After Receiving Subpoena, Trump Personally Directed Boxes Of Classified Documents To Be Moved Out Of Storage Area
After Receiving Subpoena, Trump Personally Directed Boxes Of Classified Documents To Be Moved Out Of Storage Area
Security footage corroborates the account of a Mar-a-Lago employee who has been interviewed several times by investigators.
The Washington Post reports that a Trump employee has spoken multiple times with the FBI about how Trump personally directing the relocation of several boxes of documents at Mar-a-Lago after receiving a subpoena in May to return the stolen classified and top secret material. This witness’s account — which is corroborated by security-camera footage — is the most direct account of Trump’s actions and instructions prior to the FBI’s search roughly two months ago.
The New York Times reports that the employee is Walt Nauta, a former military aide that left the White House to work for Trump.
WaPo:
The employee who was working at Mar-a-Lago is cooperating with the Justice Department and has been interviewed multiple times by federal agents, according to the people familiar with the situation, who declined to identify the worker.
In the first interview, these people said, the witness denied handling sensitive documents or the boxes that might contain such documents. As they gathered evidence, agents decided to re-interview the witness, and the witness’s story changed dramatically, these people said. In the second interview, the witness described moving boxes at Trump’s request.
The witness is now considered a key part of the Mar-a-Lago investigation, these people said, offering details about the former president’s alleged actions and instructions to subordinates that could have been an attempt to thwart federal officials’ demands for the return of classified and government documents. . . .
The details shared with The Post reveal two key parts of the criminal probe that until now had been shrouded in secrecy: an account from a witness who worked for and took directions from Trump, and the way that security footage from Mar-a-Lago has played an important role in buttressing witness accounts.
Together, those pieces of evidence helped convince the FBI and Justice Department to seek the court-authorized search of Trump’s residence, office and a storage room . . . which resulted in the seizure of 103 documents that were marked classified [and] about 11,000 documents not marked classified. . . .
Trump has offered a number of public defenses of why documents with classified markings remained at Mar-a-Lago — saying he declassified the secret documents, suggesting that the FBI planted evidence during the search, and suggesting that as a former president he may have had a right to keep classified documents. National security law experts have overwhelmingly dismissed such claims, saying they range from far-fetched to nonsensical.
The January 6 Committee’s ninth public hearing — scheduled for Thursday at 1 PM ET — will include information from the Secret Service showing that former president Donald Trump was “repeatedly alerted to brewing violence” on the day of the insurrection.
The Post reports the hearing will include “newly obtained Secret Service records showing how President Donald Trump was repeatedly alerted to brewing violence that day, and he still sought to stoke the conflict”. That information comes from a cache of one million electronic communications the Committee received from the Secret Service, which according to some of the communications, repeatedly defied Trump’s orders that day.
Surveillance footage the committee plans to share was taken near the Ellipse that morning before Trump’s speech and shows throngs of his supporters clustered just outside the corralled area for his “Stop the Steal” rally. . . . Law enforcement officials who were monitoring video that morning spotted Trump supporters with plastic shields, bulletproof vests and other paramilitary gear, and some in the Secret Service concluded they stayed outside the rally area to avoid having their weapons confiscated . . .
Other internal emails likely to be revealed at the hearing further buttress accounts about staff members warning Trump about the risk and then the reality of violence that day, as he continued to press nervous Secret Service agents to take him to the Capitol to join his supporters marching there . . . After being alerted to violence erupting at the Capitol . . . Trump tweeted criticism of Vice President Mike Pence for not blocking the certification of the election, whipping up supporters who . . . were battling police to break into the halls of Congress. . . .
The hearing aims to highlight new evidence . . . that [Trump] sought to rile up his supporters to help block the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory; used his bully pulpit to encourage a fiery showdown at the Capitol; and then refused to budge to help rescue thousands of lawmakers, staff members and police officers on Capitol Hill who were either fleeing or fighting for their lives that afternoon.
On Tuesday, the Justice Department’s filing with the Supreme Court, calling on it to reject Trump's appeal to have a special master review various classified documents, with classified markings that were seized from his Mar-a-Lago residence, was described as “utterly devastating” by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe. “It pulverizes all of Trump’s arguments and leaves none standing.”
From the 34-page filing: “The district court appointed the special master to review claims of privilege and for the return of personal property, but [Trump] has no plausible claim of privilege in or ownership of government records bearing classification markings. As the court of appeals recognized, [Trump] thus has no basis to demand special-master review of those records.”
The 11th Circuit ruled that any “declassification argument is a red herring because declassifying an official document would not change its content or render it personal. So even if we assumed that [Trump] did declassify some or all of the documents, that would not explain why he has a personal interest in them.”
And of course, Trump has done no such thing. As the Government noted, Trump “has never represented in any of his multiple legal filings in multiple courts that he in fact declassified any documents — much less supported such a representation with competent evidence.” Thus, Trump “has no plausible claims of ownership of or privilege in the documents bearing classification markings”.
Seth Meyers, on Trump’s recent rallies in Nevada and Arizona:
And yet even though Trump is theoretically supposed to be there to campaign for other candidates, he always without exception makes it about himself. He’s like the best man at a wedding who gives a drunken toast about how awesome he is.
Which reminds me:
Ordinarily, demented and deranged people frighten us--we want nothing to do with them because they are utterly unpredictable, not a comfortable presence. Which makes it all the more uncanny that so many people enlist in this demented and deranged sociopath's cult.