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By: The opinion Posted 09 Jun 2023, 0:28 am EDT
The ex-president donald trump was formally charged in federal court in connection with the retention of classified government documents in his residence sea-a-lake after leaving the White House.
Trump’s lawyer, James Trusty, in an interview with CNN, said that the charges include false statements, conspiracy to obstruct, and willful withholding of documents in violation of the Espionage Act.
CNN exclusively reported on Thursday a hitherto unrevealed incident involving the loss of surveillance video records, which occurred when an employee at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence emptied the resort’s pool in last october and it ended up flooding a room where the computer servers containing surveillance video records were.
and although it is not clear if the room was flooded on purpose or if it happened by mistakethe incident occurred in the midst of a series of events that federal prosecutors considered suspicious.
Federal prosecutors in charge of investigating former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents they have asked at least one witness about the flooded server room as part of the federal investigation, according to one of the sources cited by CNN.
The previously unreported incident came about two months after the FBI recovered hundreds of classified documents from the Florida residence and prosecutors obtained surveillance footage to track how White House records were moved by the complex.
Prosecutors have been examining any effort to obstruct the Justice Department investigation, after Trump received a subpoena in May 2022 to return classified documents.
Prosecutors have heard testimony that the computer equipment in the room was not damaged in the flooda source told CNN.
However, the flooded room, as well as the conversations and actions of Trump employees as the criminal investigation loomed over the club, drew the attention of prosecutors.
Circumstances May Influence a Potential Obstruction Conspiracy Casemultiple sources told CNN, as investigators try to determine whether events last year around Mar-a-Lago indicate that Trump or a small group of people who work for him took steps to try to interfere with the collection of tests conducted by the Department of Justice.
Focus on Trump employees at Mar-a-Lago
Investigators for special counsel Jack Smith have been asking questions in recent months about the handling of surveillance footage at the Mar-a-Lago resort and the discussions that Trump employees had about the surveillance system, after last summer’s subpoena for the footage, according to multiple sources.
Investigators have recently asked questions that indicate they are trying to determine whether the Mar-a-Lago workers received specific instructions, particularly from Trump himself, to obstruct the investigation.
The special counsel’s office has focused its obstruction investigations around Trump, Trump’s personal assistant Walt Nauta and a maintenance worker who helped Nauta move boxes of classified documents before federal agents searched the property on last summer, and potentially others, sources told CNN.
Sources told CNN that the maintenance worker is the person who drained the pool that caused the computer server room where the surveillance videos were shot to flood.
Keep reading:
– Donald Trump was criminally charged in the investigation of the handling of classified documents
– Trump assures that “no one has told him that he is being accused”
– Trump is the target of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into classified documents