Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, a staunch Trump ally and member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, tweeted after the unsealing of the indictment that the U.S. was now in "a war phase."

In his tweet, he added: "Eye for an eye."

Prior to being named special counsel, Smith served as the chief prosecutor for the special court in The Hague, where he investigated war crimes committed during the Kosovo War.

Before that, he served as the vice president of litigation for the Hospital Corporation of America, the nation’s largest nongovernmental health care provider.

Smith began his prosecutorial career in 1994 as an assistant district attorney with the New York County District Attorney’s Office. 

Read the full story here.

After he left office, Trump retained troves of classified documents from the following government agencies: CIA, Defense Department, National Security Agency, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, Energy Department and State Department, as well as the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, an entity within the State Department, according to the indictment.

Prosecutors said that in August or September 2021, Trump met in his office at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with a representative of his political action committee.

During the meeting, Trump commented that "an ongoing military operation in Country B was not going well," the indictment said.

Trump then "showed the PAC Representative a classified map of Country B and told the PAC Representative that he should not be showing the map to the PAC Representative and to not get too close."

"The PAC Representative did not have a security clearance or any need-to-know classified information about the military operation," the indictment said.

The indictment did not name the PAC representative who viewed the document and did not specify the country in which the military operation was carried out.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has not provided Congress with an assessment of the potential risk to national security from the documents found at Mar-a-Lago, according to Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and a congressional aide with knowledge of the matter. 

“We’d like to know what damage, if any, was created by the improper storage of these documents. That’s what we’re waiting on next,” Rubio, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told NBC News yesterday.

U.S. intelligence agencies conduct damage assessments whenever classified material is compromised to determine whether any information exposed could endanger or affect sources or intelligence gathering methods. The ODNI declined to comment.

A congressional aide said the administration previously briefed lawmakers on the documents, including in “recent weeks.” But the damage assessment has not been completed and it remains unclear when it will be finished, the aide said.

The indictment detailed a meeting Trump held at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, in July 2021 when he gave an interview to a writer and publisher in connection with a "then-forthcoming book," which is believed to be the memoir of former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Trump showed a classified document to the group during the meeting, which was recorded with Trump’s knowledge and consent, prosecutors said. The indictment contained a transcript of that recording.

When Trump greeted the writer, publisher and two of his staff members, Trump said, "Look what I found, this was [the Senior Military Official's] plan of attack, read it and just show...it's interesting," the indictment said.

The indictment said that that senior military official "purportedly feared that TRUMP might order an attack on Country A" and that official advised him against doing so. It's believed that the country was Iran, NBC previously reported.

Later in the interview, Trump acknowledged that the information he was sharing with the group was "highly confidential."

"Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this. You attack, and —," the indictment said.

A staffer at one point appeared to start saying that they have to do something with the document Trump was referring to.

"Declassify it," Trump interjected. "See as president I could have declassified it...Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret."

The staffer replied, "Yeah...now we have a problem."

As he was preparing to leave the White House in January 2021, Trump and his White House staff, including Nauta, packed boxes and Trump was "personally involved in this process," according to the indictment.

Trump then "caused his boxes, containing hundreds of classified documents, to be transported from the White house to Mar-a-Lago," the indictment said.

Attorney Bradley Moss previously told NBC News that Trump's best defense in the case "is he didn’t realize they were classified documents because he didn’t pack them up."

In an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” earlier this year, Trump lawyer Jim Trusty had insisted that Trump “didn’t pack the boxes.”

Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert who drew national attention when he became the lone Republican witness to testify during the first Trump impeachment hearings, appeared on Fox News this afternoon and described the newly unsealed federal indictment as "extremely damning."

"This is not an indictment that you can dismiss," said Turley, who is a regular legal analyst on Fox News and tends to provide analysis that is more favorable to the former president.

The indictment recounted an interaction between Trump and one of his lawyers ("Trump Attorney 1") when they were discussing what to do with a folder containing documents with classified markings. The lawyer recounted that Trump made a "plucking" motion, that seemed to indicate the lawyer should just remove the incriminating papers.

"He made a funny motion as though — well okay why don’t you take them with you to your hotel room and if there’s anything really bad in there, like, you know, pluck it out," the lawyer said. "And that was the motion that he made. He didn’t say that."