GOP impeachment witness: Retraction of employee 4’s testimony 'another ominous sign' for Trump
Conservative legal scholar Jonathan Turley, who served as a Republican expert witness during former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, called a Trump employee’s decision to retract his prior testimony in the Mar-A-Lago case “another ominous sign” for the defense.
Prosecutors from special counsel Jack Smith’s office on Tuesday submitted a filing to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, where Trump, aide Walt Nauta and one-time Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira were recently indicted on charges related to the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.
All three co-defendants have pleaded “not guilty.”
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In Tuesday’s filing, prosecutors said a former Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker — identified as “Trump Employee 4” — switched legal counsel and “immediately … retracted his prior false testimony and provided information that implicated Nauta, de Oliveira, and Trump in efforts to delete security camera footage, as set forth in the superseding indictment.”
Smith’s team filed that superseding indictment last month, alleging “Trump was part of a scheme to delete security video” and obstruct the FBI investigation into the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified documents. The superseding indictment accused de Oliveira of telling “Trump Employee 4” — identified by NBC News as Yuscil Taveras — that “the boss” wanted a server deleted. That server, according to NBC News, “would show how [Trump’s] employees had moved boxes of documents before the FBI search.”
Taveras’ decision to change his testimony came after he received a target letter from Smith. His decision to flip “paved the way for prosecutors to seek new obstruction charges” and file that superseding indictment last month, ABC News reports.
Turley on Wednesday wrote, “The retraction of the prior testimony of Trump Employee 4 is another ominous sign in the Mar-a-Lago case.”
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“This type of witness testimony can hit below the waterline on a defense,” the conservative legal scholar warned.
Politico reports that the filing was “demanded by Florida-based U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the classified records case against the former president.”
Per Politico:
[Cannon] 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.
See Turley’s post below or at this link.
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