Reacting to a report from the Washington Post that Donald Trump stashed top secret documents related to Iran's missile program and documents detailing highly sensitive intelligence operations aimed at China at his Mar-a-Lago resort, former FBI official Andrew McCabe and former White House lawyer Norm Eisen agreed the news was "stunning."
Appearing jointly on CNN with host Ana Cabrera, Eisen took the lead in saying the odds of the former president being prosecuted under the Espionage Act took a leap if the report turns out to be true.
According to David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department official, "The exceptional sensitivity of these documents, and the reckless exposure of invaluable sources and methods of U.S. intelligence capabilities concerning these foreign adversaries, will certainly influence the Justice Department’s determination of whether to charge Mr. Trump or others with willful retention of national defense information under the Espionage Act."
Eisen agreed.
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"Ana, whenever you are looking at violations, the DOJ is making determinations, it wants to assess both how serious the potential crime was -- again, there has been a finding of probable cause of crime here -- but also how grave the damage," he told the CNN host.
"So I think as we hear more and more reporting about what may be in these documents and the harm that they cause, the potential risk to the United States, to our intelligence personnel, to our allies who help us gather this kind of information, it just makes the likelihood of prosecution go up," he continued.
He then added, "And I do think there is a material risk of Donald Trump being charged and of course there is a lot more evidence besides this that we've heard about of his personal involvement with this document mishandling."
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