Global Courant
According to US media reports, the investigation is moving closer to indicting the former president over material found at his Florida home.
Prosecutors in the United States have told Donald Trump’s lawyers that he is the target of an investigation into his handling of classified documents after leaving the presidency, according to reports in multiple US media outlets.
The message came from the office of Special Counsel Jack Smith, ABC, The New York Times, CNN and other news outlets said Wednesday.
The Justice Department typically notifies people when they become the target of an investigation to give them a chance to present their own evidence before a grand jury. The notification does not necessarily mean that you will be charged.
Trump, the frontrunner in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, pleaded not guilty in April to charges of falsifying business records related to hush money paid to an adult film star before the 2016 presidential race. He also faces a criminal investigation into alleged attempts to reverse his 2020 election loss.
Trump claims the multiple investigations are politically motivated.
A redacted FBI photo of documents and secret cover pages recovered from a container stored at Trump’s Florida estate (File: US Department of Justice/Handout via Reuters)
The investigation into the classified documents began in 2021 amid suspicions among federal officials that the former president had not returned all the documents he should have returned.
Last August, the FBI found some 13,000 documents, 100 of which were marked classified, during a search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, even though one of Trump’s lawyers had previously said that all documents containing secret markings had been removed. returned.
Trump has defended his custody of the documents and suggests he released them when he was president. However, Trump has provided no evidence for the claim, and the court documents show that his lawyers have not made that argument either.
Trump is the first current or former US president to face criminal charges, and his legal woes are mounting.
In May, a jury in a Manhattan civil court ordered Trump to pay $5 million in damages for sexually assaulting former Elle columnist E Jean Carroll and then defaming her by labeling her a liar.
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