Maggie Haberman Piles On — Confirms Trump Told Aide ‘You Don’t Know Anything’ When FBI Was To Question Her on Espionage Act Case
New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman threw another log on the fire by confirming that ex-President Donald Trump coached a close aide when she was preparing to be interviewed by the FBI.
News broke Monday that close Trump aide Molly Michael — think Mrs. Landingham from The West Wing — told investigators in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s classified docs investigation that Trump weighed in when he learned she was to be questioned by the FBI — committing what some experts are calling witness tampering.
Michael says Trump told her “You don’t know anything about the boxes,” according to sources who spoke to ABC News, and also testified that Trump would give her notes and to-do lists on cards and papers “with visible classification markings.”
On Tuesday, Haberman revealed that her sources have confirmed ABC’s reporting, and added some analysis of her own:
The revelations about Ms. Michael’s discussions with investigators were the latest to show the scale and nature of the evidence gathered by federal prosecutors working on the classified documents case. Mr. Trump stands accused of illegally holding on to dozens of highly sensitive national security records after leaving office and of conspiring with two aides at Mar-a-Lago, his club and residence in Florida, to obstruct the government’s repeated attempts to get them back.
Ms. Michael is one of at least two witnesses who could be called to testify at Mr. Trump’s trial in the documents case and present the jury with evidence that the former president sought in some way to obstruct the government’s investigation.
Haberman’s reporting and analysis are significant because she is rightly considered an expert on Trump with deep experience reporting on the subject and a network of Trumpworld sources that give her up-to-the-minute insights. Not coincidentally, Trump is known to pore over Haberman’s reporting, all of which makes her a uniquely influential figure in Trumpworld.
Trump faces 37 counts stemming from Smith’s investigation into his retention of classified documents under the Espionage Act plus a superseding indictment by Smith on three additional charges against Trump (one additional count of unlawful retention of National Defense Information and two new obstruction counts).
