Former US President Donald Trump
US media on June 7 quoted sources revealing that federal prosecutors have informed former US President Donald Trump's legal team that he is the subject of an investigation into whether he committed wrongdoing in handling classified documents.
So far, Mr. Trump has only been criminally charged in a state investigation in New York, related to allegations of paying hush money to a porn actress, although the former president is facing a series of legal challenges, including two federal investigations.
According to The New York Times , the notice sent by special prosecutor Jack Smith's office to Mr. Trump's team is the clearest signal yet that the former president is likely to face prosecution in the investigation into how he handled classified documents.
Notifying a person that they are a target of an investigation is a standard way of indicating that they are the direct focus of a criminal investigation, and it usually occurs before charges are filed. This notification often opens the door for defense attorneys to request a meeting with the prosecutor to present their side of the story.
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Reuters reported that Trump’s team received the notice on June 5, and the notice does not necessarily mean Trump will be prosecuted. But the New York Times reported that the notice suggests that prosecutors working for Smith have likely completed much of the federal investigation and are moving toward filing charges.
In August 2022, FBI investigators seized about 13,000 documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Of these, 100 were marked confidential, although one of Trump’s lawyers previously said all classified files had been returned to federal authorities.
In court filings last year, prosecutors said they were examining whether Mr. Trump violated laws governing the handling of U.S. national security documents and whether he obstructed government efforts to retrieve them.
On June 5, three of Mr. Trump’s lawyers — James Trusty, John Rowley and Lindsey Halligan — met with Mr. Smith and others for nearly two hours at the Justice Department headquarters. According to The New York Times , people close to Mr. Trump said it was a last-ditch effort to block the prosecution and alert federal prosecutors to what they believed was misconduct in Mr. Smith’s investigation.
On June 7, witnesses continued to appear before a federal grand jury in Miami, which is hearing evidence in the classified documents case. One of them was Taylor Budowich, a former spokesman for Mr. Trump.
As Mr. Budowich finished testifying, John Solomon, a journalist and one of Mr. Trump’s representatives at the National Archives, published an article claiming that prosecutors were “on the verge” of indicting Mr. Trump.
The New York Times reached out to Trump directly to ask whether he had actually been informed that he was being prosecuted, and the former president said it was “not true.” But when asked whether he had been told he was the target of a federal investigation, Trump did not answer directly, saying “you have to understand” that he had not been in direct contact with prosecutors.
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Shortly after, Mr. Trump denied Mr. Solomon's claims on his social media platform. "No one told me that I was being prosecuted and that I shouldn't be prosecuted because I did nothing wrong, but for years I have assumed that I was a target of weaponized agencies like the Justice Department and the FBI," he wrote on Truth Social.
Trump has announced his bid for re-election to the White House after 2024, and he is currently the leading candidate in the increasingly crowded Republican field, according to opinion polls. Most recently, Mike Pence, who was vice president in the Trump administration, officially joined the race.
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