What the hell????

Yucil Taveras

Taveras is the Trump employee who got his own lawyer in order to tell the truth about the stolen documents at Mar-A-Lago.

Mr. Taveras once worked as a D.J. but came to focus on computers. He has worked for Mr. Trump for 13 years, first in New York before eventually earning a promotion, according to a person close to him. His new position running the tech support department at Mar-a-Lago brought him and his family to Florida in August 2019.

  NYT

He worked for 13 years before getting a promotion?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Another documents case revelation

One we figured, but now is confirmed.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Judge Cannon shennanigans and incompetence revealed

A fuller explanation of the latest in the Georgia documents case with the news of a change in testimony from Yuscil Taveras is laid out in this article from Public Notice. I won't excerpt it, because it's packed with information about what's been going on.

Walt Nauta's incompetent or shady (or both) Trump-paid lawyer is supposed to respond to Smith's latest motion for a Garcia hearing (explained in the article) today.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Setting up an appeal or dismissal?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 08/31/2023:

A fuller explanation of the latest in the Georgia documents case with the news of a change in testimony from Yuscil Taveras is laid out in this article from Public Notice. 

Cannon gets her answer and Trump's lawyers push the envelope

A Trump employee who monitored security cameras at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate abruptly retracted his earlier grand jury testimony and implicated Trump and others in obstruction of justice just after switching from an attorney paid for by a Trump political action committee to a lawyer from the federal defender’s office in Washington, prosecutors said in a court filing Tuesday.

The security aide – described as “Trump Employee 4” in public court filings but identified elsewhere as Yuscil Taveras – initially testified to a grand jury in Washington, D.C. that he was unaware of any effort to erase the videos, but after getting the new attorney “immediately … retracted his prior false testimony” and 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 new submission said.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team revealed the details of the employee’s about-face as part of a filing demanded by Florida-based U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the classified records case against the former president.

She had questioned why prosecutors continued to collect evidence from a grand jury empaneled in Washington, D.C., even after Smith obtained a grand jury indictment in Florida in June charging Trump with more than 30 counts of retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

[...]

In an apparent bid to assuage any continuing concerns by Cannon about a grand jury hundred of miles away working on matters related to the case she is handling, Smith’s team informed her that the D.C. grand jury officially completed its work Aug. 17.

  Politico

The very humorous part of this deal is that a Trump lawyer (Stan Woodward) was paid for to represent several people involved in the documents fiasco, and when Taveras began cooperating with Smith's office, the special counsel appealed to the court to have Woodward removed from Taveras' representation considering the obvious conflict. Woodward's suggested proposal to take care of the conflict problem was - get this - to not call on Taveras to testify at trial!

“The Government is unaware of one, in which a court has excluded evidence to avoid a conflict on facts remotely similar to this case, where the Government put Mr. Woodward on notice long ago about potential conflicts,” Harbach wrote, “and he is now seeking to affirmatively use those conflicts to gain a tactical advantage at trial by excluding highly incriminating evidence to the benefit of not only his own client but also a co-defendant [Trump] whose PAC is paying his legal fees.”

Ordinarily you'd recognize this was a crazy suggestion and sure to go nowhere, but remember, this case is before Judge Aileen Cannon, so why not give it a try?

UPDATE 05:33 pm:

UPDATE 07:17 pm:

UPDATE 08/23/2023 11:46 am:

I have to assume that Trump's team will be saying Smith would still be ILLEGALLY using the DC Grand Jury if Judge Cannon hadn't made him stop.

UPDATE 08/24/2023:

UPDATE 08/31/2023:

A fuller explanation of the latest in the Georgia documents case with the news of a change in testimony from Yuscil Taveras is laid out in this article from Public Notice. 

Smith heading off a mistrial in Florida

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Better and better

While we wait for the announcement of an indictment for the insurrection...

The Justice Department, in a new superseding indictment unveiled Thursday, is charging former President Trump with seeking to delete Mar-a-Lago surveillance video footage last year in connection with the federal classified records case.

Trump is charged in the new indictment along with Carlos de Oliveira, the property manager of the resort and a new defendant in the case, and his valet Walt Nauta, who had faced previous charges.

  The Hill

Special Counsel Smith's team said in a separate filing that they would work to ensure the new charges would not delay the trial.

[...]

De Oliveira is due to appear in court in Miami on Monday.

[...]

Prosecutors also said they recovered the document involved in an incident in which Trump, bragged about a "plan of attack" against another country in an interview at his New Jersey golf resort.

  Post News

A superseding indictment unsealed by the Justice Department lists multiple new counts against Trump, including: altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing an object; and corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating or concealing a document, record or other object; and an additional charge of willful retention of national defense information.

[...]

De Oliveira [...] faces one count of altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing an object; one count of corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating or concealing a document, record or other object; and one count of making false statements and representations during a voluntary interview with federal investigators.

He has been ordered to appear in federal court in Miami on Monday morning.

[...]

The superseding indictment names De Oliveira as one of the aides who helped move boxes for Trump, and federal prosecutors allege that he, along with Trump and Nauta, instructed an unnamed employee to delete Mar-a-Lago security camera footage to prevent it from being turned over to a federal grand jury.

[...]

The 32nd count of willful retention of national defense information in the superseding indictment stems from a document Trump showed to four people during a July, 21, 2021, meeting at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, according to the new filing. The indictment alleges that the document, which Trump had until mid-Jan. 2022, was marked TOP SECRET/NOFORN, and is described in the indictment as a "presentation concerning military activity in a foreign country."

The superseding indictment notes that Trump was participating in a recorded interview with a writer and a publisher, and two of his aides were also present. The former president told the group he had a "plan of attack" from a senior military official. Trump characterized the document as "highly confidential" and "secret information" and noted that "as president I could have declassified it. … Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret." The indictment also points out that neither the aides nor the writer or publisher had a security clearance.

The document, which CBS News reported was a Defense Department memo on Iran, was not part of the original 31 counts of retention of national defense information charged in Smith's initial indictment.

[...]

According to the filing, the Justice Department emailed the attorney for Trump's business with the final grand jury subpoena, requiring the production of surveillance records, videos and images, on June 24, 2022.

[...]

On June 27, 2022, the indictment says, De Oliveira took another Trump employee to a small room known as an "audio closet," and asked the employee how many days the server retained security footage. The employee said he believed it was about 45 days. "De Oliveira told Trump Employee 4 that 'the boss' wanted the server deleted," the indictment states. "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. ... De Oliveira then insisted to Trump Employee 4 that 'the boss' wanted the server deleted and asked, 'What are we going to do?'"

  CBS

Assuming Employee 4 is the source of the information, I hope Employee 4 has protection.

.....but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 07/28/2023:

Keep in mind, DeOliveira is the guy who helped Nauta move boxes. He's represented by an attorney paid for by the Trump Save America PAC. He's the guy who called the Mar a Lago IT guy and asked questions about how long security footage was kept. And he's the guy that reportedly drained the pool into the server room where the surveillance footage was stored.

[...]

[T]he day after DoJ subpoenaed the Trump Org for the security camera footage, Trump called DeOliveira and they spoke for 24 minutes.

[...]

Trump asked Nauta to return to Mar a Lago, and when he got there, Nauta told DeOliveira that trump wanted him to talk to the IT guy.

Two days after that, DeOliveira went to see the IT guy and told him trump wanted him to DELETE the security footage.

Now, the indictment does NOT address any attempts to delete or destroy the footage, just the attempt (which is a crime). So all three have been charged with obstruction of justice for that attempt. DeOliveira has also been charged with lying to the FBI about moving boxes with Carlos.

It's also mentioned in the indictment that DeOliveira was told if he were loyal, trump would pay for his lawyer.

  Mueller, She Wrote

My belief is that's 99.99% likely.  DeOliveira is the guy who drained the pool.

Subject to the Court’s approval, the Special Counsel’s Office will not oppose defendants Trump and Nauta waiving appearance at an arraignment on the superseding indictment pursuant to the conditions set forth in Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 10(b).

  NBC

Presumably, since dissemination of classified materials was not charged in this case (because it wasn't done at Mar-a-Lago), Smith could still charge that crime in New Jersey.*

UPDATE 07/28/2023 08:53 am:

The information technology worker who appeared in recent weeks before a federal grand jury hearing evidence as to how 15 boxes of government documents wound up at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate was identified by The New York Times on Wednesday night. Two sources familiar with the matter told the Times that the man, Yuscil Taveras, had answered questions about his relationship to two other Trump aides at Mar-a-Lago. One, a former valet named Walt Nauta, was identified late last year; the other, Carlos Deoliveira, was identified and described as Mar-a-Lago’s head of maintenance by the Times [...] Taveras was asked about a call Deoliveira placed to him last summer.

  Daily Beast

The question answers itself.  His attorney - paid for by Trump - has as his foremost concern Trump's best interests.

And gives him another possible flipper.

*UPDATE 07/30/2023:  This is not clear to me.  The particular section of the law dealt with may allow for retention and/or dissemination.  We'll have to wait and see.  At least I will.

But deOliveira can always say by "the boss" he meant Nauta.  Right?

UPDATE 07/31/2023:

Two thoughts:

1) If you're going to have any conflict with another defendant, you need separate lawyers;

2) This gives the impression that Taveras wasn't being allowed to tell the truth as long as he had the Trump-funded lawyer; which in turn suggests that other defendants with that lawyer are not telling the truth.

UPDATE 07/31/2023 04:29 pm:

The tale of the two gormless henchmen creeping around the basement pointing flashlights at security cameras and the servers they'd been dispatched by Trump to wipe — all the while being captured by those very same cameras! — is almost too ludicrous to bear. Who knew there could be something more preposterous than that photo of the tacky bathroom with the boxes stacked in the shower?

[...]

Were they dressed like Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern in the Home Alone movies? Did they take flashlights because they hoped somehow to defeat the motion-activated camera sensors referred to in the evidentiary pleadings?

[...]

After being rebuffed by Taveras, De Oliveira and Nauta regrouped. At 1:31, De Oliveira dove through the bushes to meet Nauta on an adjacent property — presumably one without cameras — snuck back through the brambles for another visit to the IT office, and then, like a Homer Simpson gif come to life, crossed back through the bushes to report to Nauta.

[...]

[T]he whole thing is a Keystone Cops comedy where the protagonist is a cartoon villain who swipes oversized love notes from murderous despots and stashes military secrets in his pool locker.

Normal people don’t pratfall into violating the Espionage Act because they think that national defense documents are cool keepsakes to have around. But normal people also don’t spend 70 years cultivating a reputation as serial philanderers, only to hold themselves out as avatars of Christian values. So perhaps it was inevitable that we’d wind up here, with the former president facing a decade in jail for crimes so mind-numbingly stupid, and yet so extensively documented.

From the boxes in the bathroom, to the flashlights in the tunnel. From the lawyer fresh off a stint at OAN, to the lawyer dictating a long memo explaining that his client instructed him to defy a grand jury subpoena. From Trump recording himself disseminating national defense information, to his goons getting caught on camera trying to destroy the security footage.

It’s all so offensively dumb!

[...]

Next we'll find out that the security camera footage was destroyed in a conveniently timed flood.

OH, WAIT.

   Public Notice

Some day we'll see a TV miniseries akin to "White House Plumbers" about this bumbling crime.