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      Trump’s lawyers told he is target in Mar-a-Lago documents investigation

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      Federal prosecutors formally informed Donald Trump’s lawyers last week that the former US president is a target of the criminal investigation examining his retention of national security materials at his Mar-a-Lago resort and obstruction of justice, according to two people briefed on the matter.The move dramatically raises the stakes for Trump as the investigation appears to near its conclusion after taking evidence before a grand jury in Washington and a previously unknown grand jury in Florida that was impaneled last month.Trump’s lawyers were notified before they met on Monday with the special counsel Jack Smith leading the Mar-a-Lago documents case and the senior career official in the deputy attorney general’s office and made the case that prosecutors should not indict the former president in the matter.Trump has reportedly said he had not been personally informed by the justice department that he was a target when asked directly by a New York Times reporter, but demurred when asked whether his legal team had been told about the designation.The development, earlier reported by conservative outlet Just the News, comes as prosecutors have evidence of criminal conduct occurring at Mar-a-Lago and decided that any indictments should be charged in the southern district of Florida, where the resort is located, rather than in Washington.To that end, prosecutors last month started issuing subpoenas to multiple Trump aides that compelled them to testify before a new grand jury in Florida, impaneled around the time that the grand jury in Washington stopped taking new evidence, two people familiar with the matter said.On Wednesday, former Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich testified before the Florida grand jury and was asked in part about a statement that Trump drafted in early 2022 that said he had given “everything” back after he returned 15 boxes of materials to the National Archives.The statement was never issued, Budowich is understood to have confirmed. Several aides to Trump were against releasing the statement because they were not confident that the assertion was accurate, a person close to the former president said.What charges might emanate from the Florida grand jury remains unclear.But prosecutors would most probably prefer to bring charges in Washington, where the judges at the US district court are more familiar with handling national security cases – though Florida also has a robust national security section – and the jury pool skews more Democratic.The impaneling of grand juries has to do with where prosecutors believe a crime was committed. And the most straightforward reason for the Florida grand jury is that prosecutors have developed evidence of criminal activity at Mar-a-Lago, which is in the southern district of Florida.In this investigation, prosecutors considering charges against Trump for retaining national security material may have concluded from the evidence that he was still president when classified documents were moved to Mar-a-Lago, meaning his “unlawful possession” only started in Florida.Similarly, if prosecutors have also developed evidence that Trump knew he had retained national security documents after he left office at Mar-a-Lago, for instance by waving them around or showing people, that could present hurdles to charging Espionage Act violations in Washington.The venue for an obstruction of justice charge is more difficult to deduce, meanwhile, because the courts have provided little guidance about how it should be applied under section 1519 of the US criminal code, which prosecutors listed on the affidavit for Mar-a-Lago search warrant.Generally, other obstruction statutes hold that the venue depends on where the impeded proceeding was taking place. In the Trump documents investigation, the subpoena last year demanding the return of classified documents was issued in Washington.The US court of appeals for the DC circuit, however, has ruled in previous cases that the correct venue is where acts of obstruction took place. If prosecutors are considering obstruction charges for Trump’s steps to conceal classified documents after the subpoena, Florida could be the venue. More

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      Chris Christie files papers to run for US president ahead of official campaign launch tonight – live

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      From 3h agoNew Jersey’s former Republican governor Chris Christie has officially filed to run for president, according to the Federal Election Commission, setting himself up to face off against Donald Trump and a host of other candidates for the party’s nomination to challenge Joe Biden in the general election next year.Christie will announce his candidacy at 6.30pm eastern time with a town hall in New Hampshire. This campaign will be a sort of rematch for Christie: he was among the slew of Republicans Trump defeated in 2016 to win the party’s nomination, and later that year, the White House.While Christie worked with Trump during his time in the White House, they later had a falling out, and Christie recently said Trump “needs to be called out and … needs to be called out by somebody who knows him. Nobody knows Donald Trump better than I do.”While Christie has insisted he is “not a paid assassin”, the 60-year-old is certainly a seasoned brawler.Christie’s claims to fame include leaving office in New Jersey amid a scandal about political payback involving traffic on the George Washington Bridge to New York, then leaving the Florida senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign in pieces after a debate-stage clash for the ages.Christie was quick to drop out of that campaign, then equally quick to endorse the clear frontrunner. He stayed loyal despite a brutal firing as Trump’s transition coordinator, fueled by old enmities with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and only broke from Trump after the January 6 Capitol attack.Recently, Christie has worked for ABC News as a political analyst, honing his turn of phrase. Speaking to Politico, he insisted he was serious about winning the primary.“I’m not a paid assassin,” he said. “When you’re waking up for your 45th morning at the Hilton Garden Inn in Manchester [New Hampshire], you better think you can win, because that walk from the bed to the shower, if you don’t think you can win, it’s hard.”He also said Trump “needs to be called out and … needs to be called out by somebody who knows him. Nobody knows Donald Trump better than I do.”Read more:Back in the Capitol, here’s more from Fox News on why rightwing lawmakers banded together to frustrate the chamber’s Republican leaders by blocking debate on legislation dealing with gas stoves and federal government rule-making.The revolt caused a vote to start debate on legislation to fail for the first time since 2002. It came after the far-right lawmakers joined with Democrats in what one of their members, Dan Bishop, told Fox was an expression of frustration with House speaker Kevin McCarthy:The Guardian’s Maanvi Singh is on deck now to run the blog through the evening’s news, including Chris Christie’s town hall kicking off his presidential campaign.Here’s more from the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly on Chris Christie’s return to the presidential campaign trail and his primary rematch against foe turned friend turned foe Donald Trump:The former New Jersey governor Chris Christie has confirmed his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination next year.Christie filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday afternoon. He was scheduled to announce his presidential run hours later in a town hall hosted at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics in Manchester, New Hampshire.The pugilistic politician joins the primary as a rank outsider but promises a campaign with a singular focus: to take the fight to Donald Trump, the former president who left office in disgrace after the January 6 attack on Congress but who is the clear frontrunner to face Joe Biden again at the polls.A few hours ago, Donald Trump’s allies released a statement welcoming Chris Christie to the presidential race with a grin – a big, toothy, Cheshire cat grin.“Ron DeSantis’ campaign is spiraling, and President Trump’s dominance over the Republican primary field has opened a mad rush to seize the mantle for [a] runner-up. Ron DeSantis is not ready for this moment, and Chris Christie will waste no time eating DeSantis’ lunch,” said Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Make America Great Again Inc Pac supporting the former president’s campaign.And now that Christie has announced his candidacy, the Democrats are out with their customary roast. Here’s Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison’s statement:
      The American people still remember what happened the last time Chris Christie ran for president. After dropping his own bid in 2016 to wholeheartedly endorse Donald Trump, Christie served as head of Trump’s transition team, gave his presidency an ‘A,’ and used his position as chair of Trump’s Commission on Opioids to land a lucrative consulting contract with big pharma. A longtime champion of the MAGA agenda, Christie backed a federal abortion ban and helped coordinate efforts to restrict access in every state, called for cutting Medicare and Social Security, and vetoed minimum wage increases for working people.Nothing he says can change the fact that Chris Christie is just another power-hungry extremist in the rapidly growing field of Republicans willing to say anything to capture the MAGA base.
      New Jersey’s former Republican governor Chris Christie has officially filed to run for president, according to the Federal Election Commission, setting himself up to face off against Donald Trump and a host of other candidates for the party’s nomination to challenge Joe Biden in the general election next year.Christie will announce his candidacy at 6.30pm eastern time with a town hall in New Hampshire. This campaign will be a sort of rematch for Christie: he was among the slew of Republicans Trump defeated in 2016 to win the party’s nomination, and later that year, the White House.While Christie worked with Trump during his time in the White House, they later had a falling out, and Christie recently said Trump “needs to be called out and … needs to be called out by somebody who knows him. Nobody knows Donald Trump better than I do.”An effort by House Republicans to stop the government from banning gas stoves and change the federal rule-making process has been blocked by a revolt from within the party.Rightwing GOP lawmakers just now joined with Democrats in voting down the rule that would kick off debate on the four bills, a key step before the chamber could vote on their passage:The Biden administration opposes the bills, and there was little chance they would be passed by the Democrat-controlled Senate. We’ll let you know as soon as it becomes clear what fueled the conservative revolt.In other House shenanigans, you will recall that Republican congressman, admitted fabulist and potentially soon-to-be federal inmate George Santos tried and failed to keep secret the names of those who paid for his expensive bail.Reporters at the Capitol have been wondering why he didn’t want these people’s identities publicized, and did what they have done to Santos ever since he first showed up in Washington in January: chased him around while asking him questions. See the pursuit, and the little that he had to say, below, courtesy of CNN:Republicans control the House and should have no trouble voting to start debate on the bills intended to ensure gas stove access. But they are having trouble, and that says something about the state of the GOP today.As you can see in the tweet below from Axios, 10 GOP lawmakers are currently opposing the rule to start debate on the four bills that stop the government from banning gas stoves and also changing the federal rule-making process. That’s enough to stop the legislation from being debated by the House, a formal step that must be taken before the bills can be passed.Who’s doing the revolting? Rightwing members of the House Freedom Caucus, many of whom were behind the days of GOP infighting in January that delayed Kevin McCarthy’s election as speaker of the House. We’ll let you know when we find out what the Freedom Caucus is mad about this time.The White House will “assess” whether an attack on a dam that flooded a swath of southern Ukraine amounts to a war crime, US national security council spokesman John Kirby said at the White House this afternoon.Follow the Guardian’s live blog for the latest on this developing story from Ukraine:The Biden administration has taken a look at the two Republican House bills advertised as protecting Americans’ access to gas stoves, and it does not like what it sees.In a statement, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said it “strongly opposes” the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act and the Save Our Stoves Act, while adding: “The Administration has been clear that it does not support any attempt to ban the use of gas stoves.”Lawmakers are expected to today vote on passage of the former legislation, and consider the latter tomorrow. The OMB’s statement says the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act would undercut the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s job of using “the best available data to promote the safety of consumer products. This Administration opposes any effort to undermine the Commission’s ability to make science-based decisions to protect the public.”The OMB criticizes the Save Our Stoves Act for preventing the energy department from creating and enforcing new standards for stove and oven efficiency, denying “the American people the savings that come with having more efficient new appliances on the market when they choose to replace an existing appliance”.The two bills “would undermine science-based Consumer Product Safety Commission decision-making and block common sense efforts to help Americans cut their energy bills”. While the OMB doesn’t outright say Joe Biden would veto them, it’s hard to see the two pieces of legislation making it through the Democratic-led Senate, or even being considered.The House of Representatives will this week take up two pieces of legislation aimed at blocking new regulations on the use of gas stoves.On Tuesday, the House is expected to vote on the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act – a measure to prevent the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a federal regulatory agency, from taking steps to stop the sale of the appliances, including by labeling them as hazardous.And on Wednesday, representatives will vote on the Save Our Gas Stoves Act, which would bar the Energy Department from finalizing, implementing or enforcing a proposed rule setting efficiency standards for the appliances.If the House advances the Republican bills, they will likely face opposition from the Democratic-controlled Senate.Gas stoves have for months been the subject of ire for rightwingers, after a slew of studies showed that the appliances are damaging to the climate and public health. A recent report found that one in eight cases of childhood asthma in the US is due to the pollution given off by cooking on gas stoves – a level of risk similar to that of exposure to secondhand smoke – while an earlier study found that gas stoves each year pump out as much planet-warming pollution as 500,000 carsr.Late last year, a member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission floated the possibility of banning gas stoves, but the agency quickly backtracked to clarify that no ban is currently under consideration. But US cities and counties are considering policies to limit or even phase out the use of the polluting appliances.Though it has recently become the topic of public concern, researchers and regulators have long suspected that gas stoves are dangerous. In 1973, the Environmental Protection Agency had preliminary evidence that exposure to gas stoves posed respiratory risks, and in 1985 the Consumer Product Safety Commission raised concerns about gas stoves’ nitrogen emissions.The murder rate in a number of large US cities has seen a “sharp and broad decline” this year, new research has found, even as the number of mass shootings around the country continues to climb.My colleague Richard Luscombe writes that statistics compiled by New Orleans-based AH Analytics show a 12.2% drop in murders in 90 US cities to the end of May over the same period last year, although the study notes there are places, such as Memphis and Cleveland, where the murder rate has actually increased.The report will do little to weaken calls by weapons control advocates and Joe Biden for Congress to pass meaningful gun reforms as the US remains on track for a record number of mass killings in 2023.A federal judge has granted media requests to release the names of people who co-signed George Santos’s $500,000 bond in his criminal fraud case, according to The Hill.Santos’s attorney had asked to keep those names secret and Joseph Murray said he feared “for their health, safety and wellbeing”.Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna has criticised what he called the Supreme Court’s partisan decision-making, saying it was a “crisis”.Speaking at the Indian Impact event in Washington, DC, he said: “What we have right now is a court that has lost the legitimacy of the American people.”Khanna was addressing the rulings on reproductive rights, affirmative action and other issues that the conservative majority has continued to push forward. Asking for term limits and more stringent ethical boundaries, he said the current court included “political hacks” and referenced times in history when presidents like Abraham Lincoln called for supreme court reform.“We need a mobilization that is much more explicit and harsh in calling out the supreme court,” he said. “We should get rid of the niceties.”The investigations into Donald Trump grind on, but one may be nearing a conclusion: the inquiry into the classified documents discovered last year at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. His attorneys met with the justice department yesterday, including special counsel Jack Smith, and the former president spent this morning angrily posting on Truth social about the alleged injustice he was facing. House Republicans are rushing to his defense, while also moving forward with a plan to hold FBI director Christopher Wray in contempt for not turning over a document alleging corruption by Joe Biden. The vote on that is set for Thursday.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      US intelligence knew of a Ukrainian plan to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline, though it’s unclear if Kyiv was actually behind its sabotage.
      Trump has feuded with Fox News’s straight-news division, but will on 19 June sit down for an interview with them for the first time since his 2020 election defeat.
      Federal investigators are looking into a swimming pool that was drained at Mar-a-Lago and into room full of servers containing surveillance footage of the resort, according to a report.
      Punchbowl News reports that speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy also supports the push to hold FBI director Christopher Wray in contempt: More

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      Months of distrust inside Trump legal team led to top lawyer’s departure

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      Donald Trump’s legal team for months has weathered deep distrust and interpersonal conflict that could undermine its defense of the former president as the criminal investigation into his handling of classified documents and obstruction of justice at Mar-a-Lago nears its conclusion.The turmoil inside the legal team only exploded into public view when one of the top lawyers, Tim Parlatore, abruptly resigned two weeks’ ago from the representation citing irreconcilable differences with Trump’s senior adviser and in-house counsel Boris Epshteyn.But the departure of Parlatore was the culmination of months of simmering tensions that continue to threaten the effectiveness of the legal team at a crucial time – as federal prosecutors weigh criminal charges – in part because the interpersonal conflicts remain largely unresolved.It also comes as multiple Trump lawyers are embroiled in numerous criminal investigations targeting the former president: Epshteyn was recently interviewed by the special counsel, while Parlatore and Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran testified to the grand jury in the classified documents inquiry.The turmoil has revolved around hostility among the lawyers on the legal team who have come to distrust each other as well as their hostility directed at Epshteyn, over what they regard as his oversight of the legal work and gatekeeping direct access to the former president.In one instance, the clashes became so acute that some of the lawyers agreed to a so-called “murder-suicide” pact where if one got fired, others would resign in solidarity. And as some of the lawyers tried to exclude Epshteyn, they withheld information from co-counsel who they suspected might brief him.The infighting eventually reached the point at which some of the lawyers started to believe the biggest impediment to defending Trump might just be the distrust and interpersonal conflict, rather than someone like Parlatore deciding to cooperate with prosecutors.In fact, the legal team is said to be confident that Parlatore will not flip on Trump after he told the grand jury hearing evidence in the case last year that Trump gave him free rein to search for any remaining documents at his properties last year, according to a transcript of his testimony.But an eventual attempt to remove Epshteyn from the case ended in failure, and Epshteyn remains a trusted member of Trump’s inner circle. The months of worsening relations that led to that moment were described to the Guardian by six people familiar with the situation.In a statement, a Trump spokesperson said: “This is completely false and is rooted in pure fantasy. The real story is the illegal weaponization of the Justice Department and their witch-hunts targeted to influence an election in order to try and prevent President Trump from returning to the White House.”The lawyers named in this story either declined to comment or did not respond to calls for comment.West Palm Beach dinner foreshadows divisivenessThe animosity inside the Trump legal team started almost immediately after the FBI seized 101 classified documents from Mar-a-Lago last August, when Trump’s lawyers asked a federal judge to appoint a special master to review the materials for any privilege protections.The legal team, at the time, was composed of former federal prosecutors Jim Trusty and Evan Corcoran – whose search for classified documents in response to a subpoena later proved incomplete – former Florida solicitor general Chris Kise and lawyer Lindsey Halligan.The lawyers presented a united front as they argued to US district court judge Aileen Cannon that she should grant a special master, which she did – a strategic win for Trump that enabled him to delay the criminal investigation and prosecutors’ ability to review the documents.But Trusty, who played a leading role in the special master litigation, was already frustrated with how things were going.Trusty’s private frame of mind emerged over dinner with Halligan and Corcoran at the five-star Breakers hotel in West Palm Beach, Florida, hours after the special master court hearing. The conversation was overheard by this Guardian reporter who happened to be sitting at the table next to them.Trusty’s main irritation with Epshteyn, as he recounted, was having to run his legal decisions by him even though he did not consider him a trial lawyer and objected to how, in his eyes, he gave more priority to Trump’s perceived PR problems than to genuine legal problems.He criticised Epshteyn for trying to “troubleshoot” those problems before they could reach Trump, instead of allowing him to straightforwardly brief the former president himself. The entire situation meant the lawyers were having to play “a game of thrones nonsense” that he found distracting.Trusty then discussed legal strategy, suggesting Kise was “too apologetic” in opening remarks to the judge and questioned the validity of the FBI warrant for Mar-a-Lago. He also said he had no interest in talking to reporters from the publication Lawfare or the New York Times on account of their coverage.Lawyers split over further searchesTrusty’s annoyance with Epshteyn for inserting himself into legal deliberations came to be shared by Parlatore several weeks later, when the justice department told the Trump legal team in October that it believed the former president still possessed classified documents.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe deliberations over how to respond to the department’s accusations split the legal team. Epshteyn and Kise were not in favor of doing voluntary searches of the Trump properties, while Parlatore and Trusty suggested a more proactive approach that involved new searches.Epshteyn and Kise for weeks were unconvinced. But Parlatore and Trusty reasoned that if they did find more classified documents but immediately returned them to the justice department, it would make it harder for prosecutors to say that Trump wilfully retained classified material.New searches of Trump’s properties did take place, though in Parlatore’s retelling of the deliberations to CNN last week, Epshteyn was reluctant to allow a search of Trump’s Bedminster golf club. Later, Trump lawyer Alina Habba was booked on CNN to dispute Parlatore’s account.But the episode also precipitated new distrust among the lawyers themselves, not just with Epshteyn. When the news about the justice department’s suspicions were reported, Parlatore and Trusty were surprised to see Kise portrayed as having always sought a cooperative approach with prosecutors.To Parlatore and Trusty, while Kise ultimately supported further searches, he was hardly the leading voice. And when Kise pulled out of arguing before the US court of appeals for the 11th circuit to keep the special master with 24 hours’ notice, they had him exiled to the civil litigation team.Lawyers stage Mar-a-Lago interventionWith Kise gone from the team defending Trump in special counsel matters, Parlatore and Trusty’s interpersonal conflicts with Epshteyn reached new levels as they grew increasingly annoyed at what they considered their inability to directly consult Trump without having to go through Epshteyn.The pair chafed that when they spoke to Trump on the phone, Epshteyn was typically also on the line. At other times, they sniped that Epshteyn would give overly rosy outlooks to Trump and, in March, travelled to Mar-a-Lago to seek Trump’s permission to exclude him from future deliberations.It was not clear whether the issue was actually resolved. Parlatore came away from the meeting content that he no longer needed to speak to Epshteyn. However, Epshteyn remained Trump’s in-house counsel and the legal team’s liaison with the Trump 2024 campaign.Around that time, Parlatore and Trusty also started withholding information from Corcoran because they worried that Corcoran was too close to Epshteyn and was briefing him behind their backs.That meant that as the special counsel intensified the documents investigation, after prosecutors convinced a US appeals court to force Corcoran to turn over his notes to a grand jury, at least two members of the legal team had little to no visibility into what the other two lawyers were doing unless they found out another way.Personal conflicts explode publiclyAround that time, Trump advisers and lawyers started to hear murmurs about whether Parlatore and Trusty should continue in their roles. When the pair heard about his inquiries, they resolved that if one of them actually got fired, the other should also resign.The animosity had also been increasing as the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, prepared to charge Trump in the hush money case and Parlatore insisted to Epshteyn that celebrity lawyer Joe Tacopina – whom he detested related to a prior case – should not be on the team defending the former president.Epshteyn suggested it was not in his control because Tacopina was recommended by others in Trump’s orbit, including Kimberly Guilfoyle – which Parlatore interpreted as a snub.Parlatore also had a misstep when he and Trusty last month urged Congress in a letter to tell the justice department to “stand down” its criminal investigation in the documents matter, laying out a detailed defence that claimed in part that responsibility lay with aides instead of Trump himself.The 10-page letter was sent to Trump and they believed it had the former president’s approval. But Trump was furious days later when he saw that the language in the letter cast doubt on his previous public statements about how White House and classified documents ended up at Mar-a-Lago.Parlatore had also decided against giving Epshteyn advance warning about the letter, which some on the Trump campaign used as an example of why the legal team needed his supervision.But the proximate cause of Parlatore’s departure was a row over discussing the letter on CNN. Parlatore had made a point of appearing on the network because he figured the attorney general, Merrick Garland, was more likely to watch CNN than a conservative network like Newsmax.Exactly who ordered Parlatore’s appearance to be cancelled remains unclear, though the Trump 2024 campaign later told the lawyers it was because he criticized Tacopina the last time he was on CNN. As the special counsel investigation neared its end, Parlatore told Trump he had enough and quit. More

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      Prosecutors have evidence Trump showed classified papers to people – report

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      Federal prosecutors have evidence Donald Trump showed classified documents to people, the Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing unnamed sources, as the investigation into his handling of national security materials and obstruction of justice approaches its conclusion.The development could raise the stakes for the former president as it exposes him to serious action under the Espionage Act, of wilfully communicating national security materials rather than simply retaining them, which is rarely charged.The movement of boxes in and out of a storage room at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida resort, has been a key focus for prosecutors because that was where Trump’s lawyer, Evan Corcoran, concentrated when he searched the property for classified documents.Corcoran found roughly 40 classified documents in the storage room and told the justice department no further papers remained on the property. But that assertion was called into question when the FBI seized 101 classified documents months later, including from the storage room in question.The central question for the special counsel, Jack Smith, has been whether Trump arranged for classified documents to be removed from the storage room before Corcoran searched there, to illegally retain them, even though he had been told he could not, as the Guardian first reported.When the chief US judge Beryl Howell forced Corcoran to testify to a grand jury, she opined in a 86-page legal memo that she believed when Trump went through boxes to give materials back to the National Archives last year, it was “apparently a dress rehearsal” for the subpoena.The Post attributed the “dress rehearsal” line to officials, though it was in Howell’s legal opinion that was reported in March.More importantly, it remains unclear if the special counsel has evidence that Trump’s response to the archives was a dry run to commit obstruction of justice.Prosecutors have also developed evidence in recent weeks that Trump employees at Mar-a-Lago last year brought boxes of documents back to the storage room the day before justice department officials came to collect classified documents that had been subpoenaed, the Post reported.Trump has denied wrongdoing, though his defence is framed around his near-unfettered ability as president to declassify documents. That argument is being viewed by the justice department as a straw man, because he is actually under investigation for retaining national security materials.The statue at issue is section 793e of the US Code, which makes no mention of whether documents are classified. If prosecutors were looking to charge Trump with classified documents retention, as he claims, the statue at issue would actually be section 798.A Trump spokesperson has previously said of the investigation: “This is nothing more than a targeted, politically motivated witch-hunt against President Trump.”Trump is not the only public figure being investigated over the retention of classified documents. Joe Biden and Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president, have also been found to have retained records after leaving office.But Trump faces unprecedented legal problems.The clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination faces trial on 34 criminal counts related to his hush-money payment to a porn star; was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation in a case brought by a writer who alleged rape; faces state and federal investigations of his election subversion; is the subject of the classified records investigation; and faces a New York state civil suit over his business practices.He denies all wrongdoing and claims to be the victim of political persecution – a stance that has propelled him to a 30-points-plus lead in primary polling. More

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      Mar-a-Lago employee aids investigation into whether Trump hid documents

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      Federal prosecutors have gained the cooperation of a person who worked at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, the New York Times reported, as they seek a more complete picture of whether the former US president took steps to remove classified documents from a storage room in response to a subpoena for their return.The identity of the cooperating witness and the extent of the information divulged remains unknown, but the person was reported as having turned over a picture of the storage room where the vast majority of the classified documents at the property had been located.The development comes as the special counsel Jack Smith has renewed efforts to focus on whether the failure by Trump to fully comply with a subpoena last year demanding the return of any classified documents was a deliberate act of obstruction, multiple people familiar with the matter said.Last June, the Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran helped draft a sworn statement attesting to a “diligent search” for any classified documents. Corcoran returned some papers to the justice department, but his search was proved to be incomplete when the FBI later seized 101 classified documents.To understand whether Trump decided to hide classified documents after receiving the subpoena, investigators have been examining Trump’s handling of any classified documents, how and where they were stored, why the subpoena was not fully complied with, and gaps in surveillance footage.The special counsel recently issued more subpoenas to Mar-a-Lago employees – including the chefs in the kitchen and a housekeeper who has been called in at least twice – to the point that nearly everyone who works at the property has been quizzed, the people said.To resolve the issue about the gaps in the surveillance footage, the special counsel last week subpoenaed Matthew Calamari Sr, the Trump Organization’s security chief who became its chief operating officer, and his son Matthew Calamari Jr, the director of corporate security.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, one of the people said – initially a point of confusion for the justice department, which appears to have thought the text was to Calamari Jr.But Nauta has emerged as a central player in the incomplete subpoena response, after he was seen on the surveillance footage going in and out of the storage room to collect and return boxes both before and after the subpoena was issued to Trump in May of last year.The scrutiny around Nauta has long been focused on whether Trump enlisted his help to remove classified documents from the storage room and take them to his office or elsewhere before Trump’s lawyers searched the room when they completed their incomplete subpoena response.Nauta himself has turned into a dead-end for investigators when, last fall, the justice department threatened to charge him with obstruction or making false statements to the FBI after he gave differing accounts to investigators in an effort to scare him into cooperation.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the move backfired. Nauta’s lawyer informed the justice department that his client would never again talk to investigators unless he was charged or unless he was offered an immunity deal like what was offered to Trump adviser Kash Patel, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.In a statement, a Trump spokesman said of the investigation: “This is nothing more than a targeted, politically motivated witch-hunt against President Trump that is concocted to meddle in an election and prevent the American people from returning him to the White House.”The special counsel had not made a decision either way as of Friday, one of the people said, and the threat of charges was the last interaction that Nauta has had with investigators. Likewise, Patel’s last interaction was when he testified to the grand jury pursuant to his immunity deal.Some people inside the justice department believe that threatening Nauta with prosecution so early on in the investigation was a mistake, and that they could have taken a lighter approach that could have led to answers for issues that have since cropped up, one of the people said.After losing Nauta, investigators have turned to other witnesses who could shed light on his role. In recent interviews, they have asked whether Nauta removed boxes containing classified documents when he was in the storage room at the time of the subpoena, and where he went with them. More

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      Trump lawyers say Mar-a-Lago boxes contained foreign leader briefings

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      Donald Trump’s lawyers in the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation found the 15 boxes the former president returned to the National Archives a year after the end of his presidency mostly contained briefings for calls with foreign leaders, according to a new letter they sent to Congress.The majority of the letter – seen by the Guardian and earlier reported by CNN – served to characterize Trump’s retention of classified-marked documents as inadvertent, and due to White House staffers sweeping all documents into boxes during a chaotic departure at the end of the administration.But the 10-page letter that was sent to the House and Senate intelligence committees also revealed the order in which the documents were placed, as well as their contents, inside 15 boxes the National Archives struggled to retrieve for months and precipitated the criminal investigation.The investigation into Trump’s potential retention of national defense information and obstruction of justice led by special counsel Jack Smith is ongoing, though it may be near its end given prosecutors have subpoenaed almost everyone who conceivably could have knowledge of the matter.Trump’s two main lawyers involved in the documents investigation – Tim Parlatore and Jim Trusty – in late December last year formally asked the National Archives for access to the 15 boxes that Trump had returned through the relevant provision in the Presidential Records Act.The request was granted several weeks later, and Parlatore and Trusty went to one of the top floors in the main National Archives building overlooking the National Mall and started going through the boxes, which they found preserved just as when Trump had sent them up from his Mar-a-Lago resort.The boxes, according to the letter, contained a mixture of documents from the White House that were grouped by date and included newspapers, magazines, notes, letters and daily presidential schedules.Where there had been classified documents – which was what prompted the National Archives to first alert the justice department to start an investigation last year – officials had inserted placeholder pages that described the document that had been removed, the letter said.“That allowed Parlatore and Trusty to discern what the documents were, as well as what other materials in the boxes were in proximity … The vast majority of placeholder inserts refer to briefings for phone calls with foreign leaders that were located near the schedule for those calls.”The letter then described the ensuing criminal investigation as “misguided” because, in their eyes, the way the boxes were packed was indicative of White House staff pulling all documents into the boxes during a chaotic “pack-out” process at the end of the Trump administration.Left unsaid was that the criminal investigation has evolved since the initial referral.The obstruction part of the investigation is centered on Trump’s incomplete compliance with a subpoena last May that demanded the return of any classified-marked documents in his possession. That was after documents he returned earlier to the National Archives included 200 that were classified.Last June, Corcoran searched Mar-a-Lago and produced about 30 documents with classified markings to the justice department, and had another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, sign a certification that attested to compliance with the subpoena “based on the information provided to me”.But the justice department developed evidence that more documents that were marked as classified remained at the resort, according to court filings, and when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August they found 101 documents marked as classified in a storage room and in Trump’s office.Last month, Corcoran was ordered by a senior US judge to testify and hand over his notes to the grand jury hearing evidence in the case, piercing his attorney-client privilege protections through the crime-fraud exception because Trump might have used his advice in furtherance of a crime.The special counsel is also investigating whether Trump violated the Espionage Act, and prosecutors have recently asked witnesses whether Trump ever showed a map to donors or a book author, a person familiar with the matter said. More

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      in Elections

      Top Trump adviser to be interviewed by special counsel prosecutors

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      Donald Trump’s senior adviser and legal counsel Boris Epshteyn is scheduled to be interviewed on Thursday by special counsel prosecutors investigating the former president’s retention of classified-marked documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort and his role in the January 6 Capitol attack.The investigation Epshteyn is being asked to talk about – potentially both – remains unclear, according to a person familiar with the matter who confirmed the meeting on the condition of anonymity. His lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.But the interview, which was requested by special counsel prosecutors, marks a moment of potential peril for Trump given Epshteyn has been one of his closest advisers in recent years, with more knowledge about the former president’s legal entanglements than perhaps anyone else.Throughout the Mar-a-Lago documents case, Epshteyn has simultaneously been a member of Trump’s inner circle as a senior adviser on the 2024 campaign, and a member of the Trump legal team as the project-manager-esque person leading the civil and criminal lawyers as the in-house counsel.The dual roles mean Epshteyn is considered to have the most insight into decisions taken by Trump and others as the investigation has progressed – the sort of behind-the-scenes knowledge most prized by prosecutors in high-profile criminal cases.Whether Epshteyn has legal exposure himself remains unclear. But he played a role in the Trump legal team’s botched response to a grand jury subpoena last year that demanded the return of any classified-marked documents before the FBI seized 101 such papers at Mar-a-Lago.In that episode, Epshteyn coordinated the two Trump lawyers who were involved in turning over some classified-marked documents to the justice department and signing an attestation letter certifying compliance with the subpoena, which later turned out to be false.The scheduled interview with Epshteyn was the topic of conversation among some of the Trump lawyers on Wednesday morning, who have made their dislike of working with him known internally, complaining that he acts as a gatekeeper to Trump and gave him poor predictions in the Manhattan hush-money case.But Trump has prized Epshteyn’s personal loyalty to him, and despite asking associates at the start of the year whether he was doing a “good job” after a series of legal defeats in court and having his phone seized by the FBI in the January 6 investigation, has kept him as a trusted member of his inner circle.The documents case has proved tricky for the entire Trump legal team, with prosecutors unusually focused on the behavior of the lawyers.Epshteyn’s interview makes him the fifth Trump lawyer to have formally spoken with justice department officials or testified before the grand jury in Washington hearing evidence about the former president’s potential mishandling of classified documents and obstruction of justice.The grand jury most recently heard testimony from Evan Corcoran, who led the initial search of Mar-a-Lago after Trump received the subpoena and was ordered to turn over detailed notes, because of the so-called crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege protections.Before Corcoran testified, his co-counsel Tim Parlatore was subpoenaed to testify about additional searches of Mar-a-Lago he led after the justice department believed Trump might have additional classified-marked documents in his possession. Alina Habba and Christina Bobb have also testified to the grand jury. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump boasts about ‘great family’ amid legal troubles – but where’s Melania?

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      When Donald Trump was photographed entering his Trump Tower skyscraper on Monday evening in New York and then emerging again on Tuesday to face criminal charges in a Manhattan court, in a historic low for a former US president, he cut a solitary figure.And as he flew back on his private jet to Florida after pleading not guilty to 34 charges accusing him of covering up hush-money payments to an adult film star and an ex-Playboy model while he was married, the woman to whom he was then (and is now) married, Melania Trump, was not there.As people increasingly wondered “Where’s Melania?” Donald Trump gathered supporters and family members in the glittering ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach and delivered a rambling but defiant speech on Tuesday evening, part tirade against his indictment, part thanks to his family. But Melania was neither mentioned nor anywhere to be seen.“I built a great business with my family, a fantastic business,” Trump said to the assembled, as his family watched from the front row, alongside Melania’s father, Viktor Knavs.His oldest sons Donald Jr and Eric were there, as was Tiffany Trump, his daughter with his second wife, Marla Maples. His other daughter, Ivanka Trump, was not present, having distanced herself from her father’s 2024 presidential campaign and her time serving as a key aide in his White House, and neither was Trump’s only child with Melania, Barron. But all the offspring got a mention.“I have a son here who has done a great job, and I have another son here who has done a great job,” Trump said, referring to his sons Eric and Donald Jr, before adding, “And Tiffany, and Ivanka. And Barron will be great someday. He is tall, he is tall and he’s smart.“But I have a great family and they have done a fantastic job and we appreciate it very much. They have gone through hell,” he added.In a family line-up photo Melania is noticeably absent.At one point on Tuesday afternoon there had been a smattering of reports that Melania was sighted in New York as if to join her husband at Trump Tower, but a picture claiming to capture the moment was inconclusive. No verification or confirmation was ever forthcoming and no further evidence of anyone seeing Melania in New York or Palm Beach in public emerged.A source told People last month Melania was “leading her own life, and still feels happy being at Mar-a-Lago, surrounded by people who love her and who never talk about reality, or bad things about her husband”.Nevertheless, the source said Melania “remains angry” about her husband’s extramarital affairs, adding that she “doesn’t want to hear [the alleged hush money payment] mentioned … She is aware of who her husband is and keeps her life upbeat with her own family and a few close friends.”In addition to being accused of falsifying business records in what prosecutors claim to be a conspiratorial attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election by quashing claims of a sexual encounter with the adult film star Stormy Daniels, Trump is also accused of paying hush money to a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, over an affair. Trump denies having affairs with either woman. More