The Department of Justice has notified former President Donald Trump that he is the target of an investigation into his handling of classified documents.
Typically, the DOJ notifies people that they have become the target of an investigation in order to provide the person with an opportunity to “present their own evidence before a grand jury.”
However, “the notification does not necessarily mean Trump will be charged,” Reuters reported.
Trump’s legal team had met with the DOJ just days before news of the notification broke. Neither Trump’s campaign nor his legal team had a comment on the notification.
Does the notification mean that Trump will be charged criminally? Let’s take a look.
What Is the Impact?
“Trump’s legal team was notified on Monday…Although there are some signs that the documents investigation is coming to a close, the timing of when a person is told they are a target cannot necessarily be used as a predictor of when charges might be brought,” said attorney David Schoen. “Sometimes they are issued at the beginning of a long investigation and sometimes at the conclusion of an investigation.”
The notification relates specifically to Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents — thousands of which were recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last August. But Trump is facing trouble on multiple fronts — in Manhattan and Georgia, and with two separate DOJ investigations. Stay tuned and we’ll see what happens.
Trump, meanwhile, has harangued the classified documents investigation as politically motivated. In some respects, Trump may be correct. And in some respects, Trump may not be correct. Trump is the Democrats’ white whale, and undoubtedly, Democrats are willing to go out of their way to “get” Trump. But Trump is also, undoubtedly, a corrupt S-O-B. He’s the common denominator in enough criminal investigations where you just have to say, “Okay, the guy probably did something illegal somewhere, right?”
I don’t know. Precedent has conditioned me to expect that nothing is going to stick to Trump, and the Democrats are wasting their efforts and their hopes on the idea that Trump can be pushed off course with something as simple as a criminal lawsuit. In fact, I’m fairly positive that Trump feeds on the controversy, the lawsuits, and the scandals. I think he might kind of like it, and I’ve got a pretty good idea that it helps him politically. The MAGA base expects the mainstream media and professional America and attorneys everywhere to malign Trump. The perpetual fervor lends credibility to the idea that Trump is an outsider, that he has come to drain the swamp and that what you are seeing now — the flurry of lawsuits — is a desperate reaction to keep Trump from attaining his goals.
Obviously that narrative falls flat if Trump just exists and nobody cares one way or the other. But people very much do care. And the more they care, and the more that caring manifests itself in lawsuits and investigations and headlines, the more evidence Trump has at his disposal to make his point: It’s Trump against the world. That’s been the point for a long time, and it’s still resonating. Expect it to continue resonating through the 2024 campaign — especially if Trump has a couple of indictments under his belt.
Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
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