Two people familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone that the FBI has begun asking former Trump administration officials whether they’ve heard of the so-called “standing order” Trump claims to have given. In recent days, the sources say, the feds have sent interview requests to the ex-officials, including former National Security Council personnel. The FBI has asked some of them to visit local FBI field offices to answer follow-up questions concerning the ex-president, classified and highly sensitive documents, and the alleged “order.” That order, Trump’s office insisted last week, dictated that any “documents removed from the Oval Office and taken into the residence were deemed to be declassified.”

So far, these interviews have been voluntary, but as with any FBI investigation, witnesses are required by federal law to be truthful in their answers or risk potential prosecution for false statements…

In posts to his social media platform Truth Social, Trump has suggested both that the FBI was involved in “planting” evidence during the execution of the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, and that the documents found were “all declassified” in any case. More recently, Trump has reposted a public Jan. 19, 2021 executive order calling for the declassification of a specific binder of classified documents related to the FBI’s 2016 investigation of Trump and Russian intelligence.