WHAT TRUMP HAS TO FEAR — By now, you’ve seen the shocking details from the 37-count indictment — including tidbits that surprised even plugged-in reporters who have broken scoop after scoop about the documents probe.

The epic pictures of boxes stuffed with classified documents stored haphazardly around Mar-a-Lago, including in a bathroom. The transcripts of audio recordings that include Trump seemingly to acknowledge he knew he was in possession of illicit materials he could not summarily declassify. A lawyer’s secret notes that recorded Trump’s alleged suggestions that his attorneys clean up his dirty laundry. And text messages documenting his apparent obsessionwith keeping the documents in his possessions and concealed from law enforcement. Read the full indictment

The consequences could be severe. Our colleagues Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein note: “Each count of willful retention of records carries a maximum 10-year sentence. Obstruction charges each carry a 20-year maximum sentence. False-statements charges each carry a five-year maximum.” If convicted, Trump would not face those maximums under federal sentencing guidelines. But he would certainly be facing significant jail time.

What should be especially concerning for Trump is the swath of sympathetic lawyers — even longtime Trump defenders — weighing in on the gravity of the case against him.

— GOP legal brain and Fox News contributor JONATHAN TURLEY called the details in the indictment “extremely damning,”arguing that the case is nothing like the charges Manhattan DA ALVIN BRAGG brought against the ex-president in April.

“There are some indictments that are just bare bones. This is not,” he said on Fox yesterday. “These are witnesses who apparently testified under oath, gave statements to federal investigators, both of which can be criminally charged if they’re false. Those witnesses are directly quoting the president in encouraging others not to look for documents or allegedly to conceal them. It’s damaging.”

— Former Trump attorney TIMOTHY PARLATORE noted to CNN’s Jake Tapper that Smith charged Trump for mishandling only 31 classified documents of the hundreds he was found to possess, suggesting that the prosecutors have a high level of confidence they can make their Espionage Act case.

“It does seem that they are saying that these 31, at least, they think that they can prove that these are national defense” concerns, he said.

— Even Trump ally ALAN DERSHOWITZ, who defended him during the first impeachment trial in the Senate, appeared to change his tune about the charges. Before they were unveiled, he called the prosecution “potentially dangerous to the rule of law” and argued it would lead presidents to “weaponize the criminal justice system against their political opponents.”

On Fox Business last night, he acknowledged Trump faced serious peril surrounding the recording of the ex-president showing one of the classified documents to an unidentified writer while discussing how he could have declassified them when he was president but didn’t and now couldn’t.

“This is the one that should be worrisome to the president, and he may have an answer for it,” Dershowitz said."