Published: Less than 30 min ago
The US Department of Justice’s investigation into whether former President Donald Trump violated the Espionage Act continues.
The investigation into whether Trump stored classified documents at his property in Florida is still “in its early stages,” said Jay Bratt, a senior security counsel at the Department of Justice.
The statement is the clearest indication yet that the Justice Department is directly reviewing Trump’s conduct and moving forward with the investigation.
It was last week that the FBI raided the former president’s Florida residence Mar-a-Lago and took with them a number of boxes of material, eleven sets of documents of which were marked as containing highly sensitive information – intended only to be accessible to specific authorities.
The published search warrant shows that the FBI is investigating possible violations of three federal laws, the most serious of which falls under the Espionage Act. The suspicions do not concern direct espionage, but the collection, dissemination or loss of classified material.
Trump claims that the crackdown is politically motivated, and that the documents are not, in fact, classified. As president, he reportedly had a standing order to declassify documents the moment they were brought from the White House to Mar-a-Lago.