As former President Donald Trump continues to publicly attack the Justice Department and FBI after last week’s unprecedented raid on the Mar-a-Lago club, people close to his inner circle told Insider they believe he may be facing serious legal problems. A lawyer familiar with the Trump team’s thought process said in an interview that the former president “likes to run the show” and is “a big believer in the public relations offensive” but that he will soon face criminal charges that he cannot talk about. to leave. “He should be worried about all these investigations,” the lawyer added. “I think he’s a target of all of them and I think he’s going to be charged.” Trump is currently at the center of a series of state and federal criminal investigations. At the forefront is the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Trump violated three federal laws, including the Espionage Act, when he moved government records from the White House to Mar-a-Lago after leaving office. The department has also zeroed in on the former president in its sprawling criminal investigation into the events surrounding the Capitol riot and subpoenaed a number of former top White House officials in recent weeks. Prosecutors have also subpoenaed the National Archives for all White House records it turned over to the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. In Georgia, the Fulton County District Attorney’s office is investigating whether Trump and his allies broke Georgia law in their bid to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state. And in New York, the Manhattan district attorney’s office recently secured a deal with Trump’s chief accountant, Allen Weiselberg, who this week pleaded guilty to more than a dozen felonies and agreed to implicate the Trump Organization. But Alan Dershowitz, who represented Trump in his Senate impeachment trial, told Insider on Friday that Trump should be more concerned about the New York attorney general’s political investigation into his business practices. “Right now it’s only political, but you never know,” he said. “Civil can always turn into a criminal like it did with Weisselberg.” He also said he believes that even if Trump is charged with a crime in one of the criminal investigations, he can still run for president in 2024. “There’s no way he’s going to be disqualified from running based on the current investigations,” Dershowitz said. The FBI earlier this month executed a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and residence, shown here in March 2017. Darren Samuelsohn As Insider previously reported, there is nothing in the Constitution that prevents someone from running for president if they are in prison after being convicted of a crime. Socialist candidate Eugene Debs was convicted of treason under the Espionage Act when he ran for president in 1920. And Lyndon LaRouche, who was convicted of mail fraud in 1988 and imprisoned, ran for president in 1992. If convicted of violating two of the three laws the Justice Department has acknowledged investigating him in connection with the removal of classified documents, Trump could theoretically launch a presidential campaign in 2024, even if he is incarcerated. But if he is convicted of violating one of those laws — 18 USC Section 2071, which prohibits the concealment, removal or mutilation of government records generally — he could be barred from office again. That said, legal scholars told The New York Times that it’s unlikely Trump would be disqualified from running again even if convicted of violating Section 2071, citing Supreme Court rulings that show Congress can’t override eligibility criteria of the Constitution for the presidency. Trump’s representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his current legal status. As of Friday night, the former president was still criticizing the FBI’s investigation as a corrupt exercise of power and also told Truth Social that his lawyers will soon file a “major Fourth Amendment motion” regarding the raid.
