Donald Trump Indicted on 7 Charges Over Classified Documents
- nbcnews.com
The criminal allegations in the Mar-a-Lago documents case deepen the legal risks for Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, after he was indicted earlier this year on state charges in New York by a Manhattan district attorney for his role in bribing an adult film star.Â
Trump also remains under criminal investigation for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Â
Donald
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For more than a year, prosecutors have been examining whether Trump knowingly kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after he left office as president and took steps to hide those documents after the justice department issued a warrant to return them.
The criminal investigation began back in February when the National Archives issued a referral to the justice department after finding more than 100 classified documents mixed with presidential records in 15 boxes returned by Trump.
At issue was the volume and sensitivity of the classified material in the boxes. According to estimates provided to Trump's lawyers at the time, the 15 boxes contained more than 100 documents, over 700 pages, potentially involving national security.Â
The discovery poses a problem for the department because Trump is no longer authorized to keep such documents after he leaves office and officials are increasingly concerned that Trump may have further classified documents that are also national security material.