(DCWatchdog.com) – Republican US Senator Rand Paul has issued a call for repealing the Espionage Act after last week’s raid of former President Donald Trump’s home by FBI agents and reports that he may face charges under it.
More than 30 federal agents searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Springs, Florida, reportedly seeking White House documents that he may have taken with him after his term.
A report by The Washington Post has since alleged that the FBI found papers related to nuclear weapons in Trump’s home.
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) took to Twitter over the weekend to comment on the Department of Justice investigation of Trump.
Paul lambasted the Espionage Act as a piece of legislation that has been “abused from the beginning to jail dissenters” of World War I.
“It is long past time to repeal this egregious affront to the 1st Amendment,” he wrote.
In his post, the Kentucky GOP Senator included a link to an article by another libertarian like himself, former presidential candidate Jacob Hornberger, the founder of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
In the article, Hornberger goes after the Espionage Act, which was adopted in 1917, as a “tyrannical law.”
In a report on Sunday, Business Insider dwelled on how the law in question stipulates that the “gathering, transmitting or losing defense information” about any national defense document that “through gross negligence” was “illegally removed from its proper place of custody … to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed.”
It said 11 classified government documents have been found in Trump’s home, and some of those were marked “Top Secret.”
The search warrant unsealed by the DOJ on Friday shows that it is investigating whether Trump broke the Espionage Act plus two other laws.
A guilty verdict under the Espionage Act could bring a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
The 45th President of the United States has slammed the FBI raid on his home as politically motivated. He has also insisted that any documents in his home were “all declassified.”
