In late November 2021, as National Archives officials were trying to persuade former President Donald J. Trump to return a trove of records taken from the White House upon leaving office, one of Trump’s colleagues I gave him the sharpest advice. The newly unsealed document outlines the conditions under which the materials can be returned.
“Give me back whatever you have. Let me come here and get everything,” the anonymous source told Trump, according to an interview with the FBI. Ta. Intention. “
Less than two years later, that warning proved prescient. Federal prosecutors indicted Trump last June on charges of violating the Espionage Act, accusing him of illegally retaining more than 30 classified documents and obstructing repeated government efforts to retrieve them.
The nearly 400 pages of investigative records unsealed Monday by the judge overseeing Trump’s classified documents case included summaries of the same officer’s interviews with federal officials. Employee identity redacted from summary.
The records were originally attached as sealed evidence to a January motion by Trump’s lawyers seeking additional discovery from the government. But Judge Eileen M. Cannon opened the exhibit two weeks ago, ruling that prosecutors can remove the names of some potential witnesses from the exhibit to protect their identities and safety.
The anonymous official who warned Mr. Trump about the threat of prosecution, identified in unsealed records as Person 16, was sent to the card room at Mr. Trump’s private club and residence, Mar-a-Lago, in Florida. He explained that he approached the former president in the library. Trump was wearing golf attire.
Person 16 told the FBI that Trump responded to his warning with a “weird ‘you’re the man’ response,” leaving the impression that he actually intended to return the materials to the archives. , he said. Their conversation was interrupted when a Mar-a-Lago club member and a “much younger woman” approached and asked to take a photo with Mr. Trump, Person 16 recalled.
Person 16 also suggested that some of Mr. Trump’s children were participating in a mission to persuade Mr. Trump to return presidential records to the archives. This person told the FBI that one of the children told him: they belong to the government. Talk to your dad about getting it back. It’s not worth the aggravation. ”
Although the unsealed exhibits did not significantly change the basic story of the classified documents case, they did reveal some new details.
For example, part of the exhibit revealed that the FBI used the code name “Plasma Echo” in an initial investigation of classified documents that Trump brought to Mar-a-Lago.
Another exhibit includes a minute-by-minute timeline of the FBI’s search of the property in August 2022, about a year before the indictment was returned, showing when agents entered the property and It recorded exactly when Trump’s safe was accessed through technical means. and when evidence seized during the search arrived at the Fort Lauderdale Airport for transportation to Washington.
Another exhibit suggested the agency was considering “loose” surveillance of Mr. Trump’s plane to “determine whether boxes were loaded onto the plane.”
However, Person 16’s interview with the FBI was one of the most informative unsealed records. The person asked the agents not to record the conversation because he feared it would be a “risk to him in Trump’s world.”
Still, Person 16 was very candid with the FBI, telling interviewers gossipy details about members of Trump’s legal team.
One of the lawyers said in an interview that he was taken in because of Trump’s TV appearance. Other members of the team were hired by Mr. Trump because of their “dressing” and placing themselves directly in Mr. Trump’s “line of sight,” Person 16 said.
Person 16 also told the FBI that Trump may have told his personal aide Walt Nauta, who was ultimately indicted as a co-defendant in the case, that he would be eligible for a pardon if Trump was re-elected. suggested.
“Mr. Nauta was also told that even if he was accused of lying to the FBI, FPOTUS (short for former President of the United States) would pardon him in 2024.”
Judge Cannon has not yet issued a ruling on the underlying claims to which the newly unsealed exhibits were attached.
The motion asks a judge to allow Trump’s lawyers to access communications between prosecutors working for Special Counsel Jack Smith and officials from the public archives and national security and intelligence agencies. This is an attempt to persuade. Lawyers want that information to strengthen their defense in a potential trial that members of the so-called deep state colluded with the Biden administration to have Trump indicted.
