Prosecutors tell Trump’s team he is a target
Federal prosecutors have informed the legal team for former president Donald Trump that he is a target of their investigation into his handling of classified documents after he left office, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The notification to Trump’s team by prosecutors from the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, was the clearest signal yet that the former president is likely to face charges in the investigation.
It remained unclear when Trump’s team was told that he was a target of the special counsel’s inquiry, but the notice suggested that prosecutors working for Smith had largely completed their investigation and were moving toward bringing an indictment.
In court papers last year, prosecutors indicated that they were scrutinizing whether Trump had broken laws governing the handling of national security documents and whether he had obstructed government efforts to retrieve them.
Trump was found to have had more than 300 documents with classified markings at Mara-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, including some found in a search there by FBI agents two months after lawyers for the former president said a diligent search had not turned up any more.
Notifying a potential defendant that he or she is a target is a formal way of indicating that the person is a direct focus of a criminal investigation and often precedes the filing of charges. The notification typically opens the door to defense lawyers requesting a meeting with prosecutors to offer their side of the story.
On Monday, three of Trump’s lawyers — James Trusty, John Rowley, and Lindsey Halligan — met for almost two hours with Smith and others at the Justice Department in what people close to Trump described as a final effort to stave off charges and alert top prosecutors to what they believe to be misconduct in Smith’s investigation.
On Wednesday, witnesses continued to appear in front of a federal grand jury in Miami that was hearing evidence in the documents case — among them Taylor Budowich, one of Trump’s former spokespeople.
Aides and advisers to Trump spent the day in a state of high tension. As Budowich completed his grand jury appearance, John Solomon, a journalist who serves as one of Trump’s representatives to the National Archives, published an article asserting that prosecutors were moving toward indicting Trump “imminently.”
The New York Times contacted Trump directly to ask if he had in fact been that told he would be indicted, and he said it was not true.
But when asked if he had been told he is a target of a federal investigation, Trump did not respond directly, saying, “you have to understand” that he was not in direct touch with prosecutors. He then repeated that it wasn’t true that he was told he will be indicted.
A short time later, Trump, who was at his club in Bedminster, N.J., posted a message on his social media platform denying Solomon’s claim.
“No one has told me I’m being indicted,” Trump wrote,
“and I shouldn’t be, because I’ve done NOTHING wrong, but I have assumed for years that I am a Target of the WEAPONIZED DOJ & FBI.”
Most of the documents investigation has been conducted by a grand jury sitting in Washington, which has heard from numerous witnesses over the past several months, including some of Trump’s White House advisers, some low-level workers at Mar-a-Lago, and more than 20 members of his Secret Service security detail.
Only a handful of witnesses have appeared so far before the grand jury in Miami, which seems to have started hearing evidence last month, according to people familiar with its workings. It remains uncertain how many more witnesses are scheduled to testify before the Miami grand jury.
Recently, there have been indications that the grand jury in Washington has either expired or paused hearing testimony, according to several people familiar with its workings. Some of those people said the last witnesses to appear for questioning in Washington did so in early or mid-May.
Should prosecutors ultimately charge Trump, it remains an open question whether Smith’s team would file an indictment in Washington, Miami, or both cities.
The special counsel’s office is also conducting a separate inquiry into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The status of that investigation seems to be lagging somewhat behind the classified documents case.
Trump is already under indictment in New York by a local prosecutor in a hush-money case, and is under scrutiny by a prosecutor in Georgia over his efforts to overturn his election loss in that state in 2020.
Federal prosecutors appeared to be still assembling evidence in the documents investigation Wednesday. Budowich appeared at the Miami courthouse around 9 a.m. for an hour or two of questions in front of the grand jury.
NEW YORK TIMES
Guilty plea in plot to kidnap Michigan governor
BELLAIRE, Mich. — A man accused of aiding a plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor pleaded guilty Wednesday, the ninth conviction in state and federal courts since agents broke up an astonishing scheme by antigovernment rebels in 2020.
Shawn Fix said he provided material support for an act of terrorism, namely the strategy to snatch Governor Gretchen Whitmer at her vacation home in Antrim County. Prosecutors agreed to drop a weapon charge.
Fix trained with a militia, the Wolverine Watchmen, for “politically motivated violence,” prosecutors have said, and hosted a five-hour meeting at his Belleville home where there was much discussion about kidnapping Whitmer.
Fix, 40, acknowledged helping plot leader Adam Fox pinpoint the location of Whitmer’s home, key information that was used for a 2020 ride to find the property in northern Michigan. “Guilty,” Fix told the judge. He appeared in an Antrim County court, one of five people charged in that leg of the investigation. A co-defendant pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in March, leaving three other men to face trial in August.
Fix, who faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, agreed to testify if called by prosecutors.
The main kidnapping conspiracy case was handled in federal court, where four men, including ringleaders Fox and Barry Croft Jr., were convicted. Two others were acquitted.