Former Federal Prosecutor: Trump may have sold classified docs; “Arrest Trump Immediately”
According to legal expert and former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner, former President Donald Trump should be arrested “immediately” in the wake of the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search warrant to recover confidential, classified, and even top-secret documents.
Kirschner took to his YouTube channel to question whether or not Trump might have sold or given away some of those classified government documents:
“The most reasonable inference is that Donald Trump disposed of those classified documents after unlawfully taking them from the White House. To what purpose did he put them? Did he sell them to America’s adversaries? Did he use them to blackmail people? Did he use them to leverage a favorable business deal in some country or another? We don’t know yet.”
Another legal expert who runs a firm specializing in national security, Kel McClanahan, told The Hill that he agreed that Trump could have given away or sold the documents:
“The least optimistic scenario is that they are nowhere to be found because they are already with someone else.”
Mar-a-Lago via Flickr / Carmen Rodriguez, Public Domain
Under the Presidential Records Act, Trump should have turned all classified records and documents over to the National Archives upon leaving office, and the DOJ is now investigating whether Trump may have violated laws related to the handling of government documents.
Trump could receive up to a 10-year prison sentence if he were to be convicted of violating the Espionage Act, a law that bars anyone from sharing information that could potentially harm or disadvantage the US, though Trump has vehemently denied all assertions of wrongdoing, saying that he had “declassified” the documents, noting that “everyone ends up having to bring home their work from time to time.”
Trump at Mar-a-Lago via Flickr / Trump White House Archives, Public Domain
Kirschner said he believes Trump should be arrested immediately:
“There is no legitimate argument, there is no persuasive argument, there is no compelling argument against arresting Donald Trump promptly.”
