Federal investigators are asking witnesses whether former President Donald Trump showed off to aides and visitors a map he took with him when he left office that contains sensitive intelligence information, four people with knowledge of the matter said.
The nature of the map and the information it contained is not clear. But investigators have questioned a number of witnesses about it, according to the people with knowledge of the matter, as the special counsel overseeing the Justice Department’s Trump-focused inquiries, Jack Smith, examines the former president’s handling of classified material after leaving office and weighs charges that could include obstruction of justice.
After the June 3 visit, when Justice Department officials were handed a batch of documents with classified markings that had been found at Mar-a-Lago, a lawyer for Trump signed a certification saying a “diligent search” had been conducted and all government material had been returned. That statement proved untrue two months later when the FBI found hundreds of pages of additional classified documents during a court-authorized search.
The documents investigation being overseen by Smith, the special counsel, is running in parallel with another he is managing that is focused on Trump’s efforts to remain in power after his election loss in 2020 and how those efforts led to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.
Investigators have compiled extensive witness testimony, texts and emails from a number of key witnesses. They have constructed a timeline of Trump’s actions and movements and interviewed dozens of people, including close advisers to Trump as well as staff members at Mar-a-Lago and former administration officials who had knowledge of how he handled documents in different settings.
Among those interviewed recently is one of the lawyers involved in Trump’s response to the grand jury subpoena for remaining documents. Prosecutors successfully asked the chief judge who had been presiding over the grand jury until recently, Judge Beryl Howell, to allow them to question the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran.
Her order ruling that Corcoran must testify was said to be accompanied by an 86-page memorandum of law. She found that the Justice Department had met the threshold for having a credible case that Trump had obstructed justice, justifying its request to override attorney-client privilege and require Corcoran’s testimony about his role, according to people familiar with the memorandum’s contents.
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Article URL : https://news.yahoo.com/witnesses-asked-trump-handling-map-184922560.html