Former President Donald Trump greets supporters at the Team Trump Volunteer Leadership Training Event at the Grimes Community Complex in Grimes, Iowa on June 1, 2023.
Scott Olson | Getty Images
former president donald trump he is informed that he is a target of the federal government criminal investigate holding hundreds of classified information government Records after leaving the company White HouseNBC News reported Wednesday evening.
Such notice is usually given before prosecutors decide whether to press criminal charges against the target.
Trump’s attorneys said during a meeting Monday at the Justice Department with special counsel Jack Smith and other Justice Department officials that Trump is the subject of a classified documents investigation, NBC reported. was told. It is unclear whether he was notified of his situation in advance.
The targets are those whom prosecutors have determined have committed crimes. Targets are often prosecuted in the end.
The Department of Justice rule states that prosecutors are “encouraged to give the person a reasonable amount of time before seeking indictment to give him or her an opportunity to testify before a grand jury, if appropriate.” there is
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
Trump’s position in the investigation became clear when Trump aide Taylor Budwich testified before a Miami federal district court grand jury gathering evidence in the case.
Smith said that President Trump kept classified records at his home at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., and that he tried to hide those documents and keep them away from government officials who wanted them back. Both allegations are being investigated. By law, a president must surrender his government records when he leaves office.
An FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago last August uncovered hundreds of classified documents and other government records.
“Nobody ever told me I was going to be indicted,” Trump said in a social media post on Wednesday.
He added that criminal charges should not be filed in the case “because I did nothing wrong.”
Trump did not directly answer when asked by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman if he had been told he was being targeted.
Trump, who is seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, was charged in March with his then-personal attorney falsifying business records in connection with paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016. was indicted by a New York state grand jury.
He has pleaded not guilty to the case, which is set to go to trial in the Manhattan Supreme Court next year.
Separately, Smith is overseeing a criminal investigation into Trump’s efforts to reverse his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. Georgia state prosecutors are similarly investigating him and his allies for such efforts in the state’s presidential campaign.
President Trump Wednesday called prosecutors “fascists” in all these cases, saying they were trying to harm him politically.
