Mar-a-Lago Witness Outs Himself Before Judge Cannon Can Do It For Him

// Judge Cannon may not have definitively knocked the Mar-a-Lago documents case off the calendar before the election, but she does continue to break shit at a remarkable pace.

This week she not only granted Trump a postponement on replying in support of the eleventy-seven garbage motions he’s spammed the docket with, but her shenanigans caused a witness to out himself on national television rather than wait for her to make good on her threats to do it herself.

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“Over the course of the last year, emotionally it’s been a roller coaster,” Brian Butler told Kaitlan Collins. “A couple weeks ago, Judge Cannon says she’s gonna release the names of the witnesses. You go from highs and lows in this.”

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That would be a reference to an ongoing kerfuffle over Trump’s motion to compel the government to produce a mountain of largely irrelevant materials on the theory that the entire executive branch is part of the “prosecution team.”

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Pursuant to Judge Cannon’s standing order, Trump filed a redacted version of the motion in January, with the exhibits under seal. But he demanded the right to put the entire filing on the public docket, including witness statements and grand jury testimony.

The special counsel objected, noting that they’d divulged the information to the defendants under the specific understanding that it would not be made public. But Judge Cannon shrugged off the government’s concerns about witness intimidation.

“The party requesting closure must demonstrate that such action is ‘necessitated by a compelling governmental interest and is narrowly tailored to serve that interest,’” she scoffed derisively.

In a motion for reconsideration, prosecutors pointed out that the court had applied the wrong standard, treating discovery materials like judicial records.

Both the First Amendment and the common law grant the press and the public a qualified right of access to criminal trial proceedings and certain judicial records. See Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia, 448 U.S. 555 (1980). But neither the First Amendment nor the common law grants the press or the public a right to access discovery materials. Chicago Tribune Co., 263 F.3d at 1310-13; See Nickens, 809 F. App’x at 591.

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That motion is still pending, but it appears that the damage has already been done. Fearful that he’d be outed by the court, Butler went on CNN and confirmed the allegations in the superseding indictment, where he’s described as “Trump Employee 5.”

In Paragraph 81, Butler corroborates the plan for Trump’s co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira to delete the security camera footage of them moving boxes of classified documents around Mar-a-Lago:

On Saturday, June 25, 2022, Nauta traveled from Bedminster, New Jersey, to Palm Beach, Florida. Prior to Nauta’s trip, De Oliveira told a valet at the Mar-a-Lago club (“Trump Employee 5”) that Nauta was coming down. De Oliveira asked Trump Employee 5 not to tell anyone that Nauta was coming down because Nauta wanted the trip to remain secret. De Oliveira also told Trump Employee 5 that Nauta wanted De Oliveira to talk to Trump Employee 4 [Yuscil Taveras] to see how long camera footage was stored.

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And in Paragraph 91, Butler is shown confirming to Susie Wiles, who runs the current Trump campaign, that De Oliveira will stay loyal, i.e. lie, to protect Trump:

Just over two weeks after the FBI discovered classified documents in the Storage Room and Trump’s office, on August 26, 2022, Nauta called Trump Employee 5 and said words to the effect of, “someone just wants to make sure Carlos is good.” In response, Trump Employee 5 told Nauta that De Oliveira was loyal and De Oliveira would not do anything to affect his relationship with Trump. That same day, at Nauta’s request, Trump Employee 5 confirmed in a Signal chat group with Nauta and the PAC Representative that De Oliveira was loyal. That same day, Trump called De Oliveira and told De Oliveira that Trump would get De Oliveira an attorney.

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Butler says that he rebuffed imprecations from Trumpland to accept an attorney provided by the campaign. He also says that he never again spoke to De Oliveira, his former best friend.

After spending his entire adult life in Trump’s orbit, Butler seems to know what’s coming his way.

“Instead of just waiting for it to just come out, I think it’s better that I get to at least say what happened than it coming out in the news, people calling me like crazy,” he told Collins. “The hope is I can get on with my life and get over this.”

That has not been the experience of average people who crossed Trump, but … there’s always a first time.

US v. Trump [SDFL Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.

Topics

Aileen Cannon, Crime, Donald Trump, Government