♪ ♪ narrator: funding for this presentation of this program is provided by... narrator: pediric surgeon. volunteer. topiary artist. a raymond james financial advisor tailors advice to help you live yo life. life well planned. brook: these are people who are trying to change the world. startups have this energy that energizes me. i'm thriving by helping others everyday. people who know, know bdo.

narrator: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. by judy and peter blum kovler foundation; pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. and by contributions to this pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. announcer: and now, "bbc news". ♪ >> hello. i'm lewis vaughan jones and you are watching "the context" on bbc news. >> i'm an innocent man, i did nothing wrong, and we will fight this out the way we've been fighting for seven years. >> i'm glad the department of justice will resolve these issues with the former president moving forward with charges, and i'm deeply troubled to see this indictment. >> have you spoken to attorney general mary gartland--merrick

garland? lewis: welcome to the program. the indictment against donald trump been unsealed. what does it mean? we get to see what crimes he is accused of committing. there are 37 of them. we will bring all the details. over his johnson has awarded people around him with honors and peerages. we will look at why it is controversial. and in ukraine, what happened at the dam that collapsed? we will investigate the new evidence. we are going to start in the u.s. with donald trump and the indictment against him. you can see on your screen, this document tells the story of him taking documents from his time in office back to mar-a-lago, where he lives, and storing them there.

let's take a look at some of the pictures. that is some of the documents being stored in a bathroom. that is a ballroom there. boxes and boxes of documents. what is in them? documents potentially classified , and the indictment talks about him taking them from the white house, showing them to people, talking about them, and pontially concealing them from investigators. there are 37 counts, most of them -- 31 of them for the willful retention of national defense information. also, others about conspiracy to obstruct justice. i want to give you a heads-up, we have political experts standing by to get there analysis, but these pictures here is the department of justice, and we are expectin them to give a press conference and speak to us for the first time about these charges.

we're going to carry on looking through the document and the indictment, but just so you know, we makeup attractive these pictures at any moment if and when we get -- we may cut back to these pictures at anyone if we get a sense that someone will talk about them. let's go to our correspondent gary o'donoghue in washington. gary, pockets through what we have learned. gary: well, after months of this investigation, really, we have discovered that donald trump is facing a whole bunch of criminal charges relating to the retention of these nuclear and other documents, top-secret documents. we know that some of them relate to the espionage act, we know that some of them relate to obstruction of justice. just to give you a flavor of some of the documents that they believe were willfully held by donald trump, they talked about the united states' nuclear

programs, they talked about potential vulnerabilities for the united states and its allies to military attack, they talked about plans for possible retaliation in response to foreign attacks. and throughout this you will remember that donald trump has said that effectively just having these documents, just thinking about it, he had the power to declassified things almost by thinking about it, h once said. they have now cited two occasions in 2021 where he showed or seem to show classified material to people who shouldn't be looking at it and appeared to understand himself that he shouldn't have that document. there is one meeting in a july 2021 -we are going -- two- minute warning we are getting on the special counsel. so that will be coming up very shortly. let me go back to this question of the moment were donald trump was waving one of these documents around. it was some sort of potential

plan for an attack on another country. and he says -- they quote this in the indictment -- "see, as president i could have declassified it," said trump -- lewis: i'm going to jump in, we're going to listen now just in case. >> -- and through the door. please, if you have cell phones, these silence them. -- please silence them. any questions? lewis: gary, i'm sorry to interrupt, we just wanted to double check. it was procedural instructions. do carry on. gary: donald trump talking to his agent saying, "see, as president i could have declassified it." the staffer laughs. donald trump, "no i can't, you know-- now i can't, you know, this is still a secret." he knew this material, according to the indictment, was classified and who shuldn't be showing it around. that tape is going to be crucial

as part of this evidence. they have given an instance of another occasion later in the year were allegedly he showed a top-secret map to a member of his political action committee. and also the indictment details huge sections of toing and froing with scores of boxes, some being moved into this room out of a ballroom, into a shower at one point. one of the boxes seems to still open and secret documents are laying on the floor that i meant to be on the scene -- here he is, jack smith. >> good afternoon. today and indictment was unsealed charging donald j. trump with felony violations of our national security laws as well as participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice. this indictment was voted by a grand jury of citizens in the

douthern district of florida, full to understand th scope and the gravity of the crimes charged. the men and women of the united states intelligence community and our armed forces dedicate their lives to protecting our nation and its people. our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the united states, they must be enforced. violations of those laws put our country at risk. adherence to the rule of law is a bedrock principle of the department of justice. in our nation's commitment to the rule of law sets an examp for the world. we have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone. applying those laws, collecting facts, that is what determines the outcome of an investigation. nothing more, and nothing less.

the prosecutors in my office are among the most talented and experienced in the department of justice. they have investigated this case hewing to the highest ethical standards, and they will continue to do so as this case proceeds. lewis: just want to bring you some breaking news from here in the u.k. -- boris johnson, former prime minister, is going to stand down as an mp. he is quitting as an mp. "i'm stepping down forth with and triggering an immediate by election." we are just interrupted the breaking news from the u.s. two hugely significant stores happening at exactly the same time right now. we have a statement from boris johnson basically saying that he will be stepping down forth with and triggering an immediate bi-

election in his constituency. it is a rather long statement, but there are some key bits that i want to bring you in for. -- in full. "i have received a letter from the privileges committee making it clear, much to my amazement, that they are determined to use the proceedings against me drive me out of parliament. they have still not produced a shred of evidence that i knowingly or recklessly misled the commcommons. they know perfectly well that i was saying what i sincerely believed to be true like any other minister. they know that i corrected the record as soon as possible and every other senior official administered included the current prime minister, rishi sunak, believe that we were working lawfully together. i have been an mp since 2001. i take my responsibility seriously. i did not lie, and i believe that in their hearts the committee know it.

but they are wilully chosen to ignore the truth because from the outset their progress has not been to discover theth or generally understand what was in my mind when i spoke ruin the tcommons. that purpose from the beginning has defined me -- has been to find me guilty regardless of the facts. this is the very definition of a kangaroo court. most members of the committee including the air expressed deeply prejudicial remarks about my guilt before they had seen the evidence. they should have recused themselves. in retrospect it was naïve to think that these proceedings could be useful or fair. but i was determined to believe in the system and in justice and to vindicate what i knew to be the. said faith in the impartiality of my systems led me to the commission. it is clear that my fate had been misplaced. the labour party and the liberal democrats and the smp to do whatever they can to remove me from parliament.

sadly, as we saw in july of last year, there are tory mps who share that view. this is a witchhunt underway to take revenge for brexit and reverse the 2016 referendum results. my removal is the necessary first step, and i believe there has been a concerted attempt to bring it about. i'm afraid i no longer believe this is any coincidence. sue great, who investigated gatherings in number 10, is the chief of staff-designate of the labor leader. nor do i believe that it is a coincidence that the supposedly impartial chief counsel turned out to be a strong labor supporter who repeatedly tweeted personal attacks on me and the government. when i left office last year, the government was a handful of points behind in the polls. the gap has massively widened. just a few years after winning the biggest majority in half a century, that majority is at risk. our party needs urgently to

recapture a sense of momentum and a belief in what the country can do. we need to show how we are making the most of brexit and we ed to be setting out a progrowth, pro-investment agenda. we need to cut business and personal taxes, and not just as pre-election gimmicks rather than endlessly putting them up. we must not be afraid to be properly conservative government. we have so passively abandoned the prospect of a free-trade deal with u.s., junk to measure to help people into housing or describe eu directives-- scrap eu directives or promote animal welfare. we need to deliver on the 2019 manifesto endorsed by 14 million people. " and i have read quite a lot of it there and it is quite long. there is more to go. but let's bring in joanne nadler. thanks very much for coming on the program. >> my pleasure, i think.

[laughter] lewis: what is your reaction to what just happened? >> well, i think it is highly regretful. i think that this together with the announcement earlier from -- and we are analyzing this in real time, so we don't know all of the circumstances that have provoked either of these announcements, although we do seem to have more information in boris johnson's case based on what we have just read. so what i wanted to say is i want to calibrate my comments to take into account that there are obviously human issues here. but my gut reactio is that this is going to really throw the conservative party parliamentary party and the wider party into something of an unnecessary spasm of introspection. and whilst i agree with some of

the points that boris johnson has just made about the necessity to stick to the 2019 manifesto, sadly i would have to say that he was unable to do that. now, i fully appreciate that there were extraordinary circumstances that knocked him off course. but he had an export married mandate. it -- extraordinary mandate. it was in many ways a personal mandate. he seemed to lose his way in delivering on many of the things people were expecting to come out of that momentous brexit decision. now, he delivered brexit, yes, he did, but he left a lot of it undone and yes pass that on to his two successors. at this stage to stand out in this way, it seems to be something of an abrogation of responsibility to his party. and it will obviously have

enemies of the conservative party cheering to the rafters. lewis: if you wouldn't mind just staying there, because for the sake of completeness i will finish reading the statement. it is quite long. we are through most of it, but just for a sense of where we are. actually, i am being told i cannot do that. we will go to been right first. ben, i think you outrank me or something. divorce your reaction to this.-- give us your reaction to this for some > got a lot of calls to make. -- >> got a lot of calls to make. we did not think this was going to happen. boris johnson is standing down, throwing in the towel, leaving parliament. the letter just released that you read a big chunk of explains why -- he is furious. we know he received a letter from the privileges committee that had been investigating whether or not he deliberately lied to parliament. he received their initial findings earlier this week. he had a couple of weeks to respond. we did not expect a hearing more

about the end of june. but he has jumped the gun, preempted it, he has lashed out at the work of the committee, describing it as a kangaroo court, what happened to him as a political hijab, lacerating about -- political hit job, lacerating by the chr of the committee, who i had heard from yet but i try to make contact with her. the headline is he's had enough, he is off. lewis: it is extraordinary. it is the end of one of the most remarkable political careers we have seen. >> no question. there have been no conservative politician like him both when he was in city hall and when he led the brexit campaign, which helped him get to number 10. electorally, he was really successful. he fronted the brexit campaign. he won an 80 c majority of -- 80-seat majority for the tories. he had a big mandate and a big majority.

then we saw during his leadership of the u.k. during covid, which was a remarkable time for someone like boris johnson, any prime minister, to find themselves leading a country that does quickly he was in golf in partygate and-- enguled in partygate and scandal. the momentum unraveled and he was driven out by his own mp's, who were fed up by the scandal and what they saw as a class and standards of public life he had overseen. he has been making a lot of money the last few months on the speaker's circuit, writing books. he has been there in the background. huge speculative and in westminster as to whether he may be in a position -- speculation in westminster as to whether he may be in a position to mount some kind of comeback. that is not going to happen now. he has called time in his political career and this is an astonishing turn of events. lewis: just give us your

reaction to some of the language here. talking about a witchhunt -- while that is a phrase we are all familiar from the u.s. and donald trump, talking about a kangaroo court, are these kind of flourishes of language we are used to him from his newspaper commentator days, or is this a real accusation with serious teeth? >> you make a very good point, and this is perhaps the sort of language you hear from someone like donald trump, who felt aggrieved and hard done by. he is trashing the system on his way out. he thinks that this has been done completely unfairly. he thinks the committee, the privileges committee israel houthi bias, -- privileges committee is riddled with bias and he never had a fair hearing. he accepted the process as it is, but he has not, he has

lambasted them and as try to shred their credibility on his way out. lewis: it is an extraordinary moment. i know it is pretty early, but he suggested books and other engagements outside parliament. with people around him have known this for -- what people around him have known this for a while? was this one of those open secrets, or was this genuinely a shock? >> no, this is a genuine, genuine shock. i think the expectation was that he would get a very rough time when the privileges committee reported they would have recommended a sanction, that mp's would have voted upon. it was possible he was looking at a 10-day suspension. it was possible there may have been a by election in his seat. things were looking pretty difficult for him, but he has decided not to wait for the committee to report and to find out whatever punishment mp's

decided to met e out to him, and walk before he was pushed. lewis: ben, jusremind for people watching around the world, he is not prime minister right now. he is an mp. this resignation, what does that mean in practice? ben: it means that there will be a bielection in his constituency in west london. not a very big majority, so i think the opposition parties will be desperate to take that. and it is a total headache for rishi sunak, who took over after the feted premiership of liz truss. rishi sunak, the current prime minister, desperate to bring a sense of stability to his party, to the government, to make it look managerial and efficient and thatt put all the traumas of the last year or two behind

it. and yet boris johnson has come back into the spotlight with a vengeance. he has his supporters within the parliamentary party, no doubt about that. his power within the parliamentary party has waned, particularly as this privileges committee investigation got going and he himself gave evidence to a. yesterday we had his honors list, the people boris johnson recommended to go to the house of lords or various honors, which generated a huge amount of quite-expected criticism from across the political spectrum. but nobody expectd, frankly, him to do this and preempted the privileges committee's report into his actions. it is a pretty massive headache for the current prime minister, rishi sunak. lewis: ben, thank you so much for giving us your initial immediate reaction to althat. i will let you go make those calls. ben will be getting reaction from westminster. i want to get through the rest of boris johnson's statement.

i did say it was quite long, it is quite long. i haven't got to the bit yet where he announces he is going. so i'm just going to, if you will bear with me, go through the rest of his statement. "i am now being forced out of parliament by a tiny handful of people with no evidence to back up their assertions and without the approval of conservative party members, let alone the wider electorate. i believe that a dangerous and unsettling precedent has been set. the conservative party has time to recover its mojo and edition to win the election and other court to providing enthusiastic support as a backbencher mp. the committee has set out to make that the untenable. the report is riddled with inaccuracies and reeks of prejudice under their absurd and unjust process, i have no ability to challenge anything they say. the privileges committee is there to protect the privileges of parliament. it is a very important job. they should not be using their powers, which only recently been

designed, to plan what is a political hit job on someone they oppose. it is in no one's interest that the process the committee has launched continue for a single day further, so today i have written to my association to say that i'm stepping down forthwith , triggering an immediate by-election. i'm very sorry to leave my wonderful constituency. it has been a huge honor to serve th as mayor and mp. i'm proud of what my 15-year stint was able to deliver -- vast new railway, the elizabeth line, funding for hospital in hillingdon, where enabling works have begun. i remain hugely proud of all be achieved in my time as prime minister, getting brexit done, winning the biggest majority for 40 years, and delivering the fastest vaccine rollout of any major european country, as well is leading global support for ukraine. it is very sad to be leaving parliament, at least for now.

but above all, and bewildered and appalled that i could be forced out anti-democratically by a committee chaired by harriet harman with such egregious bias. thank you for allowing me to finish the statement. it was very long and full of fury and venom from their former prime minister boris johnson. let's bring back in jo-anne nadler. give us your reaction to some of the scathing comments he has made. jo-anne: well, despite the fact that i was somewhat critical in our opening comments of boris johnson, i also have quite a lot of sympathy with some of the points that he has raised in this second part of the statement that you have just read. and i do think that there is a real issue about natural justice and the way that this committee has conducted itself and the nature of the inquiry, because after all, boris johnson

suffered quite considerable repercussions from the initial moves made against him in parliamentary terms as a result of the fallout from partygate. he resigned as prime minister. so it did feel like there was something beyond the normal process going on here, and it was something slightly punitive about the whole thing, in a way that wasn't parliamentary and wasn't appropriate. nevertheless, and i can see why that would drive somebody to distraction. but politics is a team game and for all the reasons that been with -- ben was saying, this is huge problem for the prime minister, a massive distraction. and it would be much more dignified -- not that we necessarily expect from boris johnson -- he has many positives, but that is not what

we immediately associate with him -- lewis: we are right out of pam's wife got to jump in. jo-anne nadler, former advisor to conservative central office, thank you very much for your time. bringing us immediate political reaction there to the resignation of boris johnson. this is bbc news narrator: funding for this presentation of this program is provided by... narrator: financial services firm, raymond james. man: bdo. accountants and advisors. narrator: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. by judy and peter blum kovler foundation; pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. and by contributions to this pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ ♪

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♪ ♪ narrator: funding for this presentation of this program is provided by... narrator: pediatric surgeon. volunteer. topiary artist. a raymond james financial advisor tailors advice to help you live your life. life well planned. brook: these are people who are trying to change the world. startups have this energy that energizes me. i'm thriving by helping others everyday. people who know, know bdo.