A recent report from CNN says that federal authorities while building their classified documents case against former President Donald Trump pursued answers from a member of the cleaning staff responsible for his bedroom suite at his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago. It’s there that officials recovered — including through a late 2022 search — a large number of classified documents. (Trump has claimed they were unclassified, though less prominently lately.)
Trump has at times claimed he holds an absolute right to the disputed documents’ control, though even the normally apolitical National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has refuted this idea. The law actually outlines a process by which that very federal agency takes possession of a presidential administration’s records. But in the scenario in which that faulty interpretation of the law is set aside, the basic facts relevant to the documents’ handling could be critically relevant for proving the government’s case — and the cleaning staff member who handled Trump’s bedroom was in a potentially prime position to give insight.
“When the maid who cleans his bedroom suite was asked to speak with investigators, for instance, Trump’s response was “ballistic,” one source told CNN,” per that outlet. The network didn’t have specific details (at least in that report) about what the cleaning staff member may have actually told the feds. Trump is currently on track for trial in the sweeping case towards the middle of next year, months after his January 6 trial in D.C. is scheduled, though the Florida trial on the docs could shift. (Tanya Chutkan, the federal judge on the January 6 case, has expressed determination to stick to that trial’s scheduling.)
There’s lately been a flurry of filings in that other federal criminal case Trump is facing, which concerns his alleged conspiracies targeting the 2020 election results. Among the more recent developments, the government is maligning the suddenly expressed support from Trump for broadcasting the forthcoming trial. Prosecutors characterized the stance from the ex-president’s team as amounting to a push for special treatment and cited potential problems like witness intimidation facilitated by the possible broadcasting.
