The law against mishandling classified data includes a potential ban on running for office.
Joseph Moreno, a former justice department prosecutor, said the nature and sensitivity of the search at Mr Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach suggests the probe is moving in the direction of potential charges.
This states that anyone with custody of government documents who "willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates or destroys… any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited … in any public office" can be fined or imprisoned for up to three years.
Some legal experts, however, quickly insisted that the law was unlikely to apply or survive any kind of appeal, as the only restrictions on presidential eligibility were citizenship, residence and age. The eligibility criteria for who can run for president is set by the US Constitution. These eligibility requirements are simple: a candidate must be at least 35 years old and a resident of the US for at least 14 years.
A number of legal experts have also suggested that the Congress can disqualify a candidate from holding office through the process of impeachment, but the US Constitution grants no such power for convictions made under ordinary criminal law.
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