Special counsel jack smith against donald trump. In an interview with cnn, maralago employee brian butler painting a painting a very specific picture of trumps inner circle, and how it operated more like a mafia family than anything else. With loyalty prized above everything. A world where fealty to the boss led to criminal exposure. Now, nbc news has not independently confirmed butlers identity as trump employee number 5 and he declined nbcs request for comment. In his interview last night, butler says he helped trumps codefendants, walt nowta and carlos move those boxes containing some of our nations most Sensitive National security secrets. Watch. He followed me. He pulled out, got behind me, got to the airport, i ended up loading all the luggage i had and he had a bunch of boxes. You noticed that he had boxes. Oh, yeah, they were the boxes that were in the indictment, the white bankers boxes. Thats what i remember. Did you have any idea at the time that there was potentially u. S.
hosted by alex witt will start at 5:00 a.m. eastern. that is going to do it for me. deadline white house begins right now. hi there, everyone. happy friday. it s 4:00 in new york. donald trump s once loyal attorney general bill barr recently said that the classified documents probe was the most threatening to trump, and brand new reporting in the new york times reveals why that may be the case. new york times out with some blockbuster new reporting that shows that special counsel jack smith is leaving no stone unturned in his pursuit of answers to questions about trump s conduct. namely, whether he sought to obstruct efforts by the government to get back classified documents. some of which contained incredibly sensitive national security secrets. from that new times story, quote, federal prosecutors investigating former president trump s handling of classified documents have obtained the confidential cooperation of a person who has worked for him at mar-a-lago. it
Reporting about walt nowta. is this person able to close the loop or answer some of those questions now sort of in the walt nowta black box? maybe. we know that they have the cooperation of this confidential witness. we know that this witness had provided the authorities with some type of photo that was taken from inside of mar-a-lago. and it seems to be from our reporting that the cooperation of this person has been done in a way to try and protect this person. we know that it is very difficult or it has been or those around donald trump have struggled to fully cooperate with different investigations over the years. it seems like the government has tried to obtain this information in a way to protect this individual. now if they were to go to trial and this was a key piece of evidence, they wouldn t be able to do that. but it seems like someone was able to provide the investigators with some sort of insight in the form of a photo
Remained at the premises, notwithstanding the sworn certification made to the government on june 3. in particular, the government developed evidence that a search limited to the storage room would not have uncovered all the classified documents at the premises. the government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the storage room, and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government s investigation. now i don t know how that plugs into the puzzle piece of walt nowta, but the government had information in may and june that all the classified material not only wasn t in the storage room, but that it had been moved. tell me your sort of translation of what we re seeing, what we already knew from their filings and what this new piece of reporting answers. yeah, i think that, you know, as we ve talked about is key because that shows that even after getting the subpoena or evidence that would show
To work from the bottom up. so far in this investigation, it s been largely a grand jury investigation with some big overt investigative moves like executing a search warrant at mar-a-lago. what remains to be seen is how much will the justice department try and use its prosecutorial powers, its ability to charge people to work up that ladder, to try and get that, and how much did they need to do that. if they really thought they needed walt nowta and thought they had to charge him to get his cooperation, in order to indict donald trump this is a hypothetical that is something that could take a fair amount of time to do and to move forward with, to try and get that. so i think what the government is trying to do is to try and fill that hole in with other things. with with the surveillance footage, with other witnesses, with these confidential photos they have obtained. that s what they re trying to