Maggie Haberman Sources Say Criminal Probe Has ‘Cooperating Witness’ Who Worked At Mar-a-Lago
Multiple sources told Maggie Haberman’s reporting team that the criminal probe into ex-President Donald Trump’s documents scandal has secured cooperation from someone who worked at Mar-a-Lago.
With the E. Jean Carroll rape trial taking up so much attention this week, news of the Special Counsel Jack Smith-led Justice Department probe into the Trump classified documents case has flown under the radar somewhat.
But reporting by CNN and others revealed that Smith’s probe is focusing on the handling of surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago following a DOJ subpoena — a thread that is highly suggestive of an obstruction of justice investigation.
Haberman — an influential analyst to whom Trump pays a lot of attention — has a network of Trumpworld sources, as well as contacts she has developed over years of reporting on Trump. In an article this week, she and colleagues Adam Goldman, Alan Feuer, Ben Protess, and Michael Schmidt revealed that Smith has secured the cooperation of at least one Mar-a-Lago insider:
Federal prosecutors investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of classified documents have obtained the confidential cooperation of a person who has worked for him at Mar-a-Lago, part of an intensifying effort to determine whether Mr. Trump ordered boxes containing sensitive material moved out of a storage room there as the government sought to recover it last year, multiple people familiar with the inquiry said.
Through a wave of new subpoenas and grand jury testimony, the Justice Department is moving aggressively to develop a fuller picture of how the documents Mr. Trump took with him from the White House were stored, who had access to them, how the security camera system at Mar-a-Lago works and what Mr. Trump told aides and his lawyers about what material he had and where it was, the people said.
At the heart of the inquiry is whether Mr. Trump sought to hide some documents after the Justice Department issued a subpoena last May demanding their return.
Trump faces a raft of other investigations and potential indictments and charges — the Special Counsel Jack Smith-led Justice Department probes into Trump’s conduct surrounding the January 6 insurrection, as well as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ grand jury investigation of his effort to overturn election results in Georgia and New York Attorney General Letitia James’s civil case against Trump and his company, and his arrest and arraignment in a Manhattan courtroom over an indictment on 34 felony counts for crimes involving hush money payments to adult entertainment entrepreneur Stormy Daniels and others.
