This week on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) helped outline some of the frankly concerning details lately emerging in the federal criminal case against former President Donald Trump and others that relates to the former president having harbored classified documents from his time in office.
A staff member at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort has been revealed to have abruptly changed what he was telling federal investigators after switching lawyers. This individual had been represented by Stanley Woodward, who a Trump political organization was paying, and after Woodward came a public defender. The revisions that this witness made to their accounts given to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team helped implicate former President Trump and others in an alleged plot to eliminate security footage from Mar-a-Lago that would have been of interest to federal investigators as they probed the circumstances around those government materials housed at the premises.
“The January 6th Committee was profoundly concerned about Trump’s lawyers representing multiple witnesses and placing his personal interests above justice and the truth,” Schiff said. “We feared it could result in false or misleading testimony and that it could put the witnesses in legal jeopardy themselves. It seems our concerns were well-founded.”
In the documents matter, the special counsel’s team pushed back in a court filing on the prospect of simply not hearing from that witness at trial at all to deal with the potential conflicts arising from Woodward having represented them — and now representing Walt Nauta, a co-defendant alongside the ex-president. The special counsel’s team also said that a grand jury that had been operating in Washington, D.C., and participating in investigatory matters related to the documents was no longer operational, having closed up shop August 17. Elsewhere, Trump remains expected to surrender to authorities in Georgia following his overall fourth indictment.
The January 6th Committee was profoundly concerned about Trump’s lawyers representing multiple witnesses and placing his personal interests above justice and the truth.
We feared it could result in false or misleading testimony and that it could put the witnesses in legal… https://t.co/4SCEAaUVkX
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) August 23, 2023
