We just took a close look at Attorney General Fani Willis’ RICO indictment in Atlanta, Ga., but, before we take the Trump Trial Train down south to Miami, it is time for an update. The seemingly impregnable wall of RICO defendants suffered a major crack when one of those who broke into the Coffee County election office, Scott Hall, became the first defendant to plead guilty in the wide-ranging criminal case. “Flipped” as Trump would say.
The UK Guardian reported: “Former Republican poll watcher Scott Hall pleads guilty to five criminal counts and must testify against co-defendants … The surprise move from Hall came after he gave a recorded statement … to prosecutors who are almost certain to use that testimony against the former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell when she goes to trial in October accused of several of the same crimes. A live video of the court proceeding showed Hall pleading guilty to five counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties, a misdemeanor charge …”

The Guardian continued: “Hall was sentenced to five years’ probation, a $5,000 fine, 200 hours of community service, and to write an apology letter to the state … Hall also had a 63 minute phone call with former Trump justice department official Jeffrey Clark on 2 January 2021 where they discussed the 2020 election results in Georgia, according to the indictment.”
Meanwhile, Jack Smith’s classified documents case has grown stronger with news of another defendant and some Mar-a-Lago staff who are now offering new information.
But first, as good pretend jurors, let’s reaffirm that these are only accusations and everyone is presumed innocent. Now, the basics according to the latest superseding indictment: “The purpose of the conspiracy was for TRUMP to keep classified documents he had taken with him from the White House and to hide and conceal them from a federal grand jury.”
According to the indictment, the conspiracy included the following:
- Suggesting that Trump Attorney 1 falsely represent to the FBI and grand jury that TRUMP did not have documents called for by the May 11 Subpoena;
- moving boxes of documents to conceal them from Trump Attorney 1, the FBI, and the grand jury;
- suggesting that Trump Attorney 1 hide or destroy documents called for by the May 11 Subpoena;
- providing to the FBI and grand jury just some of the documents called for by the May 11 Subpoena, while TRUMP claimed he was cooperating fully;
- causing a false certification to be submitted to the FBI and grand jury representing that all documents with classification markings had been produced, when in fact they had not;
- making false and misleading statements to the FBI; and
- attempting to delete security camera footage from The Mar-a-Lago Club to conceal the footage from the FBI and grand jury. All in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1512(k).
Meanwhile, Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira has joined Donald J. Trump and Waltine Nauta as one of the indicted. And, despite the repeated assertions of the Trump camp, his MAGA supporters, a preponderance of House Republicans, and almost every Republican running for President, this case is a big deal:
“Among the materials TRUMP stored in his boxes were hundreds of classified documents … information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack. The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.” (Emphasis added.)
I am no psychiatrist, but one could make the case that the fact that his father, Fred Trump, exchanged reduced rent for a cooperating New York City chiropractor’s note attesting to Donald’s bad feet has shaped much of the latter’s subsequent behavior. It was Selective Service and their local draft board’s job to register and then corral eligible young American men for the Vietnam War. And such a note kept Donald from serving and being one of the 58,220 Americans who died there or one of the 153,303 wounded.
Rather than appreciate or sympathize with those who served—“There but for the grace of Daddy’s Money go I”—Donald developed an oversized contempt for those he considered suckers and morons unable to buy their own get-out-of-serving note, or worse, thought it was their duty to fight. This contempt manifested in his pronounced discomfort with those who bear the wounds of combat. It is impossible to forget his pathetic dismissal of John McCain, who spent years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and then wouldn’t leave without his men: “He was a war hero because he was captured,” Trump said. “I like people who weren’t captured.”
This disrespect has marked Trump’s relationship to the U.S. military, and his most recent post on Truth Social threatening the execution of former Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley is stunning:

As always, Trump gets his facts wrong: It was Trump, not Milley, who negotiated away all leverage with the Taliban. It was Trump who gave the order for the military to withdraw from Afghanistan without adequate planning. And it was Trump who emptied the prisons of Taliban soldiers.
But, as Jeffrey Goldberg explains in The Atlantic, the threat against Milley is scary enough, but it pales in comparison to what we just barely survived during the Trump presidency:
“In normal times, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the principal military adviser to the president, is supposed to focus his attention on America’s national-security challenges, and on the readiness and lethality of its armed forces. But the first 16 months of Milley’s term, a period that ended when Joe Biden succeeded Donald Trump as president, were not normal, because Trump was exceptionally unfit to serve. ‘For more than 200 years, the assumption in this country was that we would have a stable person as president,’ one of Milley’s mentors, the retired three-star general James Dubik, told me. That this assumption did not hold true during the Trump administration presented a ‘unique challenge’ for Milley, Dubik said.”
Goldberg continues:
“John Kelly, the retired Marine general who served as Trump’s chief of staff in 2017 and 2018, has said that Trump is the ‘most flawed person’ he’s ever met. James Mattis, who is also a retired Marine general and served as Trump’s first secretary of defense, has told friends and colleagues that the 45th president was ‘more dangerous than anyone could ever imagine.’”
Goldberg offers yet another clue to Trump’s contempt for the military:
“At his welcome ceremony at Joint Base Myer–Henderson Hall, across the Potomac River from the capital, Milley gained an early, and disturbing, insight into Trump’s attitude toward soldiers. Milley had chosen a severely wounded Army captain, Luis Avila, to sing ‘God Bless America.’ Avila, who had completed five combat tours, had lost a leg in an IED attack in Afghanistan, and had suffered two heart attacks, two strokes, and brain damage as a result of his injuries. To Milley, and to four-star generals across the Army, Avila and his wife, Claudia, represented the heroism, sacrifice, and dignity of wounded soldiers.
“It had rained that day, and the ground was soft; at one point Avila’s wheelchair threatened to topple over. Milley’s wife, Hollyanne, ran to help Avila, as did Vice President Mike Pence. After Avila’s performance, Trump walked over to congratulate him, but then said to Milley, within earshot of several witnesses, ‘Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.’ Never let Avila appear in public again, Trump told Milley. (Recently, Milley invited Avila to sing at his retirement ceremony.)”
Hopefully, these excerpts provide context for the cavalier way former President Trump treated national security secrets, the behavior at the very root of Jack Smith’s documents case.
Some important details: When leaving the White House, “TRUMP and his White House staff, including NAUTA, packed items, including some of TRUMP’s boxes. TRUMP was personally involved in this process.” (Emphasis added.) These boxes contained hundreds of classified documents, and, from January through March 15, 2021, some of these boxes “were stored in The Mar-a-Lago Club’s White and Gold Ballroom … on the ballroom’s stage … In March 2021, NAUTA and others moved some of TRUMP’s boxes from the White and Gold Ballroom to the business center at The Mar-a-Lago Club.”
While the characters indicted in the Georgia RICO case reminded me of an old black-and-white Italian movie featuring the world’s worst bank robbers, the Mar-a-Lago case reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock’s under-appreciated 1955 “The Trouble With Harry.” The movie focuses on a small town’s attempt to hide a dead body. The body is moved almost as many times as Trump had his boxes moved.
Much like the Georgia RICO indictment, you can look first to “The Boss,” who always believed the documents belonged to him and never wanted to return them, and his lemming-like employees, who almost always did what he ordered them to do:
On April 5, 2021, Trump Employee 1 texted Trump Employee 2 to ask whether the boxes could be moved out of the business center so the staff could use it as an office. “Trump Employee 2 replied, ‘Woah!! Ok so potus specifically asked Walt for those boxes to be in the business center because they are his ‘papers.’” A recent article by ABC News tentatively identified Trump Employee 2 as Molly Michael.
“[S]ome of TRUMP’s boxes were moved from the business center to a bathroom and shower in The Mar-a-Lago Club’s Lake Room … In May 2021, TRUMP directed that a storage room on the ground floor of The Mar-a-Lago Club (the ‘Storage Room’) be cleaned out so that it could be used to store his boxes. The hallway leading to the Storage Room could be reached from multiple outside entrances …
“Then, on May 6, 2021, the United States National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) requested that Donald Trump return the missing presidential records … On multiple occasions, beginning in June. NARA warned TRUMP through his representatives that if he did not comply, it would refer the matter of the missing records to the Department of Justice.” (Emphasis added.)
Trump ordered some boxes be sent to The Bedminster Club, his New Jersey summer residence—yet another location not authorized to store classified documents. And “on two occasions in 2021,” Trump shared classified documents with others:
“a. In July 2021, at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey (‘The Bedminster Club’), during an audio-recorded meeting with a writer, a publisher, and two members of his staff, none of whom possessed a security clearance, TRUMP showed and described a ‘plan of attack’ that TRUMP said was prepared for him by the Department of Defense and a senior military official …’”
The indictment provides additional details of their conversation:
TRUMP: “Well, with [the Senior Military Official]—uh, let me see that. I’ll show you an example. He said that I wanted to attack [Country A]. Isn’t it amazing? I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look. This was him. They presented me this—this is off the record, but—they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him … This wasn’t done by me, this was him. All sorts of stuff—pages long, look … I just found, isn’t that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know … Except it is like, highly confidential.”
STAFFER: “Yeah.” [Laughter]
TRUMP: “Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this. You attack, and … By the way. Isn’t that incredible?”
STAFFER: “Yeah.”
TRUMP: “I was just thinking, because we were talking about it. And you know, he said, ‘he wanted to attack [Country A], and what …'”
STAFFER: “You did.”
TRUMP: “This was done by the military and given to me. Uh, I think we can probably, right?”
STAFFER: “I don’t know, we’ll, we’ll have to see. Yeah, we’ll have to try to —”
TRUMP: “Declassify it.”
STAFFER: “— figure out a — yeah.”
TRUMP: “See as president I could have declassified it.”
STAFFER: “Yeah.” [Laughter]
TRUMP: “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
STAFFER: “Yeah. [Laughter] Now we have a problem.”
TRUMP: “Isn’t that interesting?”
The second incident involved a representative of his political action committee (PAC):
“During the meeting, TRUMP commented that an ongoing military operation in Country B was not going well. TRUMP showed the PAC Representative a classified map of Country B and told the PAC Representative that he should not be showing the map to the PAC Representative and to not get too close. The PAC Representative did not have a security clearance or any need-to-know classified information about the military operation.”
On June 28, 2023, ABC News reported:
“Susie Wiles, one of Trump’s most trusted advisers leading his second reelection effort, is the individual singled out in Smith’s indictment as the ‘PAC Representative’ … Sources have also further identified some of the other figures mentioned by Smith’s team in the indictment. Hayley Harrison and Molly Michael are said to be ‘Trump Employee 1’ and ‘Trump Employee 2,’ respectively …”
Michael was once a former executive assistant for Trump while Harrison works for Melania Trump. The indictment continues:
“Between November 2021 and January 2022, NAUTA and Trump Employee 2 — at TRUMP’s direction — brought boxes from the Storage Room to TRUMP’s residence for TRUMP to review … On December 7, 2021, NAUTA found several of TRUMP’s boxes fallen and their contents spilled onto the floor of the Storage Room, including a document marked ‘SECRET//REL TO USA, FVEY,’ which denoted that the information in the document was releasable only to the Five Eyes intelligence alliance consisting of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States …”

It seems like former President Trump was figuring out how many and which documents he would have to turn over:
“On December 29, 2021. Trump Employee 2 texted a TRUMP representative who was in contact with NARA (‘Trump Representative 1’), ‘box answer will be wrenched out of him today, promise!’ The next day. Trump Representative 1 replied in two successive text messages.”
Trump Eployee 2 texted as following:
Hey – Just checking on Boxes…
would love to have a number to them today
Trump Employee 2 responded a few hours later in two successive text messages after speaking with Trump:
12
Is his number
The indictment continues:
“On January 13, 2022, NAUTA texted Trump Employee 2 … ‘He’s tracking the boxes, more to follow today on whether he wants to go through more today or tomorrow.’ … On January 17, 2022, Trump Employee 2 and NAUTA gathered 15 boxes from TRUMP’s residence, loaded the boxes in NAUTA’s car, and took them to a commercial truck for delivery to NARA.”
It turns out that, sometime in May 2022, Nauta lied to the FBI about what he had done earlier that year: “falsely stating that he was not aware of TRUMP’s boxes being brought to TRUMP’s residence for his review before TRUMP provided 15 boxes to NARA in January 2022.” He also lied about where they had been stored “and whether they had been in a secure or locked location.”
When asked where the boxes had been stored, Nauta lied and said, “I wish, I wish I could tell you. I don’t know. I don’t—I honestly just don’t know.”
When, in January 2022, NARA checked the boxes Trump had turned over, they discovered that 14 of them included “197 documents … of which 98 were marked ‘SECRET,’ 30 were marked ‘TOP SECRET,’ and the remainder were marked ‘CONFIDENTIAL.’ Some of those documents also contained SCI and SAP markings.” (Emphasis added.)
On February 9, 2022, having lost patience, “NARA referred the discovery of classified documents in TRUMP’s boxes to the Department of Justice for investigation.” On March 30, 2022, the FBI began a criminal investigation. On April 26, 2022, a federal grand jury began an investigation and, on May 11, 2022, issued a subpoena requiring the production of all documents with classification markings.
Trump believers in Georgia, like lemmings rushing to fling themselves over a legal cliff, signed forged documents, pretended they were legitimate electoral delegates, lied about non-existent election fraud, threatened innocent election workers, broke into an election office, and accessed computers and copied software they had no right to access. In Mar-a-Lago, Trump employees handled stolen documents, lied to the FBI, and obstructed justice.
And attorneys in both Georgia and Miami were placed in compromising positions. We now know Trump Attorney 1 is Evan Corcoran, who made a series of recordings to help him keep track of events. On May 23, 2022, “Trump Attorney 1 and Trump Attorney 2 told TRUMP that they needed to search for documents that would be responsive to the subpoena and provide a certification that there had been compliance with the subpoena.” According to Trump Attorney 1, Trump responded with the following:
- “I don’t want anybody looking. I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t, I don’t want you looking through my boxes.”
- “Well what if we. What happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?”
- “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”
- “Well look isn’t it better if there are no documents?”
While meeting with Corcoran and Attorney 2, Trump told the following story about Hillary Clinton’s lawyer:
“[Attorney], he was great, he did a great job. You know what? He said, he said that it—that it was him. That he was the one who deleted all of her emails, the 30,000 emails, because they basically dealt with her scheduling and her going to the gym and her having beauty appointments. And he was great. And he, so she didn’t get in any trouble because he said that he was the one who deleted them.”
How did Michael Cohen put it? While he doesn’t actually order you to do anything illegal, you always know what he wants you to do.
So, in response to the May 11 subpoena, Corcoran planned to return to Mar-a-Lago on June 2 to search for any documents with classification markings. Trump changed his summer plans to make sure he would be there.
It is at this point that De Oliveira makes his appearance in the Mar-a-Lago indictment. Between May 23, 2022 and June 2, 2022, “before Trump Attorney 1’s review of TRUMP’s boxes in the Storage Room, NAUTA—at TRUMP’s direction—moved approximately 64 boxes from the Storage Room to TRUMP’s residence, and NAUTA and DE OLIVEIRA brought to the Storage Room only approximately 30 boxes. Neither TRUMP nor NAUTA informed Trump Attorney 1 of this information.”
On June 2, 2022, Nauta escorted Corcoran to the storage, where he located 38 documents with classification markings and placed them in a Redweld folder, then sealed it. Nauta then took him to a dining room in The Mar-a-Lago Club to meet with TRUMP. When Corcoran told Trump he was finished with the search of the storage room, Trump asked, “Did you find anything? … Is it bad? Good?”
They then discussed what to do with the Redweld folder and whether Corcoran should bring them to his hotel room and put them in a safe there. According to Corcoran, Trump made a plucking motion:
“He made a funny motion as though—well okay why don’t you take them with you to your hotel room and if there’s anything really bad in there, like, you know, pluck it out. And that was the motion that he made …
“That evening, Trump Attorney 1 contacted the Department of Justice and requested that an FBI agent meet him at The Mar-a-Lago Club the next day, June 3, so that he could turn over the documents responsive to the May 11 Subpoena.”
Then Corcoran contacted Trump Attorney 3 and asked if she would come to The Mar-a-Lago Club the next morning to act as a custodian of records. Though she had no role reviewing the boxes in the storage room and hadn’t reviewed the contents of the folder, on June 3, “Trump Attorney 3 signed a certification as the custodian of records for The Office of Donald J. Trump and took it to The Mar-a-Lago Club to provide it to the Department of Justice and FBI.” In the certification, “[b]ased upon the information that [had] been provided to her,” among other things, Trump Attorney 3 stated:
- “A diligent search was conducted of the boxes that were moved from the White House to Florida”;
- “This search was conducted after receipt of the subpoena, in order to locate any and all documents that are responsive to the subpoena”; and
- “Any and all responsive documents accompany this certification.”
However, the indictment explains:
“These statements were false because, among other reasons, TRUMP had directed NAUTA to move boxes before Trump Attorney 1’s June 2 review, so that many boxes were not searched and many documents responsive to the May 11 Subpoena could not be found—and in fact were not found—by Trump Attorney 1 …”
Later that day, Attorney 3 and Corcoran met with personnel from the Department of Justice and FBI and turned over the Redweld folder and the false certification. Trump joined them for some of the meeting. “TRUMP claimed to the Department of Justice and FBI that he was ‘an open book.’”
Back to the indictment:

And we learn: “Earlier that same day, NAUTA, DE OLIVEIRA, and others loaded several of TRUMP’s boxes along with other items on aircraft that flew TRUMP and his family north for the summer.” (Emphasis added.)
And some new information:
“On June 3, 2022 … [FBI] agents observed that there were surveillance cameras located near the Storage Room. On June 22, 2022, the Department of Justice emailed an attorney for TRUMP’s business organization a draft grand jury subpoena requiring the production of certain security camera footage … from cameras ‘on ground floor (basement),’ where the Storage Room was located.
“On June 23, 2022, at 8:46 p.m. TRUMP called DE OLIVEIRA and they spoke for approximately 24 minutes. On Friday, June 24, 2022, the Department of Justice emailed the attorney for TRUMP’s business organization the final grand jury subpoena, which required the production of ‘[a]ny and all surveillance records, videos, images, photographs and/or CCTV from internal cameras’ at certain locations at The Mar-a-Lago Club, including ‘on ground floor (basement),’ from January 10, 2022, to June 24, 2022.”
On the afternoon of June 24, 2022, Corcoran spoke on the phone with Trump about the security camera footage:
“At 3:44 p.m., NAUTA received a text message from a co-worker Trump Employee 3, indicating that TRUMP wanted to see NAUTA.” Nauta then made arrangements to go back to Mar-a-Lago and told De Oliveira he wanted to keep the trip secret.
“At The Mar-a-Lago Club, NAUTA and DE OLIVEIRA went to the security guard booth where surveillance video is displayed on monitors, walked with a flashlight through the tunnel where the Storage Room was located, and observed and pointed out surveillance cameras.”
Enter Trump Employee 4, the Director of Information Technology (IT) at Mar-a-Lago. “On Monday, June 27, 2022 … DE OLIVEIRA took Trump Employee 4 to a small room known as an ‘audio closet’ near the White and Gold Ballroom.” De Oliveira and Trump Employee 4 had the following exchange in that audio closet, as laid out in the indictment:
- DE OLIVEIRA told Trump Employee 4 that their conversation should remain between the two of them.
- DE OLIVEIRA asked Trump Employee 4 how many days the server retained footage. Trump Employee 4 responded that he believed it was approximately 45 days.
- DE OLIVEIRA told Trump Employee 4 that ‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted. Trump Employee 4 responded that he would not know how to do that, and that he did not believe that he would have the rights to do that. Trump Employee 4 told DE OLIVEIRA that DE OLIVEIRA would have to reach out to another employee who was a supervisor of security for TRUMP’s business organization. DE OLIVEIRA then insisted to TRUMP Employee 4 that ‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted and asked, ‘what are we going to do?’
As we have seen in the Georgia RICO case, there are moments—turning points, if you will—when, as an imaginary juror, you say to yourself, “They’re not really going to sign those phony documents are they?” This is one of those flashing red light moments. Delete the surveillance video by deleting the contents of the entire server? Ask Trump Employee 4 to disappear the evidence of the moving boxes from the face of the Earth? Why? Because “the boss” says so? Talk about when following orders reminds us of those lemmings jumping off the cliff. Well, it seems as if Trump Employee 4 shied away from that cliff.
Which brings us to July 2022:
“[T]he FBI and grand jury obtained and reviewed surveillance video from The Mar-a-Lago Club showing the movement of boxes … [On] August 8, 2022, the FBI executed a court-authorized search warrant at The Mar-a-Lago Club. The search warrant authorized the FBI to search for and seize, among other things, all documents with classification markings. During the execution of the warrant at The Mar-a-Lago Club, the FBI seized 102 documents with classification markings in TRUMP’s office and the Storage Room, as follows:

In fact, the FBI seized about 13,000 documents, totaling about 22,000 pages, more than twice the amount that was produced on June 3, 2022. “The classification levels ranged from CONFIDENTIAL to TOP SECRET information, and certain documents included additional sensitive compartments that signify very limited distribution,” the court filing explained.
Two weeks later, on August 26, 2022:
“NAUTA called Trump Employee 5 and said words to the effect of, ‘someone just wants to make sure Carlos is good.’ In response, Trump Employee 5 told NAUTA that DE OLIVEIRA was loyal and that DE OLIVEIRA would not do anything to affect his relationship with TRUMP. That same day, at NAUTA’s request, Trump Employee 5 confirmed in a Signal chat group with NAUTA and the PAC Representative that DE OLIVEIRA was loyal. That same day, TRUMP called DE OLIVEIRA and told DE OLIVEIRA that TRUMP would get DE OLIVEIRA an attorney.”
And so it was that the issue of a Trump-paid attorney reared its head again. Remember the dilemma described by Cassidy Hutchinson, assistant to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, when she testified before the January 6 Committee? When subpoenaed, Hutchinson was unable to afford an attorney of her choice and was forced to rely on an attorney paid for by funds raised by a pro-Trump organization. She subsequently testified that the attorney had shaped her testimony and, as a result, she left out highly significant details of the very relevant events she had been asked about.
The first issue of a similar conflict in the Mar-a-Lago documents case involved two of the accused utilizing the same lawyer, Attorney Stanley E. Woodward. Jack Smith intervened to ensure that the interests of these defendants—Nauta and Trump Employee 4—were protected and that they received separate and distinct advocacy. The DOJ urged the court to hold a Garcia hearing to determine whether or not the defendants were truly aware of the possible ramifications of shared counsel. Talk about the group think of the lemmings. The DOJ explained the legal consequences of multiple defendants relying on the same attorney:
“During these investigations, the Government gathered evidence that Trump employee Carlos De Oliveira tried to enlist the director of information technology for Mar-a-Lago (identified in the superseding indictment as Trump Employee 4) to delete Mar-a-Lago security footage after the grand jury in the District of Columbia had issued a subpoena for the footage. As set forth in the Government’s motion for a Garcia hearing (ECF No. 97 at 3), before Trump Employee 4’s appearance before the grand jury in the District of Columbia, the Government informed Mr. Woodward that his concurrent representation of Trump Employee 4 and Nauta raised a potential conflict of interest, and Mr. Woodward responded that he did not have a reason to believe that his concurrent representation of Trump Employee 4 and Nauta raised a conflict of interest.
“When Trump Employee 4 testified before the grand jury in the District of Columbia in March 2023, he repeatedly denied or claimed not to recall any contacts or conversations about the security footage at Mar-a-Lago. In testimony before the same grand jury, De Oliveira likewise denied any contact with Trump Employee 4 regarding security footage. The Government’s evidence indicated that the testimony by Trump Employee 4 and De Oliveira was false.
“On June 8, 2023, a grand jury in this district returned a 38-count indictment that charged Trump with unlawful retention of national defense information and charged Trump and Nauta with obstruction-of-justice offenses. The indictment did not name De Oliveira as a defendant or contain charges regarding the efforts to delete security footage. The Government thereafter continued to investigate the false statements by Trump Employee 4 and De Oliveira in the District of Columbia. On June 29 and July 11, 2023, the grand jury issued two subpoenas for footage from three security cameras at Mar-a-Lago that related directly to De Oliveira’s solicitation of Trump Employee 4 to delete security footage, as well as the false denials of the same by both witnesses. In addition, on June 20, 2023, the Government advised Trump Employee 4 (through Mr. Woodward) that he was the target of a grand jury investigation in the District of Columbia into whether he committed perjury there, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1623. Trump Employee 4’s criminal exposure identified in the target letter was entirely due to his false sworn denial before the grand jury in the District of Columbia that he had information about obstructive acts that would implicate Nauta (and others).
“The target letter to Trump Employee 4 crystallized a conflict of interest arising from Mr. Woodward’s concurrent representation of Trump Employee 4 and Nauta. Advising Trump Employee 4 to correct his sworn testimony would result in testimony incriminating Mr. Woodward’s other client, Nauta; but permitting Trump Employee 4’s false testimony to stand uncorrected would leave Trump Employee 4 exposed to criminal charges for perjury. Moreover, an attorney for Trump had put Trump Employee 4 in contact with Mr. Woodward, and his fees were being paid by Trump’s political action committee (PAC). See In re Grand Jury Investigation,447 F. Supp. 2d 453, 460 (E.D. Pa. 2006) (explaining that potential conflicts can be ‘further heightened by the financial dynamics of the joint representation,’ where, for example, a client ‘did not independently select the’ attorney but instead had the attorney ‘pre-selected for them by the attorney to the [person] who is the central focus of the grand jury proceedings’).
“On June 27, 2023 … the Government filed a motion for a conflicts hearing with the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for District of Columbia (Boasberg, C.J.), who presides over grand jury matters in that district … On July 5, 2023, after Chief Judge Boasberg made an independent public defender available to counsel Trump Employee 4, he ended his relationship with Attorney Woodward and retracted his prior testimony. He then ‘provided information that implicated Nauta, De Oliveira, and Trump in efforts to delete security camera footage, as set forth in the superseding indictment. The Government anticipates calling Trump Employee 4 as a trial witness …’” (Emphasis added.)
Now, the DOJ has made a case for another Garcia hearing—scheduled to be heard on October 12, 2023, before Judge Aileen Cannon. Law & Crime reports that, while “Nauta, Trump’s longtime butler, is represented by Sasha Dadan and Stanley E. Woodward” and “De Oliveira, Mar-a-Lago’s property manager, is represented by Larry Donald Murrell, Jr., and John S. Irving … Woodward previously or currently represents three people the government intends to call as witnesses in the upcoming trial, and that Irving currently represents three people the government intends to call as witnesses.”
By the way, according to NBC News, Trump Employee 4 has been identified as Yuscil Taveras.
I began citing the recent plea deal between Georgia Attorney General Fani Willis and Scott Hall. Yuscil Taveras could pose similar problems for Donald Trump and his fellow defendants in the Mar-a-Lago documents case.
Remember Trump Employee 2? While Molly Michael’s representative refused to respond to questions posed by ABC News, her explosive allegations could provide additional danger for the former President:
“[T]he aide, Molly Michael, told investigators that—more than once—she received requests or taskings from Trump that were written on the back of notecards, and she later recognized those notecards as sensitive White House materials—with visible classification markings—used to brief Trump while he was still in office about phone calls with foreign leaders or other international-related matters.
“[The] were at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate when FBI agents searched the property on Aug. 8, 2022—but the materials were not taken by the FBI, according to sources familiar with what Michael told investigators. When Michael, who was not present for the search, returned to Mar-a-Lago the next day to clean up her office space, she found the documents underneath a drawer organizer and helped transfer them to the FBI that same day, sources told ABC News.
“[Michael] resigned last year, in the wake of Trump’s alleged refusal to comply with the federal requests and the FBI’s subsequent search of Mar-a-Lago. Speaking to federal investigators, Michael recounted how … as pressure from the National Archives mounted—she and Trump aide Walt Nauta would bring boxes to Trump’s residence for him to review. Trump eventually agreed to turn over 15 boxes of materials, which Michael told investigators she viewed as a positive sign … But then … around the same time that the National Archives found nearly 200 classified documents in the 15 boxes and referred the matter to the FBI, Trump began to seem more reluctant to cooperate with the agency, and he asked Michael to help spread a message that no more boxes existed …
“That’s when Michael became concerned, knowing that scores more boxes were in the storage room, sources said. And as Trump continued to claim that there were no more boxes, Michael even pointed out to him that many people, including maintenance workers, knew otherwise because they had all seen that there were many more than 15 boxes … Michael said she believed early on that claims of no more boxes from Trump were ‘easily’ disproven, and she believed Trump knew they were false because he knew the contents of those boxes better than anyone else – and because he had previously seen a photograph of the storage room with all 90 or so boxes in it, ABC News was told.”
It appears Michael—like Michael Cohen—has moved from loyal aide to traitorous flipper. And as CNN reminds us, Trump sees flippers not as part of the essential task of bringing justice but as a terrible act of betrayal:
“Suspects cooperating with prosecutors in exchange for a reduced sentence is a central feature of the criminal justice system, but Trump has long valued loyalty over legal precedent or practice. [Michael] Cohen pleaded guilty to myriad financial crimes this week in federal court in Manhattan, including campaign finance violations involving his attempt to buy the silence of women who claim they had sexual affairs with Trump.
“‘It almost ought to be outlawed. It’s not fair,’ Trump said of Cohen, who he described as only a ‘part-time’ lawyer. ‘If you can say something bad about Donald Trump and you will go down to two years or three years, which is the deal he made, in all fairness to him, most people are going to do that. … And I have seen it many times. I have had many friends involved in this stuff. It’s called flipping and it almost ought to be illegal.’”
In fact, up to now, Donald Trump has been exceedingly lucky. Many more times than not, those around him, those who have been caught up in one illegal act after another have chosen loyalty over self-preservation. He has managed to surround himself with large numbers of lemmings—in fact the jails are filled with those who followed his directions to come to the Capitol on January 6 to stop the imaginary steal.
I lost my shirt many years ago betting on the drugged horses at the Barrington Fair and, aside from a friendly game of poker, have decided to save the little money I have left. But this time around, if I was a betting man, I would put a bundle on the flippers vs the lemmings. From where I am sitting, Donald Trump’s luck is running out.