspiracy, and false statements now pending against former President Donald Trump

would likely be both straightforward and pretty compelling to a jury.

That one thing, of course, is that Trump is a former president,

who is currently running for president again.

I spoke with Cato's Clark Neely about the indictment and how this case might shake out.

Yeah, so the federal indictment of Donald Trump that came down last week contains 37 counts.

Most of those have to do with withholding or possessing and not turning over classified

documents that Donald Trump is no longer permitted to

possess because of course he's not the president anymore he's just an ordinary citizen.

As most people know I think he took boxes and boxes of documents and mementos and other things with him when he left the

Oval Office after President Biden was inaugurated.

Almost all of that he wasn't supposed to take because it doesn't belong to him. Among those documents are some highly

classified including top secret documents that he has in his possession even though he's not lawfully

entitled to possess them. So those charges are brought under the Espionage Act and prohibit

ordinary people from possessing national defense information which is the

technical term. The remaining charges involve false statements that were made or allegedly made to

FBI agents and others regarding his response to a subpoena from a grand jury that ordered him to turn over documents with classification markings.

And also, there is an alleged conspiracy to obstruct justice arising from his alleged effort to involve some of his lawyers and other staff

members in a scheme to hide those documents and boxes of documents that he wanted to not turn over while turning over a

smaller subset in response to the grand jury subpoena and representing falsely

...