Trump investigated under Espionage Act

A federal judge released documents Friday showing the FBI’s search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate cited a potential violation of the Espionage Act. The warrant said the FBI was also investigating the former president for removal or destruction of records and obstructing an investigation. The property receipt, which is a record of what FBI agents took, shows Trump possessed 11 sets of classified documents—some marked top secret. The court records did not detail what was in the documents. The Justice Department requested that U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, the same judge who signed the warrant, unseal it and the property receipt Thursday. 

Did Trump approve unsealing the documents? Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Friday that he encouraged the judge to release the documents. He also said that the records found in his Florida home were declassified and that he would have turned them over without a warrant. Presidents have the power to declassify documents when in office. It is unclear when or if the documents were declassified.

Dig deeper: Listen to Mary Reichard’s report on The World and Everything in It podcast on what the Mar-a-Lago search means for Trump.