By David Shepardson and Lisa Baertlein

(Reuters) -The largest U.S. business group on Friday urged President Joe Biden him to intervene immediately and appoint an independent mediator to address a protracted West Coast ports labor dispute.

West Coast ports stretching from California to Washington state are critical to U.S. supply chains and the nation’s economy. More than 22,000 dockworkers at those trade gateways have been working without a contract since July. U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Suzanne Clark in a letter to Biden cited “continued and potentially expanded service disruptions at these ports heading into peak shipping season.”

Tensions remain high as negotiators for the employers’ Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) and workers’ International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) tussle over wages and retroactive pay in the last leg of talks that have stretched into their 13th month.

The PMA on Friday said the ports of Seattle and Tacoma “continue to suffer significant slowdowns as a result of targeted ILWU work actions.” Representatives from those ports were not immediately available for comment.

Unions are seeking a pay increase that reflects workers’ contribution to the ocean shipping industry’s record profits from the pandemic cargo boom. They also want added compensation for the hours worked since their contract expired.

Operations at the nation’s busiest ocean trade gateways at Los Angeles and Long Beach have “generally improved” after nearly a week of sporadic labor slowdowns and stoppage, PMA said on Friday. The employer group said vessel loading and unloading was delayed due to a shortage of “lashers” who secure cargo containers on ships.

ILWU declined to comment.

Workers reported for duty on Thursday and Friday at the Port of Los Angeles, officials said.

“Operations going into the weekend seem to be the most normal they’ve been” since labor disruptions started late last week, Los Angeles port spokesman Phillip Sanfield said, adding that the port has limited weekend hours.

Terminal operations in Oakland, near San Francisco, have also returned to normal, a spokesperson said.

Port executives are eager for a resolution since some shipping customers have rerouted goods to facilities on the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico, denting business.

Retailers, manufacturers, farmers and other West Coast port customers also are lobbying Biden as the peak shipping season approaches and routes between Asia and rival U.S. ports get more expensive due to a drought that is lowering water levels in the Panama Canal.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Mark Potter)

By Raphael Satter

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States has charged two Russian nationals in the hack of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox, one of the world’s earliest, biggest and most widely publicized alleged bitcoin heists.

The department in a statement said Alexey Bilyuchenko, 43, and Aleksandr Verner, 29, were charged with conspiring to launder approximately 647,000 bitcoins from their hack of Mt. Gox, which collapsed in 2014 after losing what was then worth about half a billion dollars in cryptocurrency.

The event was one of the first signs of how vulnerable exchanges cryptocurrency users employ to transfer their digital assets into traditional cash were to committed cybercriminals. The industry has since suffered a string of massive thefts.

Reuters was not immediately able to locate contact details for Bilyuchenko or Verner. The pair’s whereabouts weren’t immediately clear.

Bilyuchenko was a key associate of Alexander Vinnik, a Russian cybercrime kingpin who was arrested in Greece in 2017, convicted of money laundering in France three years later and is now awaiting trial in California on charges of running BTC-e, a now-defunct Russian exchange the Department of Justice accused of catering to “cyber criminals around the world.”

When Vinnik was arrested, Bilyuchenko – who was staying elsewhere in Greece – narrowly avoided arrest by destroying his computer, tossing it into the sea and immediately flying back to Moscow, the BBC previously reported.

The Department of Justice said Bilyuchenko is also charged with conspiring with Vinnik to operate BTC-e from 2011 to 2017.

(Reporting by Raphael Satter in Washington; Additional reporting by Rami Ayyub; Additional writing by Paul Grant; Editing by Mark Porter)

By Dietrich Knauth

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Georgia-based slot machine operator Lucky Bucks filed for bankruptcy Friday, saying that it had reached a deal to cut $500 million in debt and turn over the company’s equity to its lenders.

Lucky Bucks suffered from increasing interest rates on its debt, an inflationary environment that reduced consumers’ use of slot machines, and a regulatory crackdown on slot machine operators in Georgia, according to its court filings in Wilmington, Delaware bankruptcy court.

Georgia law places strict limits on slot machines, prohibiting cash winnings, and preventing locations like gas stations and convenience stores from having more than nine slot machines or deriving more than 50% of their revenue from slot machines, according to the company.

The state’s increased policing of those rules caused the removal of 500 Lucky Bucks slot machines in the first five months of 2023 alone, according to court documents.

Headquartered in Norcross, Georgia, Lucky Bucks operates in 345 locations throughout Georgia with approximately 2,300 slot machines. The machines are classified as “skill-based” games under Georgia law, and winning must be redeemed for non-cash merchandise or lottery tickets instead of cash.

James Boyden, Lucky Bucks’ executive vice president of corporate development, said in a statement that the bankruptcy would not cause any disruption for the company’s employees, business partners, or consumers.

Lucky Bucks may choose to sell its business if a buyer steps forward with a better offer than the proposed debt-reduction deal, according to court documents. Lucky Bucks entered bankruptcy with $610 million in debt. The proposed restructuring is supported by 86% of the company’s lenders, the company said in a statement.

Lucky Bucks is owned by private equity firm Trive Capital, which acquired the company as part of its 2020 acquisition of the formerly public company Seven Aces.

Before filing for bankruptcy, Lucky Bucks had lobbied for a Georgia law that would have protected slot machine operators from “predatory” competition. The proposed bill, which was not passed by Georgia’s legislature, would have prevented a new slot machine from being installed in the nine months following the removal of a different company’s slot machine.

The case is Lucky Bucks Inc, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, No. 23-10758.

For Lucky Bucks: Dennis Dunne and Tyson Lomazow of Milbank LLP and Russell Silberglied of Richards, Layton & Finger PA

Read more:

ATM maker Diebold Nixdorf files for bankruptcy to cut $2 billion in debt

Atlantic City casino-hotels accused in scheme to boost room rates

(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth)

By Sarah N. Lynch and Jonathan Stempel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. prosecutors unsealed a 37-count indictment against Donald Trump on Friday, accusing the former president of risking some of the country’s most sensitive security secrets after leaving the White House in 2021.

Trump mishandled classified documents that included information about the secretive U.S. nuclear program and potential domestic vulnerabilities in the event of an attack, the federal indictment said.

Trump also discussed with lawyers the possibility of lying to government officials seeking to recover the documents; stored some of the documents around a toilet, and moved boxes of them around his Mar-a-Lago Florida resort home to prevent them from being found, the charges said.

“Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?” Trump said to one of his attorneys, according to the 49-page indictment.

The Justice Department made the criminal charges public on a tumultuous day in which two of Trump’s lawyers quit the case. The indictment charges Trump with 37 counts. A former aide, Walt Nauta, faces charges in the case as well.

Trump is due to make a first court appearance in the case in a Miami court on Tuesday, a day before his 77th birthday. Since Trump would serve any sentences concurrently if convicted, the maximum prison time he faces is 20 years for obstruction of justice, which carries the highest penalty.

U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the prosecution, said in a brief statement: “Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States, and they must be enforced.”

“We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everybody.” He said as with any defendant, those accused were presumed innocent until proven guilty and he pledged to seek a speedy trial before a jury of citizens in Florida.

Trump has proclaimed his innocence in the case. After the charges were unsealed, he attacked Smith on social media.

“He is a Trump Hater – a deranged ‘psycho’ that shouldn’t be involved in any case having to do with ‘Justice,'” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Materials came from the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies, the indictment said.

One document concerned a foreign country’s support of terrorism against U.S. interests.

Prosecutors said Trump showed another person a Defense Department document described as a “plan of attack” against another country.

They said Trump conspired with Nauta to keep classified documents he had taken from the White House and hide them from a federal grand jury. Nauta, who worked for Trump at the White House and Mar-a-Lago, faces six counts in the case.

Nauta falsely told the FBI he did not know how some of the documents ended up in Trump’s suite at Mar-a-Lago, when in fact he had been involved in moving them there from a storage room, according to the indictment.

The indictment includes photographs of Trump’s boxes on a ballroom stage, in a club bathroom and in a storage room, where some were laying on the floor.

Trump kept the documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and his golf club in New Jersey. Mar-a-Lago hosted tens of thousands of guests at more than 150 events during the time they were there, the indictment alleges.

Prosecutors said the unauthorized disclosure of the classified documents could risk U.S. national security, foreign relations, and intelligence gathering.

The indictment of a former U.S. president on federal charges is unprecedented in American history and emerges at a time when Trump is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination next year.

Trump’s support has held steady through many lawsuits and scandals but the charges laid out against him on Friday could give his Republican rivals in the presidential race ammunition to attack his record, especially on national security.

Investigators seized roughly 13,000 documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, nearly a year ago. One hundred were marked as classified, even though one of Trump’s lawyers had previously said all records with classified markings had been returned to the government.

Trump has previously said he declassified those documents while president, but his attorneys have declined to make that argument in court filings.

TRUMP APPOINTEE AS JUDGE

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has been initially assigned to oversee the case, a source who was briefed on the matter said on Friday. She could preside over the trial as well, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Cannon, appointed by Trump in 2019, made headlines last year when she decided in favor of the former U.S. president at a pivotal stage of the case and was later reversed on appeal.

Cannon would determine, among other things, when a trial would take place and what Trump’s sentence would be if he were found guilty.

It is the second criminal case for Trump, who is due to go on trial in New York next March in a state case stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn star.

If he wins the presidency again, Trump, as head of the federal government, would be in a position to derail the federal case, but not the state one in New York.

In an earlier post, Trump said he would be represented in the case by white collar defense lawyer Todd Blanche, who is representing him in a separate criminal case in Manhattan.

Trump made that announcement after his lawyers John Rowley and Jim Trusty quit the case for reasons that were not immediately clear.

Trump and his allies have portrayed the case as political retaliation by Democratic President Joe Biden, but Biden has kept his distance.

The White House said he did not find out about the indictment ahead of time, and he declined to comment when asked by reporters in North Carolina about the indictment.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has sought to minimize the perception of political interference by appointing Smith as special counsel, giving him a degree of independence from Justice Department leadership to head the prosecution.

The case does not prevent Trump from campaigning or taking office if he were to win the November 2024 presidential election. Legal experts say there would be no basis to block his swearing-in even if he were convicted and sent to prison.

POPULAR WITH REPUBLICANS

Trump’s legal woes have not dented his popularity with Republican voters, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. His main Republican rivals have so far lined up behind him to criticize the case as politically motivated.

Trump served as president from 2017 to 2021, and he has so far managed to weather controversies that might torpedo other politicians. He describes himself as the victim of a witch hunt and accuses the Justice Department of partisan bias.

Special Counsel Smith is leading a second criminal probe into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

Trump also faces a separate criminal probe in Georgia related to efforts to overturn his loss to Biden in that state.

Smith convened grand juries in both Washington and Miami to hear evidence, but has opted to bring the case in the politically competitive state of Florida, rather than the U.S. capital, where any jury would likely be heavily Democratic.

Under federal law, defendants have a right to be charged where the activity in question took place. A Florida prosecution, legal experts say, could head off a drawn-out legal challenge from Trump’s team over the proper venue.

The Republican state-by-state presidential nominating contest kicks off early next year, and the party is due to choose its nominee for the November 2024 election in July of that year.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, additional reporting by Jack Queen, Jacqueline Thomsen and Nandita Bose; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Howard Goller)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. senators on Thursday introduced two separate bipartisan artificial intelligence bills on Thursday amid growing interest in addressing issues surrounding the technology.

One would require the U.S. government to be transparent when using AI to interact with people and another would establish an office to determine if the United States is remaining competitive in the latest technologies.

Lawmakers are beginning to consider what new rules might be needed because of the rise of AI. The technology made headlines earlier this year when ChatGPT, an AI program that can answer questions in written form, became generally available.

Senators Gary Peters, a Democrat who chairs the Homeland Security committee, introduced a bill along with Senators Mike Braun and James Lankford, both Republicans, which would require U.S. government agencies to tell people when the agency is using AI to interact with them.

The bill also requires agencies to create a way for people to appeal any decisions made by AI.

“The federal government needs to be proactive and transparent with AI utilization and ensure that decisions aren’t being made without humans in the driver’s seat,” said Braun in a statement.

Senators Michael Bennet and Mark Warner, both Democrats, introduced a measure along with Republican Senator Todd Young that would establish an Office of Global Competition Analysis that would seek to ensure that the United States stayed in the front of the pack in developing artificial intelligence.

“We cannot afford to lose our competitive edge in strategic technologies like semiconductors, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence to competitors like China,” Bennet said.

Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he had scheduled three briefings for senators on artificial intelligence, including the first classified briefing on the topic so lawmakers can be educated on the issue.

The briefings include a general overview on AI, examining how to achieve American leadership on AI and a classified session on defense and intelligence issues and implications.

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; additional reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Alistair Bell)

By Brendan Pierson

(Reuters) – A mandate that U.S. health insurers cover preventive care like cancer screenings and HIV-preventing medication at no extra cost to patients could remain in place while the Biden administration appeals a court order striking it down, following a tentative agreement announced on Friday.

The agreement between the administration and conservative businesses and individuals that sued to challenge the mandate is not yet final, according to a filing with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The deal would preserve the mandate nationwide while appeals play out, but allow the employer challenging the mandate, Texas-based Braidwood Management, to stop covering pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) against HIV and other preventive services without co-pays for its employees for now.

The company, which operates an alternative health center, would be shielded from any retroactive enforcement if the mandate is restored on appeal.

The preventive care mandate, part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) often referred to as Obamacare, covers services recommended by a federal task force.

Braidwood and the other plaintiffs sued specifically over PrEP for HIV, which they said violated their religious beliefs by encouraging homosexuality and drug use.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth, Texas in March blocked the federal government from enforcing the mandate for a much wider range of services, finding that the task force’s role under the ACA violates the U.S. Constitution.

If the task force’s recommendations automatically trigger coverage, he said, then it has enough power that its members must be appointed by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

The ruling does not apply to services the task force recommended before the ACA was enacted in 2010, including breast cancer screening.

More than 150 million people were eligible for preventive care free of charge as of 2020 under the ACA, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

If O’Connor’s ruling is not overturned on appeal, insurers will be able to charge patients co-pays and deductibles for such services in new insurance plans, most of which will begin next calendar year.

The Biden administration has said O’Connor’s ruling threatens public health. Major U.S. medical associations have also weighed in against the decision.

O’Connor drew national notice in 2018 when he struck down the entire ACA, a decision that was later overturned.

(Reporting by Brendan Pierson in New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Bill Berkrot)

By Brad Brooks

(Reuters) – Federal prosecutors on Friday leveled charges of making false statements to financial institutions against a real estate developer who is at the center of allegations that led to the impeachment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

A grand jury indicted Nate Paul, 36, on eight counts of making false statements to lenders based in Texas, New York, Connecticut and Ireland to obtain $172 million in real estate loans in 2017 and 2018.

Paul, who was arrested by the FBI on Thursday and jailed overnight, briefly appeared before a federal judge in Austin on Friday. He did not enter a plea and was allowed to go free on bond. He is scheduled for a June 15 arraignment. His attorney, Gerry Morris, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Paxton was not mentioned in Paul’s indictment and Morris told reporters after the hearing that the case against his client did not involve Paxton.

Paxton, a supporter of former President Donald Trump whose lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results was tossed out by the Supreme Court, was impeached by state legislators on May 27 and temporarily suspended from office pending his trial in the Senate.

The articles of impeachment against him accuse Paxton of having employees of the attorney general’s office intervene in a lawsuit against Paul, of helping the developer obtain information about the FBI investigation against him, and of providing legal favors to Paul in exchange for his renovating Paxton’s home.

Paxton, 60, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Aside from his impeachment, he is under a separate corruption investigation by the Justice Department, according to the special prosecutors in Texas leading his state case.

The Texas Senate will try Paxton on the 20 articles of impeachment lodged against him on or before Aug. 28.

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

By Nandita Bose and Jeff Mason

ROCKY MOUNT, N.C. (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden said on Friday he had not spoken to Attorney General Merrick Garland and had no plans to do so, as the Justice Department’s indictment of former President Donald Trump was unsealed.

“I have not spoken to him at all and I’m not going to speak with him,” Biden said, when asked by a reporter if he would speak to the attorney general, continuing a pattern of distancing himself from the DOJ’s investigation into his political rival.

Trump faces 37 criminal counts including charges of unauthorized retention of classified documents and conspiracy to obstruct justice after he left the White House in 2021, according to federal court documents made public on Friday.

Republican hopefuls have alleged, without evidence, that the investigation into Trump, who is running to unseat Biden from the White House in 2024, is politically motivated. Biden and top officials have repeatedly said the DOJ is acting independently.

As the charges against Trump were unsealed, Biden was in North Carolina, where he was discussing his economic agenda and had plans to meet with military members.

White House spokesperson Olivia Dalton said earlier that Biden found out about the indictment of his former rival at the same time others did and had not had advance knowledge of it. She declined further comment.

“This is a president who respects the rule of law,” she told reporters on Air Force One. “That’s precisely why we’re not commenting here.”

Garland, who last appeared publicly with Biden at a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, appointed special prosecutor Jack Smith, who is not registered with any political party, to head the investigation last year.

Trump sought to challenge the legitimacy of FBI search warrants last year related to the probe, but a conservative-leaning federal appeals court rejected his arguments.

BIDEN, TRUMP IN SWING STATE

North Carolina is a key political swing state that Republicans are courting this weekend during a state convention. Trump, who declared himself an “innocent man” in relation to the charges, is scheduled to speak there on Saturday evening.

Biden and his wife, Jill, made a stop at Nash Community College in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, to discuss workforce training programs and then traveled to the newly renamed Fort Liberty military base to talk about new efforts to help veterans and families of those serving in the military.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Trump, who are competing against each other and a field of others for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination, are expected to speak there on Friday and Saturday nights, respectively.

Biden’s trip underscores his team’s political strategy as he makes an unprecedented run at the age of 80 for reelection. As Trump faces a host of lawsuits and investigations and Republican hopefuls trade barbs, Biden will be keen to be seen visibly, actively governing, especially on non-partisan issues like jobs.

The so-called bully pulpit is a key advantage that incumbent presidents of both parties have long put to effective use. Just 10 presidents running as incumbents have lost reelection bids.

Biden is slated to attend a rally with union members on June 17 in Philadelphia.

North Carolina, with 15 electoral votes, is an important political swing state that Trump won, though only with a slim margin, in 2020. Biden won overall with 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.

Trump is ahead of his rivals in North Carolina and that lead mirrors his dominance in other states, according to a poll released Thursday by Opinion Diagnostics. He leads the North Carolina Republican field with 44% of the vote, followed by DeSantis at 22%, the poll shows.

At Fort Liberty, Biden signed an executive order that the White House said would “increase the economic security of military and veteran spouses, caregivers, and survivors.”

Fort Liberty was recently renamed from Fort Bragg as part of an effort to relabel bases named for Confederate officers.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose and Jeff Mason; additional reporting by Sarah Lynch and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Heather Timmons, Alistair Bell, Daniel Wallis and Diane Craft)

(Reuters) – A convicted killer suspected in the 2005 disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba pleaded not guilty on Friday in a U.S. courtroom to charges of extortion and wire fraud related to her death, according to media reports.

Joran van der Sloot, 35, was extradited to Birmingham, Alabama, from a prison in Peru on Thursday for arraignment in federal court in northern Alabama. The Dutch national is serving a 28-year prison sentence in the South American country for another woman’s killing.

Holloway, an 18-year-old from a Birmingham suburb, mysteriously vanished in 2005 during a high school graduation trip to Aruba. While her remains have not been discovered, an Alabama judge declared her legally dead in 2012.

The teenager was last seen in Aruba with van der Sloot and another man. Her disappearance and an exhaustive investigation drew heavy media attention.

Van der Sloot, who was once arrested in the U.S. in the case but not charged, is accused of extorting the girl’s mother, Beth Holloway, for money and offering false information about the teen’s whereabouts in 2010, according to prosecutors.

Beth Holloway watched as van der Sloot was arraigned in the courtroom, according to local media.

During the brief court appearance, van der Sloot wore a T-shirt. He had an earpiece for translation of the hearing into Dutch but chose not to use it, CBS News affiliate WIAT-TV reported.

Van der Sloot will be returned to Peru upon the trial’s conclusion in Alabama.

He was convicted in 2012 to 28 years in prison in Peru after he confessed to beating, strangling and suffocating a 21-year-old Peruvian business student in 2010.

(Reporting by Tyler Clifford in New York City; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

By Sarah N. Lynch and Jonathan Stempel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. prosecutors unsealed a 37-count indictment against Donald Trump on Friday, accusing the former president of risking some of the country’s most sensitive security secrets after leaving the White House in 2021.

Trump mishandled classified documents that included information about the secretive U.S. nuclear program and potential domestic vulnerabilities in the event of an attack, the federal indictment said.

Trump also discussed with lawyers the possibility of lying to government officials seeking to recover the documents; stored some of the documents around a toilet, and moved boxes of them around his Mar-a-Lago Florida resort home to prevent them from being found, the charges said.

“Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?” Trump said to one of his attorneys, according to the 49-page indictment.

The Justice Department made the criminal charges public on a tumultuous day in which two of Trump’s lawyers quit the case. The indictment charges Trump with 37 counts. A former aide, Walt Nauta, faces charges in the case as well.

Trump is due to make a first court appearance in the case in a Miami court on Tuesday, a day before his 77th birthday. Since Trump would serve any sentences concurrently if convicted, the maximum prison time he faces is 20 years for obstruction of justice, which carries the highest penalty.

U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the prosecution, said in a brief statement: “Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States, and they must be enforced.”

“We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everybody.” He said as with any defendant, those accused were presumed innocent until proven guilty and he pledged to seek a speedy trial before a jury of citizens in Florida.

Trump has proclaimed his innocence in the case. After the charges were unsealed, he attacked Smith on social media.

“He is a Trump Hater – a deranged ‘psycho’ that shouldn’t be involved in any case having to do with ‘Justice,'” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Materials came from the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies, the indictment said.

One document concerned a foreign country’s support of terrorism against U.S. interests.

Prosecutors said Trump showed another person a Defense Department document described as a “plan of attack” against another country.

They said Trump conspired with Nauta to keep classified documents he had taken from the White House and hide them from a federal grand jury. Nauta, who worked for Trump at the White House and Mar-a-Lago, faces six counts in the case.

Nauta falsely told the FBI he did not know how some of the documents ended up in Trump’s suite at Mar-a-Lago, when in fact he had been involved in moving them there from a storage room, according to the indictment.

The indictment includes photographs of Trump’s boxes on a ballroom stage, in a club bathroom and in a storage room, where some were laying on the floor.

Trump kept the documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and his golf club in New Jersey. Mar-a-Lago hosted tens of thousands of guests at more than 150 events during the time they were there, the indictment alleges.

Prosecutors said the unauthorized disclosure of the classified documents could risk U.S. national security, foreign relations, and intelligence gathering.

The indictment of a former U.S. president on federal charges is unprecedented in American history and emerges at a time when Trump is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination next year.

Trump’s support has held steady through many lawsuits and scandals but the charges laid out against him on Friday could give his Republican rivals in the presidential race ammunition to attack his record, especially on national security.

Investigators seized roughly 13,000 documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, nearly a year ago. One hundred were marked as classified, even though one of Trump’s lawyers had previously said all records with classified markings had been returned to the government.

Trump has previously said he declassified those documents while president, but his attorneys have declined to make that argument in court filings.

TRUMP APPOINTEE AS JUDGE

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has been initially assigned to oversee the case, a source who was briefed on the matter said on Friday. She could preside over the trial as well, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Cannon, appointed by Trump in 2019, made headlines last year when she decided in favor of the former U.S. president at a pivotal stage of the case and was later reversed on appeal.

Cannon would determine, among other things, when a trial would take place and what Trump’s sentence would be if he were found guilty.

It is the second criminal case for Trump, who is due to go on trial in New York next March in a state case stemming from a hush-money payment to a porn star.

If he wins the presidency again, Trump, as head of the federal government, would be in a position to derail the federal case, but not the state one in New York.

In an earlier post, Trump said he would be represented in the case by white collar defense lawyer Todd Blanche, who is representing him in a separate criminal case in Manhattan.

Trump made that announcement after his lawyers John Rowley and Jim Trusty quit the case for reasons that were not immediately clear.

Trump and his allies have portrayed the case as political retaliation by Democratic President Joe Biden, but Biden has kept his distance.

The White House said he did not find out about the indictment ahead of time, and he declined to comment when asked by reporters in North Carolina about the indictment.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has sought to minimize the perception of political interference by appointing Smith as special counsel, giving him a degree of independence from Justice Department leadership to head the prosecution.

The case does not prevent Trump from campaigning or taking office if he were to win the November 2024 presidential election. Legal experts say there would be no basis to block his swearing-in even if he were convicted and sent to prison.

POPULAR WITH REPUBLICANS

Trump’s legal woes have not dented his popularity with Republican voters, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling. His main Republican rivals have so far lined up behind him to criticize the case as politically motivated.

Trump served as president from 2017 to 2021, and he has so far managed to weather controversies that might torpedo other politicians. He describes himself as the victim of a witch hunt and accuses the Justice Department of partisan bias.

Special Counsel Smith is leading a second criminal probe into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

Trump also faces a separate criminal probe in Georgia related to efforts to overturn his loss to Biden in that state.

Smith convened grand juries in both Washington and Miami to hear evidence, but has opted to bring the case in the politically competitive state of Florida, rather than the U.S. capital, where any jury would likely be heavily Democratic.

Under federal law, defendants have a right to be charged where the activity in question took place. A Florida prosecution, legal experts say, could head off a drawn-out legal challenge from Trump’s team over the proper venue.

The Republican state-by-state presidential nominating contest kicks off early next year, and the party is due to choose its nominee for the November 2024 election in July of that year.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, additional reporting by Jack Queen, Jacqueline Thomsen and Nandita Bose; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Howard Goller)