Trump staffer tells FBI he was ordered to move boxes at Mar-a-Lago

(CNN) — A Trump staffer told the FBI that the former president ordered boxes from a basement storage room to be moved from a basement storage room to his Mar-a-Lago home after Donald Trump’s legal team obtained a subpoena to obtain classified documents at his Florida home. A source familiar with the testimony of the witness.

The FBI also has surveillance footage showing an employee removing boxes from a storage room, the source told CNN.

Witness accounts of Trump’s actions after he was subpoenaed in May, along with the images, could be key to a federal criminal investigation into a number of potential crimes, including obstruction, destruction of government records and mishandling of classified information.

FBI agents raided Mar-a-Lago in August and seized thousands of documents, including 100 marked classified documents. The FBI sent surveillance video of the complex to the Trump Organization.

According to the source, a Trump staffer initially denied any damage to important documents or boxes at Mar-a-Lago. But the FBI uncovered evidence that led investigators to go back to the witness, who revised his story and said Trump gave him instructions to move the boxes.

The Washington Post He was the first to give an eyewitness account.

The Justice Department previously alleged that classified documents at Mar-a-Lago may have been “hidden and removed” from a storage room at Mar-a-Lago as part of an effort to “obstruct” the FBI’s investigation into the case. Mishandling of classified material by Trump.

After the former president returned 15 boxes of items to the National Archives in January, the Justice Department in May requested documents still with classification marks at Mar-a-Lago.

According to a lawsuit he later filed, Trump ordered his staff to search the remaining classified material to fulfill the subpoena. After federal investigators recovered documents from the resort in June, its attorneys later told investigators that they had searched the storage area and that all confidential documents were accounted for.

Prosecutors said in August that some documents may have been removed from the storage room before the area was searched as Trump’s lawyers attempted to comply with the subpoena.

“The government has also obtained evidence that government records were concealed and removed from storage rooms, and that actions may have been taken to obstruct the government’s investigation,” prosecutors wrote at the time. “This included evidence indicating that the boxes in the storage room had not been returned prior to the attorney’s review.”

This is breaking news and will be updated.