Justice [A]dditional evidence comes as investigators have used emails and text messages from a former Trump aide to help understand key moments last year.
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The new details highlight the degree to which special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the potential mishandling of hundreds of classified national security papers at Trump’s Florida home and private club has come to focus on the obstruction elements of the case — whether the former president took or directed actions to impede government efforts to collect all the sensitive records.
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Investigators now suspect, based on witness statements, security camera footage, and other documentary evidence, that boxes including classified material were moved from a Mar-a-Lago storage area after the subpoena was served, and that Trump personally examined at least some of those boxes [...] . While Trump’s team returned some documents with classified markings in response to the subpoena, a later FBI search found more than 100 additional classified items that had not been turned over.
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The application for court approval for that search said agents were pursuing evidence of violations of statutes including 18 USC 1519, which makes it a crime to alter, destroy, mutilate or conceal a document or tangible object “with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency.”
A key element in most obstruction cases is intent, because to bring such a charge, prosecutors have to be able to show that whatever actions were taken were done to try to hinder or block an investigation.
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The Washington Post reported in October that Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, had told investigators that he moved boxes at Mar-a-Lago at the former president’s instruction after the subpoena was issued. Smith’s team has video surveillance footage corroborating that account, The Post reported, and considers the evidence significant.
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In addition, the people familiar with the investigation said, authorities have another category of evidence that they consider particularly helpful as they reconstruct events from last spring: emails and texts of Molly Michael, an assistant to the former president who followed him from the White House to Florida before she eventually left that job last year. Michael’s written communications have provided investigators with a detailed understanding of the day-to-day activity at Mar-a-Lago at critical moments.
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Investigators have also amassed evidence indicating that Trump told others to mislead government officials in early 2022, before the subpoena, when the National Archives and Records Administration was working with the Justice Department to try to recover a wide range of papers, many of them not classified, from Trump’s time as president [...] . While such alleged conduct may not constitute a crime, it could serve as evidence of the former president’s intent.
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Trump ignored requests from multiple advisers to return the documents to the archives over a period of a year [and] he asked advisers and lawyers to release false statements claiming he had returned all documents.
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Investigators also have evidence that Trump sought advice from other lawyers and advisers on how he could keep documents after being told by some on his team that he could not [...] . They have collected evidence that multiple advisers warned Trump that trying to keep the documents could be legally perilous.
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Investigators have also asked witnesses if Trump showed a particular interest in material relating to Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, people familiar with those interviews said. Milley was appointed by Trump but drew scorn and criticism from Trump and his supporters after a series of revelations in books about Milley’s efforts to rein in Trump toward the end of his term. In 2021, Trump repeatedly complained publicly about Milley, calling him an “idiot."
The people did not say whether investigators specified what material related to Milley they were focused on. The Post could not determine what has led prosecutors to press some witnesses on those specific points or how relevant they may be to the overall picture that Smith’s team is trying to build of Trump’s actions and intent.
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The case stretches back to efforts by Archives officials to retrieve documents and other items from the former president in 2021, after they came to believe that some presidential records from the Trump administration — such as letters from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — were unaccounted for, and perhaps in Trump’s possession.
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Smith’s team has been presenting witnesses and evidence for months to a grand jury in Washington focused on the Mar-a-Lago probe, even as a separate grand jury at the same federal courthouse hears evidence related to efforts to block the results of the 2020 election, and the state-level prosecutors in New York and Georgia press forward with their cases.
The Mar-a-Lago prosecutors recently won a court fight that allowed them to question Trump’s lawyer, Evan Corcoran, before the grand jury about what he knew about the documents.
Grand jury proceedings are secret, and Smith has given no public indication of the pace of his investigation or when he expects it to be finished.
WaPo
