Donald Trump aide has flipped in documents case, Smith says: According to a filing by the office of the special counsel this week, a Mar-a-Lago security aide has agreed to change his testimony, in what’s likely bad news for Donald Trump.
Donald Trump Has New Problems
In a big surprise Tuesday night, an employee at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort has “abruptly retracted his earlier grand jury testimony and implicated Trump and others in obstruction of justice,” Politico reported, citing a filing by Special Counsel Jack Smith.
The aide, who Politico identified as Yuscil Taveras, was Mar-a-Lago’s director of information technology and has switched from being represented by a lawyer represented by a Trump PAC to one from the federal defender’s office.
Taveras, it appears, is willing to testify that the former president ordered the deletion of incriminating videos.
According to Politico, Taveras has now “detailed the alleged effort to tamper with evidence related to the investigation of the handling of classified information stored at Trump’s Florida home.”
The filing came after U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon asked why Smith’s office was continuing to collect evidence from the grand jury in Washington after the charges were filed in Florida.
The switch by Taveras came months ago, and preceded — and helped bring about — the superseding indictment against Trump in the documents case. The grand jury in Washington has now wrapped up its work, Smith said in the filing.
Taveras is referred to in the documents as “Trump Employee 4.”
“The Government anticipates calling Trump Employee 4 as a trial witness and expects that he will testify to conduct alleged in the superseding indictment regarding efforts to delete security footage,” prosecutors wrote in the filing. “Trump Employee 4 will very likely face cross-examination about his prior inconsistent statements in his grand jury testimony, which occurred while Mr. Woodward represented him, and which he disavowed immediately after obtaining new counsel.”
CNN had reported at the end of July that Taveras had received a target letter this summer and had met with prosecutors, but had not been charged with a crime. The report stated that while “it is unclear whether Taveras is cooperating with prosecutors,” the superseding indictment included information that came from Taveras’ interview.
“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,” the filing from Smith’s office says.
“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.”
This adds to the frequently stated conventional wisdom that of the four criminal cases against the former president, the documents case in Florida is the strongest. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who this week called on the former president to drop out of the 2024 presidential race, also called the documents case against Trump a “slam dunk.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a longtime Donald Trump critic, said after the superseding indictment that the documents case had become much stronger once the additional charges were filed.
“Trump apparently asked for Mar-a-Lago security footage to be deleted. After getting a subpoena to produce it, no less,” Schiff said on Twitter in July. “The case against him for illegally retaining classified information and for obstruction just got stronger. A lot stronger.”
There has been further speculation that one of the 18 other defendants in the Georgia RICO case could flip on Trump, but that has not happened.
Author Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Stephen has authored thousands of articles over the years that focus on politics, technology, and the economy for over a decade. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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