Trump and his aides also allegedly conducted a “dress rehearsal” for the transfer of sensitive papers even before his office received the May 2022 subpoena, according to people familiar with the matter, which spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive ongoing investigation.
Prosecutors also gathered evidence showing that Trump sometimes kept classified documents in his office in a place where they could be seen and sometimes showed them to others, these people said.
Taken together, the new details of the classified-document investigation suggest a greater breadth and specificity of instances of possible obstruction found by the FBI and Justice Department than previously reported. It also expands the timeline of possible obstruction episodes that investigators are looking into – a period from the events at Mar-a-Lago before the subpoena to now. after the FBI raid there on August 8.
That timeline could prove crucial as prosecutors seek to determine Trump’s intent to keep hundreds of classified documents after he left the White House, a key factor in deciding whether to file cases of obstruction of justice or mishandling of national security secrets. The Washington Post previously reported that the boxes were moved from storage after Trump’s office received a subpoena. But the precise timing of that activity is a key element of the investigation, people familiar with the matter said.
Grand jury activity in the case has slowed in recent weeks, and Trump’s lawyers have taken steps — including outlining his potential defense to members of Congress and seeking a meeting with the attorney general — which suggests they believe a charging decision is imminent. The grand jury working on the investigation apparently hasn’t met since May 5, after months of hectic activity at the federal courthouse in Washington. That was the panel’s longest break since December, shortly after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to lead the investigation and coincided with the year-end holidays.
Trump has denied wrongdoing in each case. “This is nothing more than a targeted, politically motivated witch hunt against President Trump designed to interfere with an election and prevent the American people from returning him to the White House,” Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, wrote in a statement. “Just like all the other fake tricks thrown at President Trump, this corrupt effort will fail.”
Cheung accused prosecutors of showing “no regard for common decency or the key rules that govern the legal system,” and he claimed that investigators “harassed anyone and everyone who worked. [for]worked [for]or supports Donald Trump.”
“During the course of the negotiations regarding the return of the documents, President Trump told the top DOJ official, ‘anything you need from us, just let us know,'” he continued. “That the DOJ rejected this offer of cooperation and staged an attack on Mar-a-Lago proves that the Biden regime is arming the DOJ and the FBI.”
A spokesman for Smith declined to comment. Justice Department officials previously said they conducted the search after months of unsuccessful efforts to obtain all classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Of particular importance to investigators in the classified-documents case, according to people familiar with the investigation, is evidence showing that boxes of documents were moved to a storage area on June 2, before arriving the senior Justice Department attorney Jay Bratt of Mar-a. -Lago with agents. The June 3 visit by law enforcement officials is to collect material in response to May 2022 grand jury subpoena requesting the return of all documents with classified markings.
John Irving, an attorney representing one of the two employees who moved the boxes, said the worker did not know what was in it and was only trying to help Trump valet Walt Nauta, who uses on a dolly or hand truck to move many boxes.
“He was seen on Mar-a-Lago security video helping Walt Nauta move boxes into the storage area on June 2, 2022. My client saw Mr. Nauta moving the boxes and volunteered to help him, ” said Irving. The next day, he added, the employee helped Nauta pack an SUV “when former president Trump left Bedminster for the summer.”
The attorney said his client, a longtime Mar-a-Lago employee whom he declined to identify, is cooperating with the government and doesn’t have “any reason to think it’s important to help move the boxes.” Other people familiar with the investigation confirmed the employee’s role and said he was questioned several times by authorities.
Irving represented several witnesses in the investigation, and his law firm was paid by Trump’s Save America PAC, disclosure reports show. An attorney for Nauta, Stanley Brand, declined to comment.
Investigators are seeking to gather any evidence that shows Trump or people close to him intentionally withheld any classified documents from the government.
On the evening of June 2, the same day the two employees moved the boxes, a Trump lawyer contacted the Justice Department and said officials there were welcome to visit Mar-a-Lago and pick up the classifieds. document related to the subpoena. Bratt and FBI agents arrived the next day.
Trump’s lawyers gave officials a sealed envelope containing 38 classified documents and a signed affidavit that a “diligent search” had been conducted for the documents sought in the subpoena and that all relevant documents are returned.
As part of that visit, Bratt and the agents were invited to visit the storage room where Trump aides said boxes of documents from his time as president were kept. Court papers filed by the Justice Department said the visitors were told by Trump’s lawyers that they could not open any boxes in the storage room or view their contents.
When FBI agents obtained a court order to search Mar-a-Lago two months later, they found more than 100 more classified documents, some in Trump’s office and some in the storage area.
In an August court filing explaining the search, prosecutors wrote that they had developed evidence that “obstructive conduct” occurred in connection with the response to the subpoena, including documents that were “likely hidden and removed from the Storage Room.”
Prosecutors also obtained evidence that even before Trump’s office received the subpoena in May, he had what he called a “dress rehearsal” of some officials for turning over government documents he didn’t want. to be abandoned, people familiar with the investigation said.
The term “dress rehearsal” is used in a sealed judicial opinion issued earlier this year in one of several legal battles over government access to particular witnesses and evidence, some of the people said. It was used to describe an episode when Trump allegedly examined the contents of some, but not all, of the boxes containing classified material, these people said. The New York Times first reported that Trump’s team conducted what was “apparently a dress rehearsal” before the subpoena arrived.
At the time, Trump and his legal team were working with the National Archives and Records Administration on whether he was taking White House records and property that should remain with the government. That dispute over the president’s records is what ultimately led to the discovery of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago — some of them highly sensitive, including information about a foreign country’s nuclear capabilities; Iran’s missile system; and intelligence gathering aimed at China.
The former president, people familiar with the situation said, told aides he wanted to make sure he kept the papers he considered his property.
That dress rehearsal episode was one of many instances where investigators saw possible ulterior motives for the actions of Trump and those around him. Trump’s lawyers and some of the witnesses, however, argued in recent months that prosecutors viewed the sequence of events in a suspicious light. They say Smith’s team has unfairly dismissed the claims that people were not trying to hide anything from the government but were merely carrying out what they considered to be routine and innocent tasks in the service of their employer.
Prosecutors were separately told by more than one witness that Trump sometimes kept classified documents out in the open in his Florida office, where others could see them, people familiar with the matter said, and sometimes show it to people, including maids and guests.
Depending on the strength of that evidence, such accounts could undermine claims by Trump or his lawyers that he didn’t know he had classified material.
People familiar with the situation said Smith’s team had completed most of its investigative work on the documents case and believed it had uncovered several distinct episodes of obstructionist conduct.
One of the suspected instances of obstruction, the people said, occurred after an FBI search on Aug. 8. They did not provide further details, but the Guardian previously reported that in December, Trump’s lawyers found a box of White House schedules, including some marked classified, at Mar-a-Lago. In that instance, a junior aide was apparently moving the box from a government-leased office in nearby West Palm Beach.