These are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand

For Trump, it's both the crime(s) and the cover-up.

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As with everything Trump, his federal indictment is equal parts terrifying and tawdry. 

The document details how the former president deliberately took highly sensitive classified documents with him when he left the White House and then engaged in a months-long conspiracy to ensure the government couldn’t get those documents back, or even learn precisely what records he had. Doing so required a near-comic level of shuffling boxes around Mar-a-Lago, including stuffing a couple dozen storage boxes into a bathroom with an incongruously garish chandelier.  

Photo from Trump’s federal indictment.

While the entire enterprise evokes the Watergate-era cliche, “It's not the crime, it's the cover-up,” there's another Nixonian catchphrase that applies here as well: Hal Holbrook’s Deep Throat, in the movie All the President’s Men, speaking of the Nixon White House: “The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.”

The indictment makes a strong case that Trump knew what he was doing was wrong