As president, Trump approved a law increasing penalties for mishandling classified info. It could come back to bite him.

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  • Donald Trump in 2018 signed a sweeping national security bill into law.

  • The bill increased punishments for those who mishandle classified information.

  • The measure is of note after the Mar-a-Lago raid, thought to be connected to government documents.

A bill that Donald Trump signed into law in 2018 could be used to punish the former president if he's found to have mishandled classified information after leaving office.

FBI agents on Monday raided Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, apparently as part on an investigation into whether Trump wrongly kept hold of classified material after he left office.

Bradley P. Moss, a national security attorney, told Insider that Trump could face five years in prison if he's found guilty under a national security bill that he signed as president.

Trump signed the bill, which made changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, into law in January 2018.

It upgraded the seriousness of wrongly moving classified material, turning it from a misdemeanor into a felony — and increasing the maximum sentence to five years, up from one.

Moss noted that it was passed after Trump's relentless attacks during the 2016 presidential campaign on Hillary Clinton, who was being investigated over whether she mishandled classified information.

Clinton was never charged in that case, but it is now Trump who is under pressure.

"Trump certainly has legal exposure to Section 1924 given it was classified documents from his spaces in the White House that were removed to Mar-Lago," Moss said.

In a tweet Tuesday in the wake of the FBI raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, Jeff Yarbro, an attorney serving as a Democratic state senator in Tennessee, pointed out Trump had signed the bill now looming over him.

The National Archives and Records Administration in February said classified material was found among boxes of things that had been taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago when Trump left office.

The legal analyst Glenn Kirschner at the time told MSNBC that Trump was facing a "five-year felony," apparently referring to the law Trump had strengthened in 2018.

At the time, the classified-information measures attracted little attention, with the focus of news coverage being the renewal of sweeping surveillance powers in the bill.

According to an analysis by Moss and other analysts at the Just Security blog, it is one of numerous laws Trump might've violated if he did mishandle classified material.

But there are some doubts about whether the bill Trump signed into law could be used to prosecute him, Moss said, as it's unclear whether it applies to former presidents.

Trump has vehemently denied any wrongdoing in relation, saying he had fully cooperated with requests from the National Archives and characterizing the raid as a politically motivated.

His aide Kash Patel told Breitbart that Trump declassified the material before leaving office under the president's broad powers for deciding what should remain secret.

Moss said "efforts by Trump to declassify records before he left office" were another key issue that could affect whether the measures could be used to prosecute the former president.

Trump's office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Read the original article on Business Insider