Trump repeatedly contacted ex-employee who later became witness in Smith’s classified documents case
In one of his two federal cases against Donald Trump, special counsel Jack Smith alleges that the former president jeopardized the United States' security by storing classified White House documents at Mar-a-Lago. Part of Smith's case has involved investigating where boxes containing documents were at a given time.
CNN's Katelyn Polantz, in an article published on December 11, reports that one of the witnesses who plays an important role in Smith's Mar-a-Lago case is a former employee who "moved several boxes for Trump" and was contacted by Trump himself before Smith's indictment.
Polantz explains, "Three months after the FBI seized classified records from Mar-a-Lago last August, a longtime employee of Donald Trump's private club quit his job. Within days, the former president did something he rarely did: Trump called the former employee on his cell phone to ask why he was leaving after two decades of working at the resort, according to two sources and material seen by CNN. The employee told the former president he had another business opportunity he wanted to pursue."
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According to Polantz's report, the former Mar-a-Lago employee "wasn't just any staffer at the club" but rather, "was a witness to several episodes special counsel Jack Smith included in his federal criminal indictment charging the former president with mishandling classified documents.
"He had moved several boxes for Trump and was also privy to conversations referenced in the indictment between Trump and his two co-defendants, Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, and Trump’s body man Walt Nauta —
putting the former employee in a unique group of Mar-a-Lago staffers who could be in a position to provide valuable information to investigators," Polantz reports. "The phone call from Trump, described to CNN by multiple people familiar with it, was part of a pattern of outreach to the former employee, who would become a key witness in the months after the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago and before Trump's June indictment."
CNN's full report is available at this link.
