A former employee of Donald Trump told federal agents that the former president asked for boxes of files to be moved inside his Florida residence, after receiving a government order demanding their return, according to a report in Washington. Post.
The key witness information, along with surveillance footage also obtained by the Justice Department, represents some of the strongest evidence known to date of possible obstruction of justice by the former Republican president.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that Trump aide Walt Nauta was caught on security camera footage from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach moving boxes out of a storage area in the research center.
It was unclear whether the employee named in Wednesday’s Washington Post report was Nauta or someone else, according to the Times, which cited three unnamed people familiar with the matter.
The FBI conducted a court-approved search on Aug. 8 at Mar-a-Lago, seizing more than 11,000 documents, including about 100 marked classified.
The employee who worked at Mar-a-Lago was cooperating with the Justice Department and has been interviewed multiple times by federal agents, the Post reported.
The witness initially denied tampering with sensitive documents and in subsequent conversations with agents admitted moving boxes at Trump’s request, according to people familiar with the situation.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the Washington Post report, and could not immediately be reached for comment on the New York Times article.
Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich, in a statement Thursday, reiterated the charge that the August search was “unwarranted and unconstitutional” and blamed the Justice Department for leaking information to media outlets in an “act of intimidation and manipulation.” “.
Budowich did not say whether Nauta, a former White House military adviser, was still employed by Trump.
In a post on his social media platform late Wednesday, Trump again denied any wrongdoing, posting: “There is no ‘crime’ involving the storage of documents at Mar-a-Lago.”
