The Indictment of Donald Trump

Brandon Van Grack was a guest on Deadline: White House on MSNBC with Nicolle Wallace, discussing the indictment of former President Trump for the alleged mishandling of classified documents.

“There are 31 counts of violations of the Espionage Act,” Brandon said. “That’s a high number. It is common in these cases that you charge more than one document when there’s more than one document that has been retained, so that’s not uncommon, but 31 is a lot. But more important than the number is the sensitivity. They talk about Special Access Programs…which is beyond classified. It is information that needs heightened protections, and there may be less than 10 cases in our lifetime that involve Special Access Programs or use that terminology in a charging document. Twenty-one of these documents are top secret, and that’s really important not necessarily because of the charge, but actually because of the potential sentence. There are sentencing guidelines that provide a recommendation for the court on what to follow, and if you’re convicted of retention of a top secret document, it can subject you to a recommendation that’s three to six years higher than a not-top-secret document.”

Watch the interview (subscription required).