According to the FBI’s court-approved search warrant for Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, probable cause existed to believe Donald Trump may have violated three laws by seemingly stealing 300 classified government documents from the White House, some extremely sensitive, and squirreling them away in his Florida mansion. For the public, the most arresting (no pun intended) of these allegedly violated statutes is the Espionage Act of 1917.
Despite its alarming name, the Espionage Act covers more than just illegal spying against America. The law bans obtaining national defense information with intent or reason to believe that it may be used for injury to the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation. Although the statute was written before Harry Truman’s executive order in 1950 that established a ranked classification system for the degree of restriction on any particular document (for example, Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret), the so-marked documents allegedly purloined to Mar-a-Lago would clearly fit this category, as could even some unclassified items. Yet at least so far, Trump has not been charged with trying to sell them to foreign countries or use them to blackmail those nations for cash — actions the public has come to associate with the word “espionage.”
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