Warrant reveals Donald Trump under investigation for potential violations of Espionage Act

WASHINGTON: Former US President Donald Trump is being investigated for possible violations of the Espionage Act and other laws, according to a search warrant made public on Friday which revealed that FBI agents seized top secret documents during a raid on Monday on his home in Florida.
As per the written inventory of material collected that was released on Friday following a court order, FBI agents seized 11 sets of documents in all, including four marked as “classified/TS/SCI” — shorthand for “top secret/sensitive compartmented information.” Agents also took three sets of documents classified as secret, and three sets of papers classified as confidential.

The inventory did not disclose the precise subject matter of material seized, but typically documents marked TS/SCO are meant to be viewed only in a secure government facility and are not meant to be taken out. Sections of the US media had reported that some of the material related to nuclear weapons but the inventory offered no clue on this matter.
Trump meanwhile, after initially suggesting the FBI could have planted evidence during the raid, claimed all the material was declassified, and the FBI did not have to “seize” anything. “They could have had it anytime without playing politics…ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS ASK,” he said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social, pivoting to ask what the FBI was doing about 33 million pages, many he claimed was classified, that President Obama took when he demitted office.

The National Archives quickly countered Trump’s charges saying it maintained “exclusive legal and physical custody” of Obama’s records stored in a Archives facility in Chicago, but Trump and his cohorts continued to maintain that different standard were being applied to Democrats.
The Justice Department has also indicated it gave Trump plenty of time and opportunities to return the documents before initiating the raid, which it intended not to make public, but was revealed by Trump himself.

The issue has now become a political powder keg, with threats of violence against the Justice Department and FBI from pro-Trump right wing extremists, and cries of treason from Trump critics who have long said he is unfit for office and cannot be trusted to keep secrets.
In a tweet on Thursday, Presidential historian Michael Beschloss referred to a famous espionage case, saying, without mentioning Trump, “Rosenbergs were convicted for giving U.S. nuclear secrets to Moscow, and were executed June 1953.” Among the responses it got was one from former CIA Director Michael Hayden, a trenchant Trump critic, who said, “Sounds about right.”

Among the hashtags pertaining to the development that was trending on Twitter was “TRE45ON,” a charge often leveled by Trump critics against America’s 45th President.
On Thursday, Ricky Shiffer, a former US Navy veteran who had served on a submarine, was shot dead by authorities after a stand-off when he tried to breach an FBI field office in Ohio. Shiffer’s social media posts revealed anger at the raid on Mar-a-lago, as he urged a violent response against the FBI.