The search warrant for former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property identifies three federal crimes the Justice Department is looking at as part of its investigation.
The first one is espionage and part of the Espionage Act, according to analysis by CNN’s legal analyst Elie Honig. He said the espionage piece of the warrant applies to someone who gathered, lost or destroyed defense information.
But the most important part for this to stick legally is the idea of intent, he said, adding that the person had to have the “intent or reason to believe, or reckless of the likelihood that, that information could be used to injure the national interests of the United States.”
The second crime in the warrant is obstruction, Honig said, defining it as essentially an obstruction of justice or “destroying, moving, concealing a document in order to interfere with some sort of ongoing investigation,” he said.
The destruction of a federal document is the third crime in the warrant, Honig said, which the document identifies as criminal handling of government records.
Keep in mind: The prosecutors who wrote the search warrant only needed to have probable cause to include the crimes. This means they realized a certain document was missing, brought that information to a judge, and the judge agreed there was probable cause to include it in the warrant, Honig said.
“It is a lower standard of proof. It’s probable cause, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Honig said. This means if there is ultimately no proof on any of the criminal accusations, the prosecutors “don’t have to and won’t charge it,” he said.
Additionally, “if prosecutors find evidence sufficient to charge other crimes, they can do that too. This is a starting point. This is for the search warrant only,” he added.
Watch more in the video below:
