/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/TSUR7W6B4RKMNHMH6C2MM3AQ44.jpg "Trump lawyers notified that he is the target of classified documents probe")
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June 7 (Reuters) – Federal prosecutors have notified former U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawyers that he is under investigation over the handling of classified materials, a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. clarified. The White House in 2024.
The Justice Department typically notifies citizens if they are the subject of an investigation and gives them the opportunity to present their evidence before a grand jury. The notice does not necessarily mean that Trump will be indicted.
News of the notification to Trump’s legal team surfaced just two days after his lawyer met with Justice Department officials to discuss the matter.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for Trump in the document case was not immediately available for comment.
Trump’s legal team was notified Monday, the person said. David Sean, an attorney representing President Trump, said that while there are some signs that the document investigation is nearing an end, the timing of when a person is notified that he or she is a target is a predictor of when he or she will be prosecuted. He said it wasn’t always possible. His ally Steve Bannon is on trial for contempt of Congress.
“Sometimes it’s issued at the beginning of a long investigation, and sometimes it’s at the end of the investigation,” he said.
Trump, the frontrunner in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has repeatedly said the investigations were politically motivated.
A federal grand jury has been investigating Trump’s retention of classified documents after he left the White House in 2021.
A second criminal investigation is examining allegations of President Trump and his allies trying to reverse his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
A spokeswoman for special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the investigation, declined to comment.
box with documents
In August 2022, investigators seized approximately 13,000 documents from President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. One of Trump’s lawyers previously said all classified records were returned, 100 of which were classified.
President Trump has defended the documents and suggested he declassified them during his presidency. However, President Trump has not provided any evidence of this, nor has his attorney made that allegation in court filings.
Trump pleaded not guilty in April to a felony charge of falsifying business records related to hush money paid to porn stars before the 2016 presidential election, becoming the first person to face criminal charges. Incumbent and former President of the United States.
President Trump handed over 15 record boxes in January 2022, a year after he left office, but federal officials have come to believe that the president has not returned all the documents.
The Justice Department will issue a grand jury subpoena to President Trump in May 2022, asking him to return other confidentially marked records, and executives to visit Mar-a-Lago to retrieve the materials. rice field.
Trump’s attorneys handed over 38 pages marked as classified to FBI and Justice Department officials and showed them Mar-a-Lago’s vault, but did not allow investigators to open the box. .
One of Trump’s lawyers also signed a document certifying that all classified records were returned to the government, but the claim was false after the FBI later raided Trump’s home. It turns out there is.
President Trump’s legal troubles are mounting.
In May, a federal court jury in Manhattan filed a civil lawsuit claiming Trump defamed former Elle columnist E. Gene Carroll by sexually abusing and then labeling him a liar. He was ordered to pay damages of $1,000,000.
Trump also faces a criminal investigation by Georgia state prosecutors in connection with his efforts to undo his 2020 election loss in Georgia.
Reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Sarah N. Lynch and Jacqueline Thomsen in Washington. Edited by Ross Corbin, Noelene Walder, Lisa Shoemaker, Lincoln Feast.
Our standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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