As Trump probes intensify, foes of ex

Former U.S. President Donald is at the center of multiple legal problems. The New York Times reports that the Justice Department has an "insider witness" in the classified documents investigation. Separately, Trump's attorneys want a change of venue in the hush money trial.

WASHINGTON — An investigation into Donald Trump's handling of classified documents has intensified in recent weeks, with prosecutors summoning a broad range of witnesses before a federal grand jury and zeroing in on questions of whether the former president or others obstructed government efforts to recover the records.

It remains unclear when the investigation led by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith might end or whether Trump might face charges over documents found at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate. But as probes in Washington and Atlanta proceed, Republican critics of Trump see an opportunity for intensifying legal woes to take away his frontrunner mantle in the 2024 presidential race in a way that an earlier indictment in New York failed to do.

Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event April 27 in Manchester, N.H.

The ongoing investigations "are the ones that have the meat," said Bobbie Kilberg, a longtime Republican donor who has become a vocal Trump critic.

"It's very, very serious," she said. "It ought to have a real impact on the American people. And if it doesn't, all I can do is shake my head in bewilderment."

A grand jury in the Mar-a-Lago case has heard testimony over the past few months from numerous Trump associates. Prosecutors have put before the panel a lawyer who helped respond to Justice Department demands for the classified documents last year, and have also been interested in Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage. At least one witness was asked to testify a second time, suggesting prosecutors may be looking to lock in particular testimony they view as useful, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss secret legal proceedings.

In a message Friday on his Truth Social platform, Trump accused Smith of "harassing and threatening my people" over the documents investigation, which he called a "hoax." His lawyers have similarly sought to pre-emptively attack any indictment, telling the House Intelligence Committee in a letter last month that the Justice Department "should be ordered to stand down" from the probe.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement to The Associated Press on Monday that the investigations are "nothing more than a targeted, politically motivated witch hunt against President Trump" designed to prevent him from returning to the White House.

Investigators over the last year have cast a wide net. They’ve interviewed witnesses about Trump's handling of classified documents as president and about the response to a May 2022 subpoena that demanded the return of classified materials in his possession, people familiar with the matter have said. They’ve also sought to determine whether Trump took steps to hide any records taken to Mar-a-Lago or showed them to anyone, as part of a continued focus on possible obstruction.

Among the witnesses who recently testified was Matthew Calamari Jr., the director of security at Trump Organization, Trump's company, according to one of the people.

His testimony could be relevant because of prosecutors’ subpoena to the Trump Organization last year for surveillance footage from the Palm Beach property. Video reviewed by prosecutors showed a Trump associate moving boxes of documents out of a Mar-a-Lago storage room, prosecutors have said. Other media organizations reported that Calamari's father, also named Matthew Calamari, a Trump organization executive vice president, testified last week too.

A moment that underscored the gravity of the case came in March when Smith's team secured the testimony of Trump lawyer M. Evan Corcoran after convincing a judge in sealed proceedings that Corcoran's legal services had been used in furtherance of a crime.

Corcoran helped draft a letter last June to the Justice Department attesting that Trump's team had conducted a "diligent search" for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago in response to the government's subpoena. At that time, the Trump team produced roughly three dozen classified documents, on top of 15 boxes of records returned in January 2022 to the National Archives and Records Administration.

But prosecutors suspected even more classified records remained. They obtained a search warrant last August and seized more than 100 additional documents.

In their letter, Trump's lawyers said that Corcoran expected investigators to return to Mar-a-Lago to go through any boxes of documents that remained, and that he and Trump "understood this to be the beginning, not the end, of working cooperatively." Though the letter was addressed to lawmakers, it presumably includes arguments the lawyers would make to try to head off any potential indictment.

Prosecutors on Smith's team have simultaneously pressed forward with a separate probe into efforts by Trump and allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election, winning court orders to question key advisers and aides before the grand jury. Among the witnesses to appear was former Vice President Mike Pence, who two weeks ago spent hours inside the Washington courthouse.

In Georgia, prosecutors in Fulton County are investigating whether Trump or anyone else committed crimes in trying to undo his narrow loss in that state to Democrat Joe Biden.

The investigations are in addition to the March indictment from the Manhattan district attorney arising from hush-money payments during Trump's 2016 presidential campaign to a porn actor who alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with him years earlier.

The overclassification of government documents has been a hotly debated issue since the 1980s. In 2004, Congress held a hearing titled "Too Many Secrets: Overclassification as a barrier to critical information sharing," which advocated for more conscientious practices to determine what information should be protected at different levels.

At the federal level, there are three levels of classification: "Top Secret," "Secret," and "Confidential." "Top Secret" is the highest level of classification and constitutes information that would be expected to cause "exceptionally grave damage" to U.S. national security. The potential damage of leaked information is supposed to decrease as documents are classified as "Secret" or "Confidential," respectively.

Most recently, the problem of document overclassification has been brought to the forefront by investigations into a number of document scandals centered around former president Donald Trump, former vice president Mike Pence, and President Joe Biden. A variety of people, including a former special counsel, have spoken out against the overclassification of documents amidst the discovery of classified documents at each of the leaders' respective residences, primarily because of the seemingly accidental nature of both Pence and Biden's situations (and despite the more fraught circumstances concerning Trump). The situation has reached a point where the National Archives has requested all former presidents and vice presidents check their homes and personal records for potentially classified documents.

In light of these discussions, Stacker investigated the nature of the Trump, Biden, and Pence classified document scandals using a variety of news and government sources. Keep reading to see what these scandals have in common and how they differ.

Each of these scandals has been spread out during the course of 2022 and early 2023. In January 2022, after Trump had left office, more than 11,000 documents were found at his properties at Mar-a-Lago. At least 300 of those documents have been identified as classified in some way. The documents include a wide variety of information but reportedly contain intelligence about both military and nuclear issues.

In sharp contrast, both Biden and Pence were found in possession of a dozen or fewer classified documents. The documents found at Biden's home in Delaware and other official offices outside of the White House were discovered in November 2022 and their contents are currently under investigation. Similarly, Pence was found to have classified documents at his home in January 2023 and the information contained in them is still being identified.

In Trump's case, the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago were only discovered because the National Archives identified vast swaths of missing documents from its files. After realizing this, the Archives reached out to Trump and his team to recoup the documents and asked for their safe return to Washington, D.C. Trump refused this course of action, causing an active effort to regain the documents without the former president's compliance.

Both Biden and Pence's documents were discovered by members of their respective staffs. Those staff members brought the classified documents forward and almost immediately went public with the information. All involved parties have willingly complied with investigations into what the documents contain and how they came to be at an unauthorized location.

All three of these cases are actively being investigated by the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trump is liable to incur a number of charges based on his document scandal, including possible obstruction for delaying the return of the documents to the National Archives. He may also face charges for the purposeful mishandling of government secrets. Given the information known about Pence and Biden's situations, it is unlikely that either of them will face charges, as legal action typically requires willful intent in these cases, and both Pence and Biden seemed to have accidentally brought classified documents to unauthorized locations.

Former U.S. President Donald is at the center of multiple legal problems. The New York Times reports that the Justice Department has an "insid…