For months after the FBI seized government documents stored at Purgatory’s waiting room in Florida, CNN reports that Donald Trump and other members of his staff reached out to a former Mar-a-Lago employee who later became a key witness in Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents, CNN reports.
One of the Mar-a-Lago employees who helped move the boxes of documents, the unnamed man quit his job at the club to pursue a new opportunity three months after the August 2022 FBI search. Trump and the man’s former boss, Mar-a-Lago property manager and Trump co-defendant Carlos De Oliveira, repeatedly contacted the man in the following months, offering him invitations to events and complimentary tickets to golf tournaments.
In early 2023, the man correctly determined he needed legal representation, and despite De Oliveira urging him to seek Trump’s financial help and access to Trump’s legal team, the man opted for an independent lawyer, and ultimately cooperated with the Special Counsel’s office. The same realization happened to another former Mar-a-Lago employee, Yuscil Taveras, the site’s IT manager, who became a cooperating witness after ditching Trump-paid counsel.