The FBI suspects former US President Donald Trump of obstructing justice and violating the espionage law, he could face jail time or a fine. This is reported by Politico, referring to the FBI search warrant.
During a search of Trump, documents were found with "information about the President of France" and papers marked "TS / SCI", which indicates one of the highest levels of secrecy of documents. Law enforcement also investigated Trump's deletion or destruction of records and refusal to return national security documents upon request.
Earlier, the FBI ransacked Trump's residence over top secret documents he might have taken with him when he left the White House. This was reported with reference to sources in The Washington Post and The New York Times. Trump himself linked the searches to the upcoming elections in 2024.
This is not the first investigation into Trump. In June, a special congressional committee concluded that Trump was trying to rig the election results and then get the results revoked, which provoked riots and the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Also, Trump, using Twitter, “led the crowd of his supporters” and accused his vice president Mike Pence of unwillingness to cancel the election results.
In early 2017, a dossier on Trump was published, authored by former British intelligence officer MI6 Christopher Steele. The dossier formed the basis of Robert Mueller's prosecutorial investigation into Trump's ties to Russia and Moscow's interference in US elections. The document said that Russian intelligence agencies helped the Republican win the 2016 election, and Russia has a sex tape made in a Moscow hotel in 2013, which confirms Trump's connection with a prostitute. During the investigation, some of the data provided by Steele was refuted, and the CIA had questions about the sources of information of the former spy.
Trump himself called all the given data fake and denied any contacts with Moscow. Russia has also strongly denied its interference in the American elections. However, the Mueller investigation led to a criminal case against the head of the Trump campaign, Paul Manafort, who was also suspected of having links with the Kremlin, and some other Trump associates. In 2018, Manafort was sentenced to more than seven years in prison, but Trump pardoned him in 2020.
