Trump wrote to-do lists for assistant on White House documents marked classified: Sources - Lemmy.world
One of former President Donald Trump’s long-time assistants told federal
investigators that Trump repeatedly wrote to-do lists for her on documents from
the White House that were marked classified, according to sources familiar with
her statements. As described to ABC News, the aide, Molly Michael, told
investigators that – more than once – she received requests or taskings from
Trump that were written on the back of notecards, and she later recognized those
notecards as sensitive White House materials – with visible classification
markings – used to brief Trump while he was still in office about phone calls
with foreign leaders or other international-related matters. The notecards with
classification markings were at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate when FBI agents
searched the property on Aug. 8, 2022 – but the materials were not taken by the
FBI, according to sources familiar with what Michael told investigators. When
Michael, who was not present for the search, returned to Mar-a-Lago the next day
to clean up her office space, she found the documents underneath a drawer
organizer and helped transfer them to the FBI that same day, sources told ABC
News. The sources said Michael also told federal investigators that last year
she grew increasingly concerned with how Trump handled recurring requests from
the National Archives for the return of all government documents being kept in
boxes at Mar-a-Lago – and she felt that Trump’s claims about it at the time
would be easy to disprove, according to the sources. Sources said that after
Trump heard the FBI wanted to interview Michael last year, Trump allegedly told
her, “You don’t know anything about the boxes.” It’s unclear exactly what he
meant by that. Trump pleaded not guilty in June to 37 criminal counts related to
his handling of classified materials, after prosecutors said he repeatedly
refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information
ranging from U.S. nuclear secrets to the nation’s defense capabilities, and took
steps to thwart the government’s efforts to get the documents back. Trump has
denied all charges and denounced the probe as a political witch hunt. As ABC
News previously reported, Michael is believed to be the person identified in
special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment as “Trump Employee 2,” described in the
indictment as someone who handled many of Trump’s White House-era boxes at
Mar-a-Lago and who provided Trump with photos of those boxes that were then
included in the indictment. Michael’s statements to investigators, described to
ABC News by sources, shed further light on the breadth of evidence that Smith
has amassed to support his case against Trump. A Trump spokesperson said that
what ABC News was told – through what the spokesperson called “illegal leaks” –
lacks “proper context and relevant information,” and that “President Trump did
nothing wrong, has always insisted on truth and transparency, and acted in a
proper manner, according to the law.” A representative for Michael declined to
comment to ABC News. The FBI also declined to comment. ‘Easily’ disproven In
2018, Michael became Trump’s executive assistant in the White House, and she
continued to work for him when Trump left office. But she resigned last year, in
the wake of Trump’s alleged refusal to comply with the federal requests and the
FBI’s subsequent search of Mar-a-Lago. Speaking to federal investigators,
Michael recounted how, by late 2021, as many as 90 boxes of materials from
Trump’s time as president were moved into a basement storage room at Mar-a-Lago,
and how – as pressure from the National Archives mounted – she and Trump aide
Walt Nauta would bring boxes to Trump’s residence for him to review. Trump
eventually agreed to turn over 15 boxes of materials, which Michael told
investigators she viewed as a positive sign, sources told ABC News. But then,
according to what she told investigators, around the same time that the National
Archives found nearly 200 classified documents in the 15 boxes and referred the
matter to the FBI, Trump began to seem more reluctant to cooperate with the
agency, and he asked Michael to help spread a message that no more boxes
existed, sources said she recounted. That’s when Michael became concerned,
knowing that scores more boxes were in the storage room, sources said. And as
Trump continued to claim that there were no more boxes, Michael even pointed out
to him that many people, including maintenance workers, knew otherwise because
they had all seen that there were many more than 15 boxes, sources said she told
investigators. Smith’s indictment against Trump alleges that Trump asked one of
his attorneys at the time, “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t
have anything here?” Speaking later with investigators, Michael said she
believed early on that claims of no more boxes from Trump were “easily”
disproven, and she believed Trump knew they were false because he knew the
contents of those boxes better than anyone else – and because he had previously
seen a photograph of the storage room with all 90 or so boxes in it, ABC News
was told. The Justice Department was apparently just as skeptical. What the FBI
didn’t take In May of last year, convinced that Trump was still holding onto a
cache of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, the Justice Department issued a
grand jury subpoena to Trump demanding he return any and all classified
documents. According to the indictment, when Trump attorney Evan Corcoran then
planned to search for any remaining classified documents in the storage room at
Mar-a-Lago, Trump directed Nauta and another aide to remove dozens of boxes from
the storage room before Corcoran got there “so that many boxes were not searched
and many boxes responsive to the … subpoena could not be found,” the indictment
said. Corcoran found only 38 classified documents in the boxes left in the
storage room, and he handed them over to the FBI, along with a certification –
allegedly endorsed by Trump – that the former president had now fully complied
with the subpoena. But the FBI still believed Trump was holding onto even more
classified documents, and when FBI agents conducted an unannounced search of
Mar-a-Lago three months later, they found 102 more classified documents in
Trump’s office and elsewhere. The next day, after the FBI search, Michael
returned to work at Mar-a-Lago and found her desk in a bit of a mess, with
drawers turned over, sources said. Buried underneath a drawer organizer were the
to-do lists Trump had written for her on the backs of briefing notes with
classification markings, Michael later recalled to investigators, according to
sources. When Michael discovered that the FBI hadn’t taken those documents in
their search of Mar-a-Lago, she helped make sure they were given to the FBI that
same day, the sources told ABC News. It’s unclear if Michael notified Trump or
others at Mar-a-Lago about her discovery, or if any of those notecards from
White House briefings are among the 32 different classified documents that Trump
is charged with unlawfully retaining. The indictment also accuses Trump of
trying “to obstruct the FBI and grand jury investigations” by, among other
things, providing “just some of the documents called for by the grand jury
subpoena, while claiming that he was cooperating fully.” In her statements to
investigators, as described by sources to ABC News, Michael noted that when the
FBI first contacted her for an interview as part of their investigation last
year, she notified Trump about the request. In response, he told her, “You don’t
know anything about the boxes,” she told investigators, according to the
sources. ‘Anything you need from us’ A Trump campaign spokesperson, Steven
Cheung, previously told ABC News that Trump “offered full cooperation with DOJ,
and told [a] key DOJ official, in person, ‘Anything you need from us, just let
us know.’” According to transcripts of contemporaneous voice notes made by Trump
attorney Corcoran and reviewed by ABC News, Trump did make such a statement on
June 3 of last year at Mar-a-Lago, when a senior Justice Department official and
FBI agents came to retrieve the 38 classified documents that Corcoran found in
the basement storage room. But, according to the indictment, that’s the same day
Trump “caused a false certification to be submitted to the FBI” claiming there
were no more classified documents. And before Trump spoke with the Justice
Department official, many of his boxes were loaded onto his plane headed “north
for the summer,” according to the indictment. In addition, after the Justice
Department weeks later issued a second subpoena for security camera footage from
inside Mar-a-Lago, Trump tried to have some of that footage deleted “to conceal
information from the FBI and grand jury,” the indictment alleged. Alongside
Trump, the indictment also charged Nauta and the other Trump aide, Carlos de
Oliveira, for their alleged roles in the conspiracy to hide classified documents
from the FBI. They have each pleaded not guilty.