The Justice Department on Thursday took the legally and politically momentous step of lodging federal felony costs in opposition to former President Donald J. Trump, accusing him of mishandling categorized paperwork he stored upon leaving workplace after which obstructing the federal government’s efforts to reclaim them.

Mr. Trump confirmed on his social media platform that he had been indicted. The costs in opposition to him embrace willfully retaining nationwide protection secrets and techniques in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements and a conspiracy to impede justice, in line with two folks conversant in the matter.

The Justice Department made no touch upon the indictment Thursday and didn’t instantly make the doc public.

The indictment, handed up by a grand jury in Federal District Court in Miami, is the primary time a former president has confronted federal costs. It places the nation in a unprecedented place, given Mr. Trump’s standing not solely as a onetime commander in chief but additionally as the present front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination to face President Biden, whose administration will now be in search of to convict his potential rival of a number of felonies.

Mr. Trump is anticipated to give up to the authorities on Tuesday, in line with an individual near him and his personal publish on his social media platform, Truth Social.

“The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been indicted,” Mr. Trump wrote, in one among a number of posts round 7 p.m. after he was notified of the fees.

The former president added that he was scheduled to be arraigned in federal court docket in Miami at 3 p.m. on Tuesday. In a video he launched afterward Truth Social, Mr. Trump declared: “I’m an innocent man. I’m an innocent person.”

A lawyer for Mr. Trump, Jim Trusty, told CNN on Thursday night that the previous president’s authorized crew had not been proven the indictment itself however that the court docket summons gave some particulars on the fees. He talked about alleged Espionage Act violations, false-statement costs and “several obstruction-based” costs, together with offenses underneath Section 1512, which criminalizes witness tampering or different technique of obstructing an official effort.

Mr. Trusty stated he believed there was additionally a conspiracy cost. But he added: “This is not biblically accurate, because I’m not looking at a charging document. I’m looking at a summary sheet.” He additionally stated the Trump authorized crew had not been instructed of anybody else being indicted.

The indictment, filed by the workplace of the particular counsel, Jack Smith, happened two months after native prosecutors in New York filed greater than 30 felony costs in opposition to Mr. Trump in a case related to a hush cash fee made to a porn actress upfront of the 2016 election.

Mr. Trump remains under investigation by Mr. Smith’s workplace for his wide-ranging efforts to retain energy after his election loss in 2020, and the way these efforts led to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. He can be being scrutinized for potential election interference by the district legal professional’s workplace in Fulton County, Ga.

A senior Biden administration official stated the White House had realized of the indictment from news stories.

Public filings within the paperwork case have painted an image of Mr. Trump as spending greater than a 12 months persistently stonewalling efforts by each the National Archives and Records Administration and the Justice Department to retrieve the trove of lots of of delicate authorities data that he took with him from the White House and principally stored at Mar-a-Lago, his non-public membership and residence in Florida.

While the character of some of the paperwork present in Mr. Trump’s possession is thought — he had held onto letters from the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, for instance — it stays unclear what different categorized supplies have been discovered at Mar-a-Lago and furthermore what, if any, harm to nationwide safety his possession of them precipitated.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly characterised the investigation as a politically motivated witch hunt, and in current weeks his legal professionals have sought to boost what they are saying are problems with prosecutorial misconduct. As early as Thursday morning, Mr. Trump sought to discredit the investigation, complaining about improprieties by a member of Mr. Smith’s crew in a publish on Truth Social.

The saga of Mr. Trump’s mishandling of presidency paperwork reaches again to 2021, when the National Archives found he had didn’t return sure data after leaving workplace. Mr. Trump was initially reluctant at hand again any materials, regardless of persistent warnings from a few of his legal professionals that he may face severe penalties if he ignored the archives’ requests.

After a lot negotiation, Mr. Trump despatched the archives 15 bins of supplies in January final 12 months. When officers on the archives examined the data, they found categorized supplies interspersed amongst them and alerted the Justice Department.

So started an in depth investigation of Mr. Trump’s dealing with and retention of the categorized data.

In May 2022, prosecutors issued a subpoena for the return of all categorized paperwork within the possession of his presidential workplace. When Mr. Trump acquired the subpoena, he requested the lawyer employed to assist him adjust to it, M. Evan Corcoran, if he needed to obey its calls for, in line with an outline of Mr. Corcoran’s notes of the dialog.

Eventually, Mr. Corcoran carried out a search of Mar-a-Lago for something that may fall underneath the subpoena’s provisions and drafted a sworn assertion that every thing it demanded had been discovered. In early June 2022, prosecutors from Washington visited Mr. Corcoran on the Florida compound to implement the subpoena and to gather a folder he had ready for them with about 30 categorized paperwork he had found throughout his search.

Within a matter of weeks, nevertheless, prosecutors developed proof that the search Mr. Corcoran had carried out was incomplete and that extra categorized materials doubtless remained at Mar-a-Lago. They satisfied a federal Justice of the Peace choose in Florida to challenge a search warrant and in August, F.B.I. brokers descended on the property, hauling away about 100 further categorized paperwork.

Even after the extraordinary search, prosecutors remained unconvinced that that they had recovered all the categorized materials in Mr. Trump’s possession. They prevailed upon a federal choose in Washington, Beryl A. Howell, to compel new searches by Mr. Trump’s authorized crew not solely of Mar-a-Lago, but additionally of different properties owned by Mr. Trump, together with Trump Tower in New York; Mr. Trump’s golf membership in Bedminster, N.J.; and a storage website in West Palm Beach, Fla.

During the search of the storage website, Mr. Trump’s legal professionals discovered a minimum of two extra categorized paperwork.

As the investigation continued, prosecutors scored a handful of breakthroughs.

In March, they persuaded Judge Howell that Mr. Trump had doubtless used Mr. Corcoran’s authorized recommendation to additional a criminal offense — a discovering that allowed the federal government to work across the typical protections of attorney-client privilege and acquire entry to Mr. Corcoran’s intensive audio notes of his dealings with the previous president.

Around the identical time, investigators found a recording of Mr. Trump in a gathering along with his aides in July 2021, brazenly discussing a categorized doc in possession associated to navy choices about confronting Iran. In the recording, in line with a number of folks conversant in it, Mr. Trump expressed remorse that he had not declassified the doc whereas he was in workplace and acknowledged that he may not achieve this.

That admission appeared to chop in opposition to one of many chief defenses he had repeatedly raised throughout the inquiry: that he had declassified all the materials that he took with him from the White House.

Charlie Savage contributed reporting.