Donald Trump is set to make his first appearance in a Miami federal court Tuesday, facing 37 felony charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. But as two viral tweets acknowledged, Trump ironically signed a law in 2018 while president that increased the penalty for “unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material.” Before then, people guilty of the then-misdemeanor crime faced a maximum of one year in prison. After Trump changed it, that max penalty is now five years, making it a felony charge. But it’s not quite relevant to Trump’s federal indictment—he’s not being charged with that specific crime. Instead, he’s being charged under the Espionage Act for his alleged “willful retention of national defense information.”
