Thread by @lawofruby

I’m rereading the superseding indictment, and details that have been there since the start are still gobsmacking. Among them? That between Jan. 2021 and Aug. 2022, when the FBI conducted its court-authorized search of Mar a Lago, MAL hosted 150 social events. 1/

Those events included “weddings, movie premieres, & fundraisers that together drew tens of thousands of guests.” Safe to say DOJ/Smith’s team obtained the event staff’s records to illustrate why Trump’s keeping hundreds of classified documents at MAL was reckless & dangerous. 2/

Another thing I only appreciated on a closer, slower reading: The Special Counsel has a list of those federal agencies/departments with a stake in the classified documents at issue. They include the Department of Energy. Why? 3/

Because, as the indictment states, DOE is “responsible for maintaining a safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent to protect national security, including ensuring the effectiveness of the United States nuclear weapons stockpile without nuclear explosive testing.” 4/

In other words, it’s not just that one or more of the documents addressed *other countries’* nuclear capabilities (see Count 5 on page 33); it’s that at least one of those in Counts 1-32 implicates our own. 5/

And indeed, the document at issue in Count 19 is described as “concerning nuclear weaponry of the United States.” 6/

Less inflammatory, but still significant are signs of the breadth of the evidence the Special Counsel’s team has. While the indictment has long been chock full of Nauta’s texts, it is easier to overlook direct quotes from texts only involving other folks. 7/

Take the text exchange in paragraph 28, for example, where Trump Employees 1 & 2 discuss in April 2021 where to move Trump’s boxes to make room for a staff office. Whose phone did that come from? Employee 2, thought to be former exec assistant Molly Michael? Or Employee 1? 8/

Similarly, in paragraph 80 — part of the new allegations — there is a text between DeOliveira and Trump Employee 4, thought to be Yuscil Taveras, an IT staffer at Mar-a-Lago. Has Taveras’s phone been turned over, via subpoena or voluntarily, or do the feds have DeOliveira’s? 9/

There are also indicia that while Trump may not have texted or emailed on his own devices, he used his staff’s phones. The employee believed to be Michael tells Nauta via text in Dec. 2021, “I’m sorry potus had my phone.” 10/

Let’s assume Trump used staff phones during his WH years to circumvent WH record keeping and/or avoid certain bureaucratic steps, which are not exactly kosher to begin with. But what reasons could he have for doing so in his post-White House life? 11/

(Addendum: Thanks to my colleague @LauraAJarrett, I learned that the feds seized DeOliveira's phone: ). /9.5washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

The superseding indictment reflects the Special Counsel's securing and digesting a host of other data, including phone records & surveillance footage of even outdoor areas around MAL. But what stands out on a fresh read are the unnamed actors & their potential cooperation. 12/

Paragraphs 39-47 show Trump Employee 2 knew Trump retained dozens of boxes of records & was reviewing some in Nov.-Dec. 2021 for return to NARA. She helped Nauta move boxes for Trump's review & texted with Nauta & one of Trump's representatives with NARA about his progress. 13/

And she even helped Nauta load the first 15 boxes returned to NARA into his car and then a commercial truck on 1/17/22. Shortly after the Aug. 2022 search, news broke that the feds had already been in contact with Michael. 14/

nytimes.com/2022/08/11/us/…

Yet nowhere in the indictment is she accused of any false representations to the feds about "the location and movement of boxes before the production to NARA," as Nauta has been. In fact, that's the gist of the false representations charge against him in Count 38. 15/

But what's more interesting is *how* the Special Counsel's office determined Nauta lied to the FBI in May 2022. Because although DOJ sought surveillance footage going back to 1/10/22, it only got footage as of Apr. '22, after boxes were moved around for Trump's NARA review. 16/

Sure, they quote texts between Employee 2 & Nauta. But some of the allegations could only have come from a witness. How else would they know Employee 2 gave Trump a photo of the storage room boxes "by taping it to one of the boxes [she] had placed in [his] residence?" 17/