Federal prosecutors have informed former US President Donald Trump’s lawyers that he is personally the target of an investigation into the White House’s handling of classified material, according to US media reports including CNN and the New York Times.

These new developments add to the already existing legal problems facing Donald Trump as he runs for the 2024 presidential election.

The Department of Justice usually notifies people when they become targets of an investigation to give them an opportunity to present their own evidence before a grand jury.

The news that Trump’s legal team has been notified of this development comes just two days after the former US president’s lawyers met with Justice Department officials to discuss the case.

Donald Trump’s campaign has not commented on the reports so far.

Trump, the front-runner in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has repeatedly described the multiple investigations as politically motivated.

A federal grand jury is investigating Trump’s retention of classified material after he leaves the White House in 2021.

A second criminal investigation is looking into alleged efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Last August, federal police seized about 13,000 documents at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago (Palm Beach, Florida) home. About 100 were classified, although his lawyer had assured him that all secrets had already been returned.

The former president has defended his withholding of the documents, saying he declassified them while still in office. He presented no evidence of this; his lawyers have made no such claim.

Trump is the first sitting or former US president to face criminal charges after pleading not guilty last April to allegations of falsifying business documents linked to paying a former pornographic actress to keep quiet about past affairs them, ahead of the 2016 elections.

Trump turned over 15 boxes of records in January 2022, a year after leaving office, but federal officials believed he had not returned all the documents.