A crucial witness in the classified documents case involving Donald Trump has agreed to testify against the former president.
Yuscil Taveras, an IT employee at a resort in Mar-a-Lago, initially denied any discussions regarding security footage that had been subpoenaed by prosecutors during the investigation, as confirmed by Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team. However, when Taveras obtained a new public defender in July, he quickly changed his statement, accusing Trump and his two co-defendants of attempting to remove the video evidence.
CNN reported on Wednesday that Taveras has now agreed to testify against Trump, Walt Nauta, and Carlos De Oliveira in exchange for not facing charges.
“Trump was charged in Florida with keeping national defense secrets, making false statements, and conspiracy to obstruct justice, among other things, for hoarding classified materials at Mar-a-Lago. His body man Nauta and a Mar-a-Lago employee De Oliveira have also been charged. All three men are accused of trying to destroy evidence, including attempting to delete security footage off a server,” the New Republic reported.
“Taveras provided his original testimony when he was represented by Trump-appointed lawyer Stanley Woodward, who also represents Nauta. Prosecutors raised concerns in July that Woodward representing a defendant and a witness could create a conflict of interest. The chief judge presiding over Trump’s other federal indictment case in Washington offered to assign a federal public defender to Taveras, and Taveras accepted,” the outlet added.
“Immediately after receiving new counsel, Trump Employee 4 retracted his prior false testimony and provided information that implicated Nauta, De Oliveira, and Trump in efforts to delete security camera footage,” an August filing from Smith said. Taveras was not named in the filing, but he was later identified through media reports.
In a separate case from the Florida classified documents one, the special counsel filed a complaint in Washington, DC, on Tuesday. The complaint expressed concern that Donald Trump’s statements in his alleged election interference case were prejudicing the potential jury pool.
Smith wrote in his filing in a DC court that Trump’s “daily extrajudicial statements could threaten to prejudice the jury pool” in his case.
“The allegation arose in a court fight that remains largely under seal, so additional details are not public. The brief reference to Trump’s statements affecting the jury pool at the Washington, DC, courthouse came in a public filing in the federal criminal case,” CNN reported.
The outlet added: “Smith’s office has been sparring with Trump’s team over how much of the underlying sealed dispute should be made public. Prosecutors tried earlier Tuesday to file court documents partially under seal – and partially on the public docket. But Trump’s team argued that the filings should not be posted to the court’s public docket until they have 14 days to respond – the amount of time set out by default court rules.”
Smith’s team fired back: “Such a requirement would grind litigation in this case to a halt, which is particularly infeasible given the pressing matters before the Court — including the defendant’s daily extrajudicial statements that threaten to prejudice the jury pool in this case, as described in the Government’s motion.”
“This is a free speech-killing indictment. There’s no way around it. I write a great deal in academia in the free-speech area, and I have rarely seen a more chilling filing by the Department of Justice,” Turley said.
“The question that people have to ask themselves is, when is the price too high? People are enraged, but what is the price too high to bag Donald Trump? This indictment is a prohibitive cost. Meaning what they are attempting to do is criminalize what they consider to be disinformation,” he added.
“This is a speaking indictment but it doesn’t say very much. It just says that we think Trump is lying and that he didn’t believe this. I can’t tell you how faciously ridiculous this claim is. It starts by saying, of course, you can say false things in the campaign, but then says that Trump knew they were false. Is that the test going forward in terms of criminalizing political speech?” Turley, a noted liberal, continued.
“Smith is just not only going to have to just bulldoze through the First Amendment, he’s going to have to bulldoze through a line of cases by the Supreme Court,” he said.
