A key Mar-a-Lago witness for the defense in Donald Trump’s mishandling of classified documents case retracted his previous false testimony Tuesday and requested a new attorney, MSNBC reported.
In court documents obtained by the network, a worker Identified as Trump Employee 4 told Chief Judge Boasbert that he no longer wanted to be represented by Trump “house counsel” and instead wanted to be represented by the First Assistant Federal Defender. After receiving new counsel he retracted his prior false testimony.
The witness told prosecutors that before the grand jury in the District of Columbia in March 2023, he “repeatedly denied or claimed not to recall any contacts or conversations about the security footage at Mar-a-Lago.”
After receiving new counsel, Trump Employee 4 redacted his previous false statement and provided information that implicated Walt Nauta, Carlos De Olivera, and Trump in efforts to delete security camera footage.
“It appears this employe at Mar-a-Lago has changed his testimony to tell the truth,” MSNBC anchor Nicole Wallace said Tuesday, with former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann joining her online.
“So this is how you get cooperating witnesses,” said Weissmann, who prosecuted high-profile organized crime cases for the U.S. Justice Department from 1991 to 2002. “This looks to me like you have the Mar-a-Lago IT guy who either gave an interview or gave grand jury testimony that the government could prove was false.”
He added: “I saw it all the time in mob cases, having handled those at the beginning of my career, where house counsel is not looking out for the interests of the person who they represent. And so, here the person wisely got separate counsel. We saw the same thing with Cassidy Hutchinson, where she gave testimony about what her prior counsel paid for by folks aligned with Donald Trump advised her to do, which was, according to her, obstruct justice.”
Weissman said with Trump Employee 4 obtaining independent counsel, “you have somebody who has slipped, and is clearly an insider saying what it is that the three charged defendants — Mr. Trump, Mr. Nauta, and Mr. Olivera — did in connection with the obstruction scheme.”
Watch the full MSNBC segment at the top of this file.
