Special Counsel Jack Smith has spoken to another mystery witness in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case against former President Donald Trump.
The Justice Department revealed in a Thursday court filing that federal prosecutors spoke with a witness on Wednesday pertaining to the criminal case against Trump. It is unclear whether this is a witness that the DOJ has already interviewed.
The latest filing is part of the standing discovery order that requires the government to disclose all evidence in its possession, even information that could be favorable to the defendant, to the defense. As part of that order, Smith handed over nine pages to the defense, including a memo of a March 6 interview, suggesting that prosecutors are still speaking with witnesses at this point in the case.
Trump is facing a total of 40 counts in the Mar-a-Lago case. Those include 32 counts of "willful retention of national defense information." There are two co-defendants in the case: Trump aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago employee Carlos De Oliveira. All three men have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Thursday's filing comes less than a week after Smith handed over a full copy of a warrant application for Nauta and a memo of another interview that was conducted on February 9 as part of the discovery order. Thursday's supplemental response is the fourteenth production of unclassified discovery offered to the defense from the government.
The process has been a messy fight between the DOJ and Trump's legal team. Last month, Smith raised issue over a ruling from Judge Aileen Cannon that would allow Trump's lawyers to publicly disclose the identity of the DOJ's witnesses and their testimony to the court docket.
The special prosecutor asked Cannon to reconsider, warning that it could expose those witnesses to "significant and immediate risks of threats, intimidation, and harassment" that he said have "already happened to witnesses, law enforcement agents, judicial officers, and Department of Justice employees whose identities have been disclosed in cases in which defendant Trump is involved."
The trial in the Mar-a-Lago case is currently set for May 20, and Smith's team is requesting a July 8 start date, while Trump is pushing that schedule out a month and proposing an August 12 start date.
Cannon, who heard arguments on Friday, has not yet made a decision on when the case will go to trial. She did, however, stress last week that there needs to be "some space" in the schedule leading up to the trial.
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Katherine Fung is a Newsweek reporter based in New York City. Her focus is reporting on U.S. and world politics. ... Read more
