Three of Stan Woodward’s Eight Current and Former Clients Prepare to Testify against Each Other

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It turns out that Stan Woodward has or still is representing enough witnesses in the stolen document case to field an ultimate frisbee team (seven people).

He would have even had a sub before Yuscil Taveras got a new lawyer on July 5.

Those are the details DOJ included in a motion for a Garcia hearing in the stolen documents case, asking Judge Cannon to conduct a colloquy with Walt Nauta and two witnesses the government may call to testify against Nauta, to make sure they’re all cool with the conflicts that representing clients with adverse interests may pose.

According to the filing, DOJ first told Woodward about the potential conflict that representing both Taveras and Nauta might pose in February, then again in March.

In February and March 2023, the Government informed Mr. Woodward, orally and in writing, that his concurrent representation of Trump Employee 4 and Nauta raised a potential conflict of interest. The Government specifically informed Mr. Woodward that the Government believed Trump Employee 4 had information that would incriminate Nauta. Mr. Woodward informed the Government that he was unaware of any testimony that Trump Employee 4 would give that would incriminate Nauta and had advised Trump Employee 4 and Nauta of the Government’s position about a possible conflict. According to Mr. Woodward, he did not have reason to believe his concurrent representation of Trump Employee 4 and Nauta raised a conflict of interest.

Taveras’ testimony that he told Carlos De Oliveira to call the guys who could give him permissions to start deleting things provides critical context for the text that Nauta sent Matthew Calamari Sr. around the same time.

For his part, Taveras is okay with Woodward staying on the case so long has he doesn’t use any confidences he shared to cross-examine him.

The Government has conferred with Trump Employee 4’s new counsel, and Trump Employee 4 does not intend to waive his rights to confidentiality, loyalty, and conflict-free representation with respect to his earlier representation by Mr. Woodward.

[snip]

Trump Employee 4’s presence at the hearing is not required. As set forth above, Trump Employee 4 has informed the Government, through his new counsel, that he takes no position as to Mr. Woodward’s continuing representation of Nauta (or anyone else) but does not consent to the use or disclosure of his client confidences and expects Mr. Woodward to comport with the ethical rules regarding maintenance of client confidences.

That would mean that Woodward may not be able to defend Nauta as vigorously as he otherwise might, because he might pull his punches against Taveras.

That’s part of the reason prosecutors want Cannon to make sure Nauta understands the limitations this may put on Woodward’s representation of him.

But that’s not all. Of the eight total witnesses in this investigation that Woodward has represented, two other people he still represents may also testify against Nauta, and their interests may conflict as well.

Nauta is represented by Stanley Woodward, Jr., who has represented at least seven other individuals who have been questioned in connection with the investigation. Those individuals include the director of information technology for Mar-a-Lago (identified in the superseding indictment as Trump Employee 4) and two individuals who worked for Trump during his presidency and afterwards (hereafter Witness 1 and Witness 2).

[snip]

Witness 1 worked in the White House during Trump’s presidency and then subsequently worked for Trump’s post-presidential office in Florida. Mr. Woodward has represented Witness 1 in connection with this case and, to the Government’s knowledge, continues to do so.

Witness 2 worked for Trump’s reelection campaign and worked for Trump’s political action committee after Trump’s presidency ended. Mr. Woodward has represented Witness 2 in connection with this case and, to the Government’s knowledge, continues to do so.

I told you I was missing some of the people he represents on the list I included in this post!

So on top of being paid by the PAC that’s under criminal investigation as part of a fraud scheme, Woodward is now representing an ultimate frisbee team’s worth of witnesses who may have to testify against each other.

This is the problem with omertàs: when they start to fail, they can collapse quickly.

I have argued that Woodward has done several things in this case — most recently, in demanding that Nauta get access to the classified documents he doesn’t have a need to know — designed to test how much Judge Cannon will let get the defense away with.

This one is a pretty big test of Judge Cannon, however.

Trump Lied and Mike Pence Almost Died

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In the wake of yesterday’s indictment, apologists for Donald Trump are out there claiming that he will be able to prove that he really believed he won the election, and therefore sponsoring fraudulent documents and launching an insurrection is totally cool.

It is for this moment that I have been linking so often to the Findings of Fact that Reagan-appointed Judge Royce Lamberth wrote in the Alan Hostetter case. As he wrote, on the same headline charge with which Trump has been charged, 18 USC 1512(c)(2), obstruction, it didn’t matter that Hostetter believed Trump really won the election, because the means Hostetter used to vindicate an election he believed was stolen was unlawful.

Even if Mr. Hostetter sincerely believed–which it appears he did–that the election was fraudulent, that President Trump was the rightful winner, and that public officials committed treason, as a former policy chief, he still must have known that it was unlawful to vindicate that perceived injustice by engaging in mob violence to obstruct Congress.

And with Trump, it will be still easier to prove corrupt purpose since his goal had the most lucrative and corrupt personal benefit imaginable, remaining President after being fired by voters.

More importantly, Trump didn’t just lie about the election results. He also lied about Mike Pence.

Trump told two kinds of lies about Pence: first, that Pence had the authority to reject the votes.

96. That same day, the Defendant encouraged supporters to travel to Washington on January 6, and he set the false expectation that the Vice President had the authority to and might use his ceremonial role at the certification proceeding to reverse the election outcome in the Defendant’s favor, including issuing the following Tweets:

a. At 11:06 a.m., “The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors.” This was within 40 minutes of the Defendant’s earlier reminder, “See you in D.C.”

[snip]

100. On January 6, starting in the early morning hours, the Defendant again turned to knowingly false statements aimed at pressuring the Vice President to fraudulently alter the election outcome, and raised publicly the false expectation that the Vice President might do so:

a. At 1:00 a.m., the Defendant issued a Tweet that falsely claimed, “If Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency. Many States want to decertify the mistake they made in certifying incorrect & even fraudulent numbers in a process NOT approved by their State Legislatures (which it must be). Mike can send it back!”

b. At 8:17 a.m., the Defendant issued a Tweet that falsely stated, “States want to correct their votes, which they now know were based on irregularities and fraud, plus corrupt process never received legislative approval. AH Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage.

Trump may well claim he believed this to be true — though Pence and two other witnesses have testified that Eastman admitted in a meeting with all of them that this was not lawful.

92. On January 4, the Defendant held a meeting with Co-Conspirator 2, the Vice President, the Vice President’s Chief of Staff, and the Vice President’s Counsel for the purpose of convincing the Vice President, based on the Defendant’s knowingly false claims of election fraud, that the Vice President should reject or send to the states Biden’s legitimate electoral votes, rather than count them. The Defendant deliberately excluded his White House Counsel from the meeting because the White House Counsel previously had pushed back on the Defendant’s false claims of election fraud.

93. During the meeting, as reflected in the Vice President’s contemporaneous notes, the Defendant made knowingly false claims of election fraud, including, “Bottom line-won every state by 100,000s of votes” and “We won every state,” and asked-regarding a claim his senior Justice Department officials previously had told him was false, including as recently as the night before-“What about 205,000 votes more in PA than voters?” The Defendant and Co Conspirator 2 then asked the Vice President to either unilaterally reject the legitimate electors from the seven targeted states, or send the question of which slate was legitimate to the targeted states’ legislatures. When the Vice President challenged Co-Conspirator 2 on whether the proposal to return the question to the states was defensible, Co-Conspirator 2 responded, “Well, nobody’s tested it before.” The Vice President then told the Defendant, “Did you hear that? Even your own counsel is not saying I have that authority.” The Defendant responded, “That’s okay, I prefer the other suggestion” of the Vice President rejecting the electors unilaterally. [my emphasis]

Certainly Eastman knew this was false (and we know there is documentary evidence to back this). He not only admitted this to Greg Jacob, but Jacob also explicitly told Eastman making this false claim would lead to violence.

94. Also on January 4, when Co-Conspirator 2 acknowledged to the Defendant’s Senior Advisor that no court would support his proposal, the Senior Advisor told Co-Conspirator 2, “[Y]ou’re going to cause riots in the streets.” [Eastman] responded that there had previously been points in the nation’s history where violence was necessary to protect the republic. After that conversation, the Senior Advisor notified the Defendant that Co-Conspirator 2 had conceded that his plan was “not going to work.”

95. On the morning of January 5, at the Defendant’s direction, the Vice President’s Chief of Staff and the Vice President’s Counsel met again with Co-Conspirator 2. Co-Conspirator 2 now advocated that the Vice President do what the Defendant had said he preferred the day before: unilaterally reject electors from the targeted states. During this meeting, Co-Conspirator 2 privately acknowledged to the Vice President’s Counsel that he hoped to prevent judicial review of his proposal because he understood that it would be unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court. The Vice President’s Counsel expressed to Co-Conspirator 2 that following through with the proposal would result in a “disastrous situation” where the election might “have to be decided in the streets.”

But that’s not the only lie Trump told about Pence. Trump also falsely claimed that Pence was willing to reject the lawful votes.

7. Also on January 5, the Defendant met alone with the Vice President. When the Vice President refused to agree to the Defendant’s request that he obstruct the certification, the Defendant grew frustrated and told the Vice President that the Defendant would have to publicly criticize him. Upon learning of this, the Vice President’s Chief of Staff was concerned for the Vice President’s safety and alerted the head of the Vice President’s Secret Service detail.

98. As crowds began to gather in Washington and were audible from the Oval Office, the Defendant remarked to advisors that the crowd the following day on January 6 was going to be “angry.”

99. That night, the Defendant approved and caused the Defendant’s Campaign to issue a public statement that the Defendant knew, from his meeting with the Vice President only hours earlier, was false: “The Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.”

[snip]

102. At 11:15 a.m., the Defendant called the Vice President and again pressured him to fraudulently reject or return Biden’s legitimate electoral votes. The Vice President again refused. Immediately after the call, the Defendant decided to single out the Vice President in public remarks he would make within the hour, reinserting language that he had personally drafted earlier that morning-falsely claiming that the Vice President had authority to send electoral votes to the states-but that advisors had previously successfully advocated be remove. [my emphasis]

Pence told Trump he wouldn’t reject the votes. Then Trump went out to his mob and claimed Pence had agreed he would.

And there are witnesses. Jack Smith has Pence on the record telling this story. He also has Marc Short learning about it in real time and taking action in response — so Pence’s Secret Service detail will also be able to testify they were alerted to what turned out to be a very real risk to Pence’s life.

And ultimately, this lie, about Pence, was easily one of the most dangerous.

DOJ has statements from dozens — possibly hundreds — of January 6 defendants (including Hostetter) describing that they responded to this lie by targeting the Capitol. This is what led rioters to threaten to hang Pence. It’s what led Jacob Chansley to leave a written threat for Pence on the dais.

This is the lie that almost got Mike Pence, his wife, and daughter killed.

And it’s not a matter of some interpretation of the numbers of mail-in ballots that were counted late on November 3. It’s a matter of his Vice President, repeatedly, telling Trump he refused take this unlawful act.

Jack Smith spent a lot of time in the indictment emphasizing that Trump knowingly lied, including proving that Trump had been told he didn’t win. That will undoubtedly help prove his case. But what he’s doing is showing that the great con man knew how to use lies to achieve a particular result.

And that particular result involved threatening the life of his own Vice President in an attempt to force him to steal the election.

“Conspiracy Shit Beamed Down from the Mothership:” The Prehistory of Trump’s Ellipse Lies

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In Jack Smith’s statement announcing the Trump indictment yesterday, he emphasized how Trump’s lies “fueled” the attack on the Capitol.

The attack on our nation’s capital on January 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy. As described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies. Lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government, the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election.

The men and women of law enforcement who defended the U.S. Capitol on January 6 are heroes. They’re patriots, and they are the very best of us. They did not just defend a building or the people sheltering in it. They put their lives on the line to defend who we are as a country and as a people. They defended the very institutions and principles that define the United States.

For each sub-section in the section of the indictment that lays out Trump’s pressure on states, the indictment shows how Trump repeated false claims on January 6 that he had been told were false. While the indictment doesn’t cite the actual language that would appear in Trump’s Ellipse speech, it invokes these five lies (it doesn’t include the lies he told about Nevada):

In the state of Arizona, over 36,000 ballots were illegally cast by non-citizens. Two thousand ballots were returned with no address. [cited here]

[snip]

Over 10,300 ballots in Georgia were cast by individuals whose names and dates of birth match Georgia residents who died in 2020 and prior to the election. [cited here]

[snip]

That’s Detroit. One hundred and seventy-four thousand ballots were counted without being tied to an actual registered voter. Nobody knows where they came from. [cited here]

[snip]

There were over 205,000 more ballots counted in Pennsylvania. Think of this, you had 205,000 more ballots than you had voters. That means you had two. Where did they come from? You know where they came from? Somebody’s imagination, whatever they needed. [cited here; also cited in January 4 meeting with Pence]

[snip]

In Wisconsin, corrupt Democrat-run cities deployed more than 500 illegal, unmanned, unsecured drop boxes, which collected a minimum of 91,000 unlawful votes. [cited here]

With each of these lies, the indictment shows when he was told these claims were false (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin). In several cases, the indictment also shows DOJ officials telling Trump those lies were false (Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin).

The actual citations from Trump’s Ellipse speech, which appears in the section on his pressuring of Mike Pence, focus on that — his false claims about what Pence could do (and the indictment describes Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman’s speeches as further effort to pressure Pence).

But before that, the indictment tracks the lies in the speech that Trump used to mobilize the mob.

The Structure of the Donald Trump Indictment

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It’s late here, so this may be my only analysis before you all wake up.

But I wanted to lay out the structure of the Trump indictment.

The indictment charges him, alone, with four crimes:

  • 18 USC 371 (conspiracy to defraud the US)
  • 18 USC  1512(k) (conspiracy to obstruct the vote certification)
  • 18 USC 1512(c)(2) (obstructing the vote certifcation)
  • 18 USC 241( conspiracy to violate civil rights)

They all are entirely overlapping. That is, Trump’s conduct, and those of 6 alleged co-conspirators, is cited in all those charges.

These are four charges for the same crime. So if the DC Circuit or SCOTUS overturns how DOJ has applied 1512, there are two back stops.

The other most important part of this indictment is who is named as a co-conspirator (and who might well be charged, as far as we know, today, separately by sealed indictment):

  • Co-Conspirator 1, an attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies that the Defendant’s 2020 re-election campaign attorneys would not. [Rudy Giuliani]
  • Co-Conspirator 2, an attorney who devised and attempted to implement a strategy to leverage the Vice President’s ceremonial role overseeing the certification proceeding to obstruct the certification of the presidential election. [John Eastman]
  • Co-Conspirator 3, an attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud the Defendant privately acknowledged to others sounded “crazy.” Nevertheless, the Defendant embraced and publicly amplified Co-Conspirator 3’s disinformation. [Sidney Powell]
  • Co-Conspirator 4, a Justice Department official who worked on civil matters and who, with the Defendant, attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud. [Jeffrey Clark]
  • Co-Conspirator 5, an attorney who assisted in devising and attempting to implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding. [Kenneth Chesebro]
  • Co-Conspirator 6, a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding. [Mike Roman; update: NYT says it is Boris Ephsteyn]

I will fill in who these people are later. They are uncharged and I want to be fairly sure.

The key detail, though, is that there is a separate conspiracy branching off involving most of them, and many other paragraphs of this indictment.

I argued since April 2022 that DOJ could — and should — charge Trump first and build in the stuff around him. I reiterated that a few weeks ago.

There’s a lot here.

But — with some awesome exceptions, which I’ll come back to — not much beyond what’s in the January 6 Report. Credit where it’s due, much, but not all, of this indictment follows their map.

Update: I’ve added Mike Roman as Co-Conspirator 6. The January 6 Report matches a report from the indictment.

A campaign operative named Michael Roman was also tapped for a major operational role in the fake elector effort. When Findlay sent his email handing off certain responsibilities for the initiative, he also wrote that Giuliani’s team had designated Roman “as the lead for executing the voting on Monday” December 14th.73 Roman was the Trump Campaign’s Director of Election Day Operations (EDO), with team members who specialized in political outreach and mobilization in battleground States wherethe Trump team now urgently needed the fake electors to meet on December 14th. With help from his EDO staff, as well as Giuliani’s team and RNC staffers working alongside the Campaign as part of the Trump Victory Committee, Roman ran an improvised “Electors Whip Operation.”74 For example, Roman sent an email on December 12th directing an aide to create “a tracker for the electors” with tabs for Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, listing contact information, whether they hadbeen contacted, whether they agreed to attend on December 14th, and names of “[s]ubstitute electors” to replace any reticent or unavailable participants as needed.75 Roman referred to others on this email as the “WHIPTEAM” and directed them to fill out the spreadsheet, to update him on “what you have and what you need,” and to plan on a call that evening.76

Donald Trump’s January 6 Indictment

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Is here.

He is charged with 18 USC 371, 18 USC 1512(c)(2), 18 USC 1512(k), and 18 USC 241.

There are six co-conspirators, all uncharged: Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, and others.

The $40 Million, Er, the Unlimited Slush Fund Man

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Something weird happened in the last few days.

On Sunday, Trump whisperer Josh Dawsey scooped that campaign finance filings that would be submitted yesterday would show that Trump’s PAC, Save America, had spent more than $40M on legal fees in the first half of 2023.

Save America, the former president’s PAC, is expected to disclose about $40.2 million in legal spending in a filing expected Monday, said the people familiar with the filing, who like others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss information that has not been made public.

That total is more than any other expense the PAC has incurred during Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and, according to federal filings from earlier this month, more than Trump’s campaign raised in the second quarter of 2023.It will bring the PAC’s post-presidential legal spending to about $56 million, as Trump faces a federal indictment in Florida, state charges in New York, and the prospect of additional criminal indictments in Washington and Fulton County, Ga.

Shortly after, Trump whisperer Maggie Haberman matched that scoop and added another, that Trump had gotten a $60M “refund” from his own SuperPAC.

The political action committee that former President Donald J. Trump is using to pay his legal bills faced such staggering costs this year that it requested a refund on a $60 million contribution it made to another group supporting the Republican front-runner, according to two people familiar with the matter.

[snip]

But the refund was sought as the political action committee, Save America, spent more than $40 million in legal fees incurred by Mr. Trump and witnesses in various legal cases related to him this year alone, according to another person familiar with the matter.

The numbers will be part of the Save America Federal Election Commission filing that is expected to be made public late on Monday.

That $40 million was in addition to $16 million that Save America spent in the previous two years on legal fees.

Dawsey’s version explained to readers that Save America’s fundraising was part of Jack Smith’s criminal investigation.

The PAC’s own fundraising and creation is under investigation, The Post has reported, though the group has not been accused of wrongdoing. Much of the money it is using to pay for legal bills was raised on false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Maggie’s version laid out that Trump had raised the money by promising that he’d spend it to address alleged voter fraud, without disclosing that those false claims may be a crime, much less state clearly that the claims were false.

The PAC was the entity in which Mr. Trump had parked the more than $100 million raised when he sought small-dollar donations after losing the 2020 election. Mr. Trump claimed he needed the support to fight widespread fraud in the race. Officials, including some with his campaign, turned up no evidence of widespread fraud.

And then yesterday’s disclosures came out and, per the Daily Beast, the key claim, that Trump had spent over $40M of his PAC’s funds on legal fees, was wrong. It was exactly half that.

Early news reports of former President Donald Trump’s astronomical $40.2 million in legal expenses now appear to have been off by about $20.1 million, or exactly half, according to a new Federal Election Commission filing.

Perhaps more notable, however, is the financial state of his former flagship leadership PAC, “Save America,” which covered those fees. Once a fundraising juggernaut, Save America ended June with just $3.7 million in the bank—a $100 million drop from its $103 million stash just one year ago—as the legal threats are only increasing in scope and severity.

The highly anticipated filing shows about $20.1 million in legal costs, with another roughly $1.5 million in additional legal reimbursements.

The early news reports—sourced from “people familiar with the filing”—and the disclosure itself don’t provide enough data to show where the error lay. However, the seemingly neat halfway split could suggest an accounting mistake—or, alternatively, possibly unreliable or intentionally misleading sourcing. Those fees do appear to extend to an array of law firms—indicating financial support for a long list of possible witnesses in several cases—as well as to Trump’s own stable of attorneys.

The more interesting detail — involving the campaign of a guy whose corporate person was convicted of tax fraud last year and goes on trial for civil fraud in October — is that he between all of Trump’s committees, he had to correct a bunch of past reports.

Trump’s full operation also filed more than two dozen corrected reports across several committees on Monday, going back as far as January 2021.

The former President should have more reliable accounting than George Santos.

Meanwhile, the incorrect reporting from Sunday — which alerted MAGAts and rich Republicans who believe they’re stuck with Trump that his burn rate on legal fees is eating up any campaign funds — came days after Trump rolled out a legal defense fund. As Sollenberger notes, as a 527, it will allow for a whole bunch of slush. Campaign manager Susie Wiles, who is (at least) a witness in the stolen documents case and also in the thick of the alleged illegal use of PAC funds has a role in managing the fund.

And yet experts said the shadiest, most notable part of the legal defense fund was not that it would pay for lawyers for potential witnesses against Trump. That part isn’t all that new. The Trump team reportedly worked hand-in-hand with CPAC chair Matt Schlapp’s “First Amendment Fund” earlier this year to provide legal help to Jan. 6 committee subpoena targets, and Trump’s “Save America” leadership PAC also bankrolled handpicked attorneys for Jan. 6 witnesses.

Instead, experts pointed to the group’s unique tax status opening an array of new fundraising opportunities for Trump as the most unsettling element—including for unlimited donations from individuals and corporations.

I can’t help but remember that DOJ shut down the investigation into the suspected $10 million donation in September 2016 from an Egyptian bank that was key to Trump remaining in the case.

Someone with knowledge of Trump’s filings preempted bad news about his terrible burn rate — but did so inaccurately (and in a way that has yet to be corrected, or explained). But it happened at a time when Trump is planning on using his criminal exposure to launch an entirely new kind of fundraising.

Trump’s campaign finance looks a lot like his corporate finance. And his criminal exposure is now part of what he’s selling.

Discoveries in the Stolen Document Discovery

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As I noted in this post, the government provided a supplemental discovery notice yesterday. It included the following:

  • CCTV provided by Trump Org on May 9 and May 12 in response to an April 27 subpoena
  • CCTV obtained after June 8 pertaining to new obstruction allegations (DOJ does not confirm whether this came from Trump Org or not)
  • All 302s finalized by yesterday (302s are what the FBI calls interview reports)
  • All grand jury transcripts in government’s possession

The discovery confirms that the government took certain steps after June 8 to add Carlos De Oliveira to the indictment. There are two kinds of surveillance footage that appear in that section of the indictment: from De Oliveira and Walt Nauta’s stomping around trying to understand what surveillance footage there would be, including looking right at the key cameras in the hallway outside the storage room, as well as their discussions in the bushes just off Mar-a-Lago property.

The reference to location data may mean they obtained De Oliveira’s phone account.

The discovery also means that, if DOJ was using another grand jury, in addition to the DC and SDFL ones, Trump is now aware of it, because DOJ has turned over all transcripts in their possession (past notices had specified the two grand juries).

Finally, the discovery also describes that DOJ subpoenaed Trump Organization for yet more surveillance footage in April, which Trump Org turned over on May 9 and 12. That subpoena was already public; NYT reported it in May.

Prosecutors have also issued several subpoenas to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, seeking additional surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago, his residence and private club in Florida, people with knowledge of the matter said. While the footage could shed light on the movement of the boxes, prosecutors have questioned a number of witnesses about gaps in the footage, one of the people said.

The timing is interesting though. It comes after — per this WaPo report — Carlos De Oliveira was informed he might be charged after he claimed not to remember the dates when Trump returned to Mar-a-Lago in July 2022 (note: this “proffer” session sounds more like an interview conducted under a limited proffer before a grand jury appearance).

For one thing, De Oliveira said he did not remember his boss coming back to Mar-a-Lago in July, the people said. Trump tended to stay away from the Florida summer heat, and it did not seem likely to some investigators that De Oliveira would forget the former president showing up twice in two weeks.

The prosecutors’ dissatisfaction came to a head in mid-April, when De Oliveira was given a proffer session — an interview in which a prosecutor and a defense lawyer meet with a person to decide if they have valuable information to offer an investigation, the kind that could lead to a plea deal.

If prosecutors grew convinced De Oliveira was lying, they may have pulled his grand jury appearance. His charged false statements were in a January 13, 2023 interview at his Florida residence, not this appearance in what may still have been DC.

In the same time frame as this subpoena for additional surveillance footage, DOJ also subpoenaed Trump’s business records from the Saudi LIV tournament.

One of the previously unreported subpoenas to the Trump Organization sought records pertaining to Mr. Trump’s dealings with a Saudi-backed professional golf venture known as LIV Golf, which is holding tournaments at some of Mr. Trump’s golf resorts.

A later NYT story reported that the subpoenas were broader: to include foreign deals with a variety of countries.

The subpoena — drafted by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith — sought details on the Trump Organization’s real estate licensing and development dealings in seven countries: China, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, according to the people familiar with the matter. The subpoena sought the records for deals reached since 2017, when Mr. Trump was sworn in as president.

And then, after those subpoenas but before Trump Org complied with them, the Matthews Calamari testified about why Walt Nauta sent Calamari senior a text in the time frame when he and De Oliveira were allegedly stomping around Mar-a-Lago attempting to implement Trump’s order to destroy surveillance footage.

Both Calamaris testified to the federal grand jury in Washington on Thursday, and were questioned in part on a text message that Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, had sent them around the time that the justice department last year asked for the surveillance footage, one of the people said.

The text message is understood to involve Nauta asking Matthew Calamari Sr to call him back about the justice department’s request,

In that same April time frame, DOJ was also asking about loyalty oaths before being given Trump-paid attorneys to represent them — the fruit of which questions likely show up in ¶91 of the superseding indictment.

Another line of inquiry that prosecutors have been pursuing relates to how Mr. Trump’s aides have helped hire and pay for lawyers representing some of the witnesses in investigations related to the former president. They have been trying to assess whether the witnesses were sized up for how much loyalty they might have to Mr. Trump as a condition of providing assistance, according to people briefed on the matter.

It was after that, though, after the first indictment on June 8 which may have helped demonstrate the seriousness of this inquiry, when per CNN reporting the following happened with Yuscil Taveras, the IT guy who said he didn’t have the rights, on his own, to delete surveillance footage:

  • Receives a target letter
  • Decides he wants to be more forthcoming
  • Gets a new lawyer (reportedly after a conflict review instigated by a judge)
  • Testifies about the request De Oliveira made inside the sound room and his own response that De Oliveira would have to call people who might be one of the Calamaris

In that same period, per yesterday’s discovery letter, that DOJ obtained more surveillance footage and possibly the warrant tracking location data.

One note: If people testified before the grand jury in DC before Jack Smith moved to present charges in SDFL, they would have separate exposure for perjury there.

Here’s my track of what DOJ has turned over when (with links to the documents below).

 

June 21, 2023: Response Discovery Order

June 23, 2023: Motion to Implement Special Conditions

July 6, 2023: Supplemental Response Discovery Order

July 10, 2023: Defendants Response Motion for Continuance

July 13, 2023: Government Reply Motion for Continuance

July 17, 2023: Supplemental Response Discovery Order

July 18, 2023: Status Hearing (Lawfare account)

July 31, 2023: Supplemental Response Discovery Order

Update: Answered two questions I’ve gotten up in the text above: First, I used “provided by Trump Org” and “obtained” in the bullets above because that’s how the filing describes these. As I’ve noted, the video showing De Oliveira and Nauta in the bushes might well have come from a different property owner.

Second, I defined 302s, which are what the FBI calls interview reports.

How Trump Clouded Journalists’ Heads about Surveillance Video

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In a story demoting Trump’s alleged co-conspirators to “minor characters” and omitting Yuscil Taveras’ reference to “the supervisor of security for TRUMP’s business organization” who could provide him the rights allowing him to delete security footage, NYT states as fact that Trump’s corporate person did turn over the surveillance tapes.

The Trump Organization ultimately turned over the surveillance tapes, and the indictment does not accuse any Mar-a-Lago employees of destroying the footage.

Until I noted it, NYT also reported that Taveras said he didn’t have the “right,” as opposed to “rights” to do so.

NYT is not the only outlet making this conclusion, noting that prosecutors obtained video and so concluding that Trump must have turned it over.

Such conclusions are wildly premature.

Trump, certainly, is making the claim.

But Trump’s tweet includes one demonstrable falsehood: any video turned over was compelled via subpoena, not handed over voluntarily (this repeats a false claim Trump made last summer about voluntarily turning over early tranches of documents). And Trump’s claim that he “never told anybody to delete them” conflicts with Taveras’ testimony about Carlos De Oliveira’s instruction, that “‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted.”

So, even ignoring he’s a pathological liar, there’s no reason we should credit Trump’s claim the tapes (at least some parts of them) were not deleted.

It is true that the current indictment does not yet charge Trump and his corporate person with deleting video. It is also true that the indictment stops at 3:55PM on June 27, 2022, more than a week before some surveillance footage was turned over on July 6, 2022. We only know part of what happened during the first five days after Trump Org was alerted to the subpoena. That leaves a lot of time for shenanigans.

There’s a lot of this story that prosecutors have not yet told.

Even in what prosecutors have revealed so far, it is clear Trump’s initial subpoena response fell short of complying with the subpoena, though there may be reasonable explanations for that. DOJ had subpoenaed five months of footage, from January 10 through the date of subpoena, June 24 (which would have captured the days leading up to Trump’s return of 15 boxes in January 2022). But Trump Org only provided footage from April 23 through June 24.

That’s a curious length of time: 62 days. It suggests Trump Org normally deletes surveillance footage after 60 days, not the 45 days Taveras believed they kept. But if that’s the case, to have 62 days of footage, Trump Org started preserving footage when Jay Bratt first alerted them to the subpoena on June 22. Importantly, if Trump Org’s surveillance footage is automatically written over after 60 days, then someone would have had to take action to start preserving it on June 22 for April 23 and 24 to have been included. That action would have happened before (at least as portrayed in the superseding indictment) anyone spoke to Taveras at Mar-a-Lago. Probably, then, that action occurred in New York.

More suspect is Trump’s failure to provide video footage of all the locations subpoenaed.

There’s a redaction in the citation of the subpoena in the warrant affidavit where it describes the locations requested.

It was never clear before last week whether the redaction hid another subpoenaed location. But the superseding indictment describes that the subpoena asked for footage from “certain locations,” plural, one of which was the basement hallway.

The search affidavit describes that the disk provided on July 6 included footage only from four cameras in the basement hallway. Here, too, though, there could be a reasonable explanation: it may be Mar-a-Lago simply didn’t have cameras in the other requested positions. There’s another redaction in the search affidavit that might provide that explanation.

Certainly, when Walt Nauta and De Oliveira scouted out surveillance cameras with a flashlight on June 25, they’re only described as doing so in the basement hallway.

Many outlets are concluding that Trump Org must have turned over everything from that hallway since the search affidavit relied heavily on security footage to describe Nauta (then referred to as Witness 5) moving in and out of the storage room. But even that may overstate things. As I noted, there’s one movement of boxes that appears in the indictment but does not appear in the search affidavit: When Nauta entered the storage room on May 22, spent 34 minutes in there, and then left carrying a single box.

53. On May 22, 2022, NAUTA entered the Storage Room at 3:47 p.m. and left approximately 34 minutes later, carrying one of TRUMP’s boxes.

This is not proof that the footage wasn’t on the disk turned over on July 6. Perhaps the FBI wasn’t all that interested in this single box retrieval and so didn’t include it in the search affidavit. But it is a piece of footage the prosecutors may have obtained later, perhaps via other means.

This was only the first subpoena for video, however. Earlier this year, CNN described follow-up subpoenas after the August search, followed later by a preservation request before De Oliveira flooded the server room in October. The second subpoena, which may have been an attempt to learn when and how the remainder of the boxes were moved back into the storage closet, where they were found on August 8, might have obtained the footage of De Oliveira and Nauta scouting out the surveillance cameras. Once the FBI saw that, I’m sure they scrutinized what they had obtained far more closely, if they hadn’t already.

But there must be more than that: some weeks ago, the defense said they had received “approximately nine months” of surveillance footage.

The initial production also included some 57 terabytes of compressed raw CCTV footage (so far there is approximately nine months of CCTV footage, but the final number is not yet certain).

If DOJ never got footage before April, they may have footage from some part of every month through December, when the last known search occurred (and if DOJ got a video of the search conducted at Bedminster, it may explain why the FBI hasn’t conducted their own search).

Importantly, defense attorneys don’t know how much surveillance footage they’ll eventually get. If all of it was coming from Trump Org, they would. (Though even the superseding indictment appears to rely on surveillance footage, capturing Nauta and De Oliveira in bushes just off Mar-a-Lago property, that could have come from a neighboring property owner.)

That’s why NYT’s earlier reporting may indicate that Trump Org didn’t “ultimately turn[] over all the surveillance tapes.” As NYT reported in May, DOJ also subpoenaed the software company that handles Trump’s surveillance footage.

But hoping to understand why some of the footage from the storage camera appears to be missing or unavailable — and whether that was a technological issue or something else — the prosecutors subpoenaed the software company that handles all of the surveillance footage for the Trump Organization, including at Mar-a-Lago.

Once DOJ identified suspected gaps they would do what DOJ does in all criminal investigations: find another source.

Especially when dealing with an entity, Trump Org, that in recent years had what the Senate Intelligence Committee described as “known deficiencies in [] document responses.”

When SSCI subpoenaed Trump Org for any documents showing ties between the campaign and Russia in 2016, Trump’s corporate person didn’t turn over everything. For example, they didn’t turn over (to Congress at least) an email from Paul Manafort describing how to “secure the victory,” predicting that Hillary “would respond to a loss by ‘mov[ing] immediately to discredit the [Trump] victory and claim voter fraud and cyber-fraud, including the claim that the Russians have hacked into the voting machines and tampered with the results'” — precisely the strategy Trump used in 2020, albeit with the true statement that Russia was tampering with election facilities, though not the vote tallies.

I keep coming back to this, but one of those deficiencies — one of the things Trump Org didn’t provide in 2017, at least to the two congressional committees investigating Trump’s ties to Russia — were the emails showing that Michael Cohen directly contacted the Kremlin in January 2016 and got a response from Dmitri Peskov’s assistant. Mueller got a copy of it, though. He cited it in the report.

On January 20, 2016, Cohen received an email from Elena Poliakova, Peskov’s personal assistant. Writing from her personal email account, Poliakova stated that she had been trying to reach Cohen and asked that he call her on the personal number that she provided.350

There’s a ready explanation for how Mueller got an email showing that Trump’s fixer was in direct contact with the Kremlin during the election when it wasn’t included in Trump Org’s subpoena responses, at least to Congress: because on August 1, 2017, Mueller obtained Cohen’s Trump Org emails using a warrant served on Microsoft.

At least in 2017, as laid out in the warrant affidavit, Microsoft was the enterprise provider for Trump Org’s email.

55. On or about July 20,2017 and again on or about July 25, 2017, in response to a grand jury subpoena, Microsoft confirmed that the Target Account was an active account associated with the domain trumporg.com. Microsoft also provided records indicating that email accounts associated with the domain “trumporg.com” are being operated on a Microsoft Exchange server. According to publicly available information on Microsoft’s website, Microsoft hosts emails for clients on Microsoft Exchange servers, while allowing customers to use their own domain (as opposed to the publicly available email domains supplied by Microsoft, such as hotmail.com). According to information supplied by Microsoft, the domain trumporg.com continues to operate approximately 150 active email accounts through Microsoft Exchange, meaning that data associated with trumporg.com still exists on Microsoft’s servers.

That meant that, even though Trump Org didn’t turn over those damning emails (and Cohen testified to Congress as if they didn’t exist), Mueller got a copy anyway from the vendor, Microsoft, providing the cloud services to Trump Org.

The same may have happened with Trump’s surveillance footage: DOJ went to a cloud provider to obtain their version of it, without any gaps.

That warrant was, in part, a Foreign Agent warrant, so people in DOJ’s National Security Division working with Jay Bratt likely would have had a heads up. Bratt and Julie Edelstein, both on this investigative team, may well remember Trump Org’s recent, “known deficiencies in [] document responses,” and so knew to look for another source.

If that happened, then Nauta and De Oliveira may have initially testified believing certain events weren’t on surveillance footage turned over to DOJ when DOJ actually had such footage, just like Michael Cohen testified to Congress (and initially, to Mueller) as if those emails didn’t exist.

Here’s a point I keep coming back to. The surveillance footage turned over on July 6 had really damning footage: showing Nauta first emptying then half refilling the storage room. That footage, showing Trump withholding documents from Evan Corcoran’s search, was central to DOJ’s probable cause to obtain the warrant to search Trump’s beach resort on August 8.

If there are or were gaps, they served to hide something still more damning than proof that Trump was playing a shell game with his own attorney.

What we know (and Jay Bratt and Julie Edelstein likely knew when they started this investigation) is that in 2017 during the Russian investigation, all the known “deficiencies in [] document responses” in Trump Org’s subpoena compliance pertained to precisely the thing investigators most feared they would find: Direct ties between Trump and Russia.

Which undoubtedly would have made them all the more determined to fill any real or perceived gaps in Trump Org’s production of surveillance video.

Update: The government reveals it was still obtaining surveillance until recently, pointing to both footage obtained with an April 27 subpoena and footage — it doesn’t say from where — after the June 8 indictment.

Included in Production 3 is additional CCTV footage from The Mar-a-Lago Club that the Government obtained from the Trump Organization on May 9 and May 12, 2023, in response to a grand jury subpoena served on April 27. On July 27, as part of the preparation for the superseding indictment coming later that day and the discovery production for Defendant De Oliveira, the Government learned that this footage had not been processed and uploaded to the platform established for the defense to view the subpoenaed footage. The Government’s representation at the July 18 hearing that all surveillance footage the Government had obtained pre-indictment had been produced was therefore incorrect. See 7/18/2023 Tr. at 8. With this production, which also contains CCTV footage obtained after the original indictment was returned that pertains to the new obstruction allegations in the superseding indictment, the Government has produced all the CCTV footage it obtained during its investigation.

And if there’s a non-public grand jury, then Trump knows about it.

With the completion of Production 3, the Government has also now disclosed all unclassified memorialization of witness interviews finalized by today’s date and all grand jury transcripts in the Government’s possession.

Stan Woodward Wants to Give Walt Nauta a Need to Know the Contents of the Stolen Documents

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The headline revelation in DOJ’s renewed bid for a classified protective order in the Trump case is that Trump wants to be able to discuss classified documents with his attorneys in his offices, which the government correctly notes, “seeks permission to do so in the very location at which he is charged with willfully retaining the documents charged in this case.”

I’m sure we’ll come back to that, particularly if Judge Aileen Cannon entertains Trump’s demand seriously (under CIPA the government could immediately appeal any decision to the 11th Circuit).

But I’ve been more interested in Walt Nauta’s demand: that he get to see all the stolen classified documents charged in the indictment.

Defendant Nauta objects to language that limits his personal access to classified information, as opposed to access by his cleared counsel;

[snip]

Defendant Nauta is charged only with obstruction and false statement offenses related the movement and concealment of Defendant Trump’s boxes; the contents of the classified documents contained in the boxes, and the national defense information that they contain, are not material to proving or defending against those charges. Moreover, Defendant Nauta’s counsel will have the opportunity to review the classified discovery, and should they see a need to share any particular classified documents with Defendant Nauta, counsel will have an opportunity to raise the issue with the Government and the Court.1

1 The Government intends to provide to Defendant Nauta’s counsel all classified discovery identified to date.

[snip]

As explained, Defendant Nauta has no need to review the contents of the classified information. His cleared counsel will have full access to the documents in preparing his defense, and the protective order will allow Nauta to seek permission to review classified information personally if he establishes a need to know. The procedure set forth in the Government’s proposed protective order appropriately balances the need to protect classified information while allowing Defendant Nauta’s counsel the ability to assess the documents.

I assume this is one more effort from Stan Woodward — who is being paid by Trump’s PAC — to test the boundaries of Judge Cannon’s indulgence, a tactical move to figure out how much the defense team can get away with.

This is, in my opinion as someone who has been covering Espionage Act cases for over 15 years, an ill-considered move.

As I noted in my first review of the original indictment, Nauta’s alleged overt acts already then fulfilled all the elements of the offense of 18 USC 793(g), conspiring with Trump to hoard classified documents, which would dramatically increase Nauta’s legal jeopardy. Already then, Nauta was at risk of being superseded with charges that expose him to over a decade of prison time, possibly two.

That’s all the more true given the additional acts in the superseding indictment.

Effectively, this demand from Woodward is a request: Please give my client a Need to Know what is in those 32 highly classified documents that Nauta wouldn’t even have had the Need to Know when he was working in the White House.

The one thing that would give Nauta a Need to Know what’s in the stolen documents — as the government intimates — is if Nauta were charged under the Espionage Act, as he could be under 18 USC 793(g).

Which brings me to a key detail in this WaPo story — which reveals that, tomorrow, Trump will disclose he has spent $40M on lawyers, eating up his campaign cash (which makes Will Hurd’s quip from the other night — that Trump is running for President to stay out of prison — pretty timely).

That’s a really important story (and will create still more damning, unprivileged documents for prosecutors to find). But WaPo’s story confirms what I suspected when I focused on ¶91 of the superseding indictment — the one that describes Trump assessing Carlos De Oliveira’s loyalty before he offered to pay for a lawyer — as, potentially, its most important.

Stan Woodward — the lawyer who has decided it’d be a good idea to ask that his client be given a Need to Know what’s in the stolen classified documents — has started to face very serious conflict problems that have been inevitable for months.

Woodward represents at least the following people (I’ll add more when I remember them):

  • Peter Navarro (who goes on trial for contempt in September)
  • Dan Scavino
  • Kash Patel
  • Walt Nauta
  • Will Russell, who testified on July 20
  • Taylor Budowich, who testified in Florida
  • Brad Parscale in AJ Delgado’s pregnancy discrimination suit against the Trump campaign
  • Kelly Meggs, who has already been sentenced for sedition
  • Freddie Klein, the former State Department official who was part of the Tunnel battle, also recently sentenced
  • Ryan Samsel, who kicked off the entire riot on January 6

Critically, Woodward was representing Yuscil Taveras, whose recent testimony is one of the things that made it possible to add Carlos De Oliveira (represented by a different Trump paid lawyer) to the indictment and include the Keystone Cops effort to delete footage. That created a conflict between Nauta’s interests and Taveras’, and someone — presumably Chief Judge James Boasberg — appointed a conflict counsel for Taveras, which is what led to Taveras becoming dramatically more forthcoming.

Nauta, who investigators long considered a key witness in the classified documents investigation, has been represented for many months by lawyer Stan Woodward, with Save America footing the bills. Woodward also represents several other Trump-linked clients who have been subpoenaed as part of Smith’s investigations, including an IT worker named Yuscil Taveras.

For much of the classified documents probe, there did not appear to be a conflict between Nauta and Taveras.

After Trump and Nauta were indicted in June, however, Taveras decided he had more he wanted to tell the authorities about his conversations with De Oliveira, according to people familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.

Taveras offered information implicating all three defendants in an alleged conspiracy to cover up evidence, these people said.

Legal ethics rules bar attorneys from arguing adverse positions in a case — such as defending one client by cross-examining another client, or advising one person who is testifying to investigators or a grand jury against another.

Once Taveras’s position put him potentially at odds with Nauta’s defense, a judge reviewed the issue, a person familiar with the matter said. A second lawyer — not paid by the PAC — was brought in to provide legal advice to Taveras, who then spoke to investigators, according to people familiar with the matter. [my emphasis]

I’ve been waiting for the moment when DOJ would ask for a conflict counsel to be appointed for Nauta: because Woodward getting paid by a PAC that is under investigation for this spending is, by itself, a potential conflict. But this describes that a judge, probably Boasberg, brought in a conflict counsel for Taveras.

It’s not clear whether Taveras has flipped or just gotten far more cooperative — he fits the description of a person who had received a target letter, so the decision to be more forthcoming may have been entirely about self-preservation.

But Taveras has not only provided damaging testimony about Nauta, De Oliveira, and Trump, but he likely can explain who from Trump Organization in New York participated in the still uncharged successful efforts to delete surveillance footage, who might be able to give someone the rights to do that.

That is, he likely has testimony that could implicate the Matthews Calamari, key players in Trump’s corporate empire.

More importantly, prosecutors will do with Taveras what DOJ did with Cassidy Hutchinson after she described that Stefan Passantino was discouraging her from being all that forthcoming: ask more about the nature of that legal arrangement. They may also ask about Susie Wiles’ role in it (which is also laid out in the WaPo article), which also came up in even Hutchinson’s publicly released testimony about these matters.

And Wiles, of course, is not only the person arranging all this conflicted legal representation for people and now running Trump’s campaign, but she’s also someone who has been involved in the use of the documents; she is also reportedly the person to whom Trump showed a classified document in Bedminster she was not cleared to see.

It’s not just that Trump is spending more on lawyers than he is taking in. But he’s spending on lawyers whose conflicts make this entire scheme a fragile game of jenga.

One that may have started to fall apart.

Update: Trump Employee 5 in the superseding indictment must also have given testimony, which may also be fairly recent. Given that he’s the kind of person who’d be consulted about loyalty, he presumably also was part of the in-house lawyering team.

Update: NYT has their own version of this preemptive limited hangout of Trump’s financial shell game. It mentions the potential legal problem with using funds raised for election security to pay lawyers, but steers clear of the ongoing investigation into it.

The PAC was the entity in which Mr. Trump had parked the more than $100 million raised when he sought small-dollar donations after losing the 2020 election. Mr. Trump claimed he needed the support to fight widespread fraud in the race. Officials, including some with his campaign, turned up no evidence of widespread fraud.

Mr. Trump used some of that $100 million for other politicians and political activities in 2022, but he also used it to pay more than $16 million in legal fees, most of them related to investigations into him, and at least $10 million of which was for his own personal fees.

Save America began 2023 with just $18 million in cash on hand, which is less than half of what was spent on legal bills this year.

Campaign finance experts are divided on whether Mr. Trump is even able to continue to use the PAC to pay for his personal legal bills, as he became a candidate last November.

Update: CNN has confirmed the timeline: Taveras got a target letter after the first indictment, then ditched Woodward, then testified.

Yuscil Taveras, a Mar-a-Lago employee who oversees the property’s surveillance cameras, received a target letter from federal prosecutors after former President Donald Trump was first indicted in June on charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office, sources told CNN.

[snip]

After receiving the target letter, Taveras changed lawyers because his attorney, Stan Woodward, also represented Nauta, which presented a conflict, sources said.

Update: Added two more Woodward clients.

Update: Added another Woodward client.

“Rights” and Wrongs: Where the Stolen Documents Investigation Is Headed

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I want to start this post about where the stolen documents investigation may be headed with an observation a commenter here made about this passage of the superseding indictment: the import of the word, the “rights,” coming from an IT guy who would think in terms of access privileges.

The passage comes in the midst of the Keystone Cops routine where Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira try to figure out how to achieve Trump’s apparent order — probably given during a 24-minute phone call to De Oliveira on June 23 and to Nauta face-to-face at Bedminster sometime between 3:44 and 5:02PM on June 24 — to delete the surveillance server. They were stomping around, squawking about how sensitive this mission was. Nauta sent someone texts with shush emojis and De Oliveira told a valet Nauta’s visit should remain secret.

The evening of June 25 — one day after DOJ sent Trump Organization a subpoena for surveillance video — they get a flashlight and go to inspect what the surveillance cameras would pick up; by moving in front of the surveillance cameras, which we now know are motion activated, they would have triggered the cameras, thereby creating more damning surveillance footage.

Imagine the video exhibit at trial, as both Nauta and De Oliveira point a flashlight at the surveillance camera that, weeks earlier, caught both of them moving just half the boxes full of classified documents back into the storage room, two earnest faces looking straight into the camera. That footage wouldn’t be covered by the subpoena they were, at that moment, trying to defy; it would probably be covered by the next subpoena.

Two days later (there’s no indication of how Nauta spent his day on Sunday June 26), on June 27, De Oliveira walks into the IT room and asks Yuscil Taveras in front of a witness (possibly in front of another security camera) to step away so they could speak. They go to what they call an “audio closet” (which could be the decommissioned SCIF) and De Oliveira tells Taveras that “the boss” wants the surveillance server deleted.

Taveras says three things in response:

  1. He doesn’t know how to accomplish that
  2. He doesn’t have the “rights” to do that
  3. To accomplish the task, De Oliveira would have to reach out to one of the Matthew Calamaris

The words, “rights,” here hasn’t gotten enough attention. Taveras was saying that he did not have the computer privileges to just delete the surveillance server: one of the Matthew Calamaris in New York would have to be involved to make such a thing happen.

So after that, De Oliveira checks back in with Nauta (who has flown to Florida to accomplish this task, along with whatever he did on June 26), they stomp around some more in suspicious ways that are visible to yet more surveillance cameras, and then two hours later Trump speaks to De Oliveira for 3.5 minutes. As described, Trump calls De Oliveira, not the other way around.

Remember how I said — of the January 6 investigation — that the January 6 investigation would take more time than the Watergate investigation because, unlike Nixon, Trump is not known to have wiretapped himself?

Well, on the stolen documents investigation, he did, effectively, wiretap himself, or at least all the employees he sent to accomplish his corrupt mission. And then Trump tried, over and over, to Rosemary Woods away incriminating video, at least this first time, captured on video again.

But amid all the Keystone Cops stomping around talking about secrets while on surveillance camera and sending shush texts, what Taveras said is an important hint of where this investigation may go next (as I laid out here).

Thus far, this story — and the conspiracy as charged so far — is just a story of a failed attempt to destroy surveillance video. De Oliveira: Can you delete the server? Taveras: Nope. I don’t have the rights. Stomp stomp stomp, almost all of it on surveillance video.

The Keystone Cops caper ends with Trump calling De Oliveira at 3:55PM on June 27, with no word of what led Trump to call De Oliveira and no word of whether whatever video got deleted was deleted in Florida or New York, or somewhere else.

The superseding indictment doesn’t mention, for example, the text that Nauta sent Calamari Sr — possibly even between 1:50PM when he and De Oliveira were stomping in bushes adjacent to Mar-a-Lao and the phone call that Trump made to De Oliveira at 3:55PM.

Both Calamaris testified to the federal grand jury in Washington on Thursday, and were questioned in part on a text message that Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, had sent them around the time that the justice department last year asked for the surveillance footage, one of the people said.

The text message is understood to involve Nauta asking Matthew Calamari Sr to call him back about the justice department’s request,

Calamari was the guy, Taveras told De Oliveira, who would have the privileges to delete surveillance footage. And sometime in that period, Nauta texted him about the surveillance request.

Thus far, this is a story and a crime about an alleged attempt to delete surveillance footage. But we can be pretty certain that surveillance video was, in fact, deleted. That’s because reporters have reported on witnesses being asked that for months. There would be no reason to obtain nine months of surveillance video — 57 terabytes of raw video, if you can believe the defense attorneys — unless there was a whole bunch more to learn from the surveillance videos.

The initial production also included some 57 terabytes of compressed raw CCTV footage (so far there is approximately nine months of CCTV footage, but the final number is not yet certain).

And there would be no reason for Trump, on August 26, to get Nauta to verify De Oliveira’s loyalty (stomp stomp stomp) before arranging to provide him a lawyer if what came next, what happened after Trump’s phone call to De Oliveira on June 27 isn’t even more damning.

Indeed, that’s why it matters that — buried in a Devlin Barrett story opining that De Oliveira’s, “alleged actions could bolster the obstruction case against the former president” because apparently Devlin hasn’t learned his lesson about presenting evidence of more serious crimes and calling it obstruction — Trump (unusually) came back to Mar-a-Lago twice between June 3 and August 8: once from July 10 to 12, and once again on July 23, and that De Oliveira told the FBI he had given away the key to storage when they showed up on August 8.

The Keystone Cop caper, in part because it is so colorful and in part because it is charged as an unsuccessful attempt, has distracted most commentators from the fact that there was a more successful attempt, and that more successful attempt didn’t hide the movement of boxes in and out of the storage closet. As I’ve noted, all the movement of boxes in May and June shows up in the search affidavit relying on what DOJ did get from Trump, save one: Nauta’s retrieval of a single box on May 22.

The superseding indictment describes that the subpoena asked for footage from “certain locations,” plural, of which the basement hallway is just one. And the most recent unsealing of the affidavit reveals that the only cameras included on the hard drive of surveillance footage turned over on July 6 were four cameras in the basement hallway. So one way or another, footage of those other locations was not turned over in response to the first subpoena.

Everyone treats this indictment as a terminal indictment — and if that’s as far as Jack Smith gets, it’s still far more damning than most everyone imagined on June 8. But multiple public references — the discussion on July 13 of continued efforts to fully exploit Nauta’s phone, the reference in DOJ’s descriptions of discovery that suggest there’s a grand jury somewhere other than DC or SDFL, and the suggestion that interviews have continued after June 23 — suggests that the current instantiation of the indictment is intended to be part of an ongoing investigation.

I noted from the first indictment that it was a “tactical nuke” designed to persuade Nauta to cooperate. Not only hasn’t the effort worked, but Stan Woodward has adopted a position on classified discovery — that Nauta, in addition to his attorneys, should get to see all the stolen classified documents — that I think makes it more likely DOJ would supersede to add a conspiracy to retain classified documents charge with him, because the elements of offense are all satisfied in the existing indictment.

Here are the obvious things that obtaining credible cooperation from Nauta would obtain:

  • ¶25: Details of Trump’s intent as Nauta helped pack up documents from the White House
  • ¶46: Why Trump was trying to hide when he instructed Nauta to replace the lids of the boxes
  • ¶54: What he was sent for on May 22
  • ¶61: What Trump instructed Nauta before he moved half the boxes back into storage for Evan Corcoran to search
  • ¶73: What boxes got loaded on the plane to Mar-a-Lago on June 3
  • ¶78: What Trump told him at Bedminster that led him to fly to Florida and try to bury the surveillance video (as well as what else he did on June 26, which is not accounted for)
  • ¶86: What both men discussed in the bushes
  • How Nauta came to text Matthew Calamari
  • ¶91: How Trump came to ask Nauta to ascertain De Oliveira’s loyalty and whether Trump had similarly offered him legal representation
  • What Nauta witnessed as Trump’s bodyman, especially in Bedminster

Here are the obvious things that obtaining credible cooperation from De Oliveira would obtain:

  • ¶76: Details of the 24-minute call he had with Trump, while Trump was at Bedminster
  • ¶86: What both men discussed in the bushes
  • ¶87: What Trump said on the phone call and whether De Oliveira had a role in the successful deletion of video, and how he knew what to delete
  • ¶91: What the terms of his representation are and whether it led him to lie (a question, other reports have made clear, many witnesses have been asked)
  • Why Trump returned to Mar-a-Lago twice before the August 8 search
  • To whom he gave the key to the storage room and on whose orders
  • Whether the October flood of the server room was an(other) attempt to destroy surveillance footage and if so, whether he was instructed to do so

De Oliveira might be a key witness to lead Nauta to reconsider his decision to protect Trump.

More importantly, one or both might be irreplaceable witnesses to answer a number of closely intertwined questions:

  • How is Trump is using lawyers to command loyalty and does it create conflict or obstruction issues
  • What surveillance footage has Trump prioritized for destruction and why
  • Why did Trump steal the documents, how has he used them, and where did the ones that went to Bedminster disappear to
  • What role does Trump’s PAC have in exploitation of the documents
  • What role does Trump Organization have in exploitation of the documents
  • Who else has had ready access to these documents

All this superseding indictment shows is that Trump had something to hide that goes beyond his desire to hoard the classified documents. Jack Smith may require the cooperation of one or both of these men to fully understand what Trump is really hiding.

This fairly remarkable post from the WSJ opinion page demonstrates the stakes of trying to answer it. It’s a pitch to elect someone other than Trump in the GOP primary, and premised on an utterly bullshit claim that Biden has politicized justice. But it gets a good distance of the way to an important discovery: even the Keystone Cops attempt already included in the indictment totally debunks Trump’s public defense, because if he believed in June 2022 that he had the right to keep these, he wouldn’t have dug himself — and thus far two staffers — deeper into a legal hole.

If Mr. Trump sought to destroy evidence, it undercuts his defense on the document charges. He contends that the Presidential Records Act gives him the right to retain documents from his time in office. But if Mr. Trump believed that, he would have played it straight. If the indictment is right that he hid the files from his own lawyers and tried to wipe the security video to stop anybody from finding out, then he didn’t buy his own defense.

From a Murdoch rag, this is a really important insight. But then WSJ predictably refuses to take the next logical step: That Trump’s obstruction makes it clear he didn’t just do this out of pigheadedness.

Prudential questions about the wisdom of this prosecution remain. Mr. Trump appears to have kept the files out of pigheadedness, not because he wanted to do something nefarious like sell them to an adversary. The FBI raided Mar-a-Lago to recover the documents.

The episode reflects poorly on Mr. Trump. But is this conduct that truly gives President Biden no choice except to ask a jury to jail his leading political opponent in next year’s election? At least Watergate involved a burglary.

We can’t even rule out a burglary, if Trump learned that he compromised these documents by storing them in his beach resort! Especially since De Oliveira claimed he had given the key away to others. We can’t rule out selling them to an adversary! We sure as hell can’t rule out trying to exploit them for the success of his PAC.

The indictment and an attempt to try this before the general election is an important goal, though potentially unrealistic given the CIPA challenges.

But it really is important to learn what Trump did do with these documents, who got the key, where they disappeared to.

This indictment doesn’t answer the question of why Trump stole these documents or what he did with them. All the superseding indictment did is make the question more urgent.

Update: Fixed Trump’s location from whence he called De Oliveira — the first call would have been Bedminster.

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